Hybrid work security breaks when teams pretend every remote session starts from a clean, controlled network. It does not. People connect from home routers with old firmware, from shared family devices, from hotel Wi-Fi where nobody can tell you who else is sitting on the same access point. A VPN tunnel helps protect traffic in transit, yes, but that is only one slice of the risk surface. If the endpoint is weak or the account is compromised, the tunnel just carries bad traffic more privately. Start with an exposure map before buying more tools. List where people actually work, which devices they use, which apps they touch daily, and which actions would cause real damage if abused. Then rank those flows by business impact. I think teams skip this because it feels less exciting than deploying software, but this map is what keeps programs grounded. Without it, controls get placed where they are easy, not where they matter, and attackers find the same blind spots over and over.
