Today’s workforce looks very different than it did just five years ago. Contractors, consultants, freelancers, and offshore teams now make up a significant portion of how companies get work done. In fact, freelancers alone represent nearly half (46.6%) of the global workforce.
This flexibility has been good for business, but it’s also introduced new security challenges. Unlike full-time employees, contractors often work from personal laptops, run unsanctioned apps, and connect over unsecured networks. They rarely go through standard onboarding or device provisioning. Yet they still have access to sensitive company applications, data, and infrastructure.
According to a recent study, 47% of organizations experienced a data breach involving a third party accessing their network. Contractors have become a growing security blind spot – a large, distributed segment of the workforce operating beyond the traditional security perimeter.
Below are four ways an extended workforce can lead to security blindspots, and how IT and security teams can address them.
1. Unmanaged Devices
Risk: Most contractors work on personal laptops that lack corporate endpoint protection, patch management, or monitoring. Without visibility into the security posture of these devices, organizations are exposed to unpatched vulnerabilities, malware, and data leakage.
Mitigation: Define clear device standards for extended workforce members and enforce compliance checks before granting access. Some organizations have found secure enclave technology effective for isolating company data from any personal use on the same machine, allowing work to happen safely on unmanaged endpoints.
2. Network Variability
Risk: Contractors frequently connect from public Wi-Fi, home networks, or international ISPs. These unpredictable environments introduce the risk of eavesdropping, session hijacking, or man-in-the-middle attacks.
Mitigation: Require secure connectivity methods such as VPNs, Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), or end-to-end encrypted connections for sensitive workflows. Visibility into session behavior and anomaly detection can help detect compromised network activity early.
3. Compliance Exposure
Risk: Regulations such as HIPAA, GDPR, and SOC 2 don’t differentiate between employees and contractors when it comes to protecting data. However, many organizations fail to apply the same controls and audit requirements across both groups. This inconsistency can create compliance gaps and liability risks that regulators will not overlook.
Mitigation: Apply a uniform compliance framework to all users – employees, contractors, and third-party partners alike. Maintain audit trails that capture every access event and enforce least-privilege principles to ensure contractors only access what’s required for their role.
4. Costly Workarounds
Challenge: To maintain control, some organizations ship corporate laptops around the world to contractors, but it often proves to be an expensive, slow, and unsustainable process. Others turn to virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) or desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) solutions to limit risk, only to face latency, user frustration, and high infrastructure costs.
Solution: Evaluate modern, scalable alternatives that balance security with usability. Secure BYOD-enabling technologies, such as endpoint isolation or secure enclaves, allow organizations to protect data without managing physical devices or degrading performance.
A New Approach to a Growing Reality
The extended workforce is no longer the exception; it’s the rule. Contractors, freelancers, and offshore contributors are now essential to business operations, yet they often operate outside traditional IT and security controls.
Securing this segment requires a mindset shift: from protecting the device to protecting the data. Rather than assuming trust based on device ownership or employment status, organizations must enforce consistent, context-aware security for everyone accessing corporate resources from any device.
That means visibility into who is connecting, from where, and on what device, along with the ability to isolate, contain, and revoke access if risk conditions change.
The distributed workforce isn’t going away. The companies that adapt their cybersecurity strategies now will be the ones best positioned to operate securely, efficiently, and globally in the years ahead.
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Author bio: Dvir Shapira, Chief Product Officer at Venn
Dvir Shapira is the Chief Product Officer at Venn. He is an experienced product management leader with a track record of scaling products from inception to market success. Dvir has seen accelerated growth in previous roles: At Incapsula and Imperva, he built the world’s first Cloud WAF and grew the business from zero to hundreds of millions in under ten years. Dvir earned his undergraduate degrees in physics and electrical engineering, as well as his MBA, at Tel Aviv University. He lives in California with his wife and three children.
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