Teleworking offers countless advantages for employees. This teleworking model allows companies to reduce costs and access broader talent, without the traditional physical barriers that limited growth. In addition, teleworking contributes to the reduction of daily trips, which has a positive impact on the environment and significantly improves work-life balance. Teleworking also favors the socio-labor inclusion of people with disabilities and supports the repopulation of rural areas, consolidating itself as a strategic alternative to in-person work.
Targeted attacks increase
However, in the current context of teleworking, it has recently been identified that this model is one of the main catalysts for the increase in cyber attacks suffered by organizations and professionals. According to a report prepared by the technology company i3e, remote work and teleworking environments registered a 58% increase in attack attempts in 2025 compared to the previous year, reaching an average of 2,000 incidents per week. In the last quarter alone, growth was 21% compared to the previous period, confirming a worrying trend associated with the rise of teleworking.
The reason is clear: the dispersion of devices, the use of home networks and the lack of robust security protocols in teleworking scenarios have turned remote environments into an open door for cybercriminals, who have managed to detect the weakest targets. “A small company can receive in a week what a large corporation suffers in a single day,” warns José María Fachado, technical director of i3e. Although SMEs register lower figures, the company insists that “no one is exempt from risk”, especially in poorly protected teleworking models.
How cybercriminals operate
The report also reveals that the majority of attacks come from Asia, specifically from cloud service providers. This pattern repeats itself because when one server is no longer useful to the attacker, it simply moves on to the next one and replicates the operation. This dynamic has been enhanced by the proliferation of tools based on artificial intelligence, which allow large-scale attacks to be automated, executing them massively and without human intervention. “These types of threats are executed on a global scale and in a matter of seconds,” adds Fachado, a growing risk in infrastructures linked to teleworking.
The greatest danger lies in the fact that many compromised IP addresses become ‘zombie networks’, from which offensives are launched against other systems around the world. This means that an infected computer not only suffers the attack, but also becomes part of a criminal infrastructure without its owner knowing, amplifying the global impact, especially in decentralized teleworking environments.
Among the most frequent targets are remote desktop platforms and unprotected open SQL services, which account for 75% of the attacks detected. Given this scenario, i3e recommends extreme security when choosing cloud providers and applying specific protection protocols for teleworking. “Prevention is key, since a server that is the victim of a cyberattack becomes a springboard to reach the next one,” concludes Fachado.
Threat response
The cybersecurity company i3e offers support to organizations of all sizes in their digital transformation processes. Its multidisciplinary team works under methodologies such as PMP, Agile, ITIL and Prince, guaranteeing efficiency, security and adaptation to current technological challenges, including the challenges associated with teleworking, increasingly present in the business world.
i3e recommends extreme security when choosing cloud providers and applying specific protection protocols for teleworking
The company monitors threats in real time, manages security events and coordinates incident response from its SoC center. In addition, it implements multi-factor authentication measures, secure access management and Zero Trust policies to protect against fraud, impersonation and unauthorized access.
