The Risks of Polywork:
How Digital Recruitment Fuels Insider Threats

Not long ago, the idea of someone holding two full-time jobs at once sounded like an outlier. Now, in the age of remote work, gig culture, and fluid job markets, it’s becoming the norm for some employees, and a costly risk for the organizations employing them. This “polywork” trend, where individuals simultaneously hold overlapping roles (often in competing or adjacent companies), has shifted from rare misconduct to a recurring reality in insider threat cases.

From a security perspective, polywork isn’t a lifestyle choice. It’s a breach of trust and, in many organizations, a clear violation of policy. It’s also a signal pointing to deeper insider threat exposure: data leakage, divided loyalties, intellectual property theft, and compliance failures. Left undetected, it creates blind spots that traditional insider threat programs aren’t always equipped to address.

Several forces have converged to make polywork more possible – and more tempting. Remote work has removed physical oversight, while digital recruitment platforms have normalized rapid role changes and made secondary opportunities easier to secure. At the same time, remote recruitment and hiring practices makes it easier for individuals to avoid detection. Economic pressures and the rising cost of living push some employees to seek additional income. In many sectors, the same specialized skills are in high demand across competing companies, making it easier for an employee to juggle or conceal overlapping roles.

Some polyworkers disclose their outside engagements and seek approval, but many do not. When the second role overlaps in industry, technology stack, or access to sensitive information, th70e risks of polywork multiply. In these cases, the problem isn’t just that an employee is working two jobs. It’s that they’re working for you and your competition at the same time.

The most obvious risk of polywork is the direct transfer of intellectual property. An engineer developing proprietary code for one employer may reuse or “reference” it in another role. A sales executive with access to client pipelines may bring that information to a competitor. Even without malicious intent, the duplication of work product or sharing of insider knowledge between roles can cross legal and compliance boundaries.

Polywork also makes insider-risk detection more complex. When the same user credentials are accessing sensitive systems at irregular hours, is it a sign of dedication? Burnout? Or that they’re serving another employer’s needs on your time? Without external context, those signals can be easy to misinterpret or dismiss until the damage is done.

Because many polyworkers are skilled professionals operating under the radar, their activity may not trigger alerts designed to catch negligence or obvious exfiltration. As a result, internal logs may look normal, even while an employee is divided in loyalty and focus.

Polywork isn’t just a workplace trend – it’s also a tactic being exploited by sophisticated state-sponsored threat actors. One of the most concerning developments is the rise of DPRK IT workers posing as legitimate remote employees, often holding multiple jobs under false identities across startups and tech firms in the U.S. and abroad.

Not all polywork is malicious, but when it’s used by DPRK threat actors, the stakes are far higher. This is polywork weaponized. In many cases, these DPRK threat actors hold multiple roles simultaneously, and have the potential to exfiltrate code, client data, or proprietary models while funneling earnings and intelligence back to a state-backed regime.

This isn’t about making ends meet – it’s about strategic infiltration. While some employees take on second jobs for financial survival, DPRK-linked polyworkers operate with clear, malicious intent. They exploit the same hiring systems and digital recruitment platforms that legitimate job seekers use , but their motives are geopolitical -putting your trusted workforce and business at risk.

Undetected polywork can ripple far beyond the insider threat team. Product roadmaps can be exposed before launch. Customer relationships can be jeopardized by competing offers built from your own CRM data. Regulatory exposure grows if sensitive information crosses borders in the hands of a dual-employed insider.

Polywork detection often requires seeing beyond the network perimeter. Internal tools can flag anomalies in system use, file access, or login patterns, but they can’t tell you why those patterns exist. The missing piece is external visibility. Identifying secondary affiliations, online profiles, and digital recruitment activity that indicate an employee’s professional commitments extend beyond your organization.

Attribution and early risk detection are areas where Nisos has deep expertise. Our team of experts combine investigative tradecraft with external intelligence collection to connect signals that internal telemetry alone cannot explain. By complementing the internal telemetry that your tools capture with activity outside your walls, Nisos helps identify the signs of polywork early and deliver the clear evidence security teams need to act with confidence.

When detection lags, your organization is left reacting after the fact. Prevention, in this context, is not just cheaper; it’s strategic risk management.

The launch of the Ascend™ Insider Threat Intelligence module makes scaling your insider threat efforts easier than ever. Ascend integrates seamlessly with your existing insider threat program, bringing the same outside-the-firewall visibility that has long defined Nisos investigations directly into your operational workflow.

For security teams, this means being able to:

• Detect indicators of dual employment earlier, before sensitive data is compromised.
• Reduce blind spots by linking internal anomalies to external intelligence with confidence.
• Run more proactive insider threat operations, backed by expert attribution when cases require deeper investigation.

Instead of guessing at intent, security leaders gain clear, actionable evidence that allows them to act decisively. That can mean escalating to HR, engaging legal, or shutting down access.

Learn more about how Nisos Ascend Insider Threat Intelligence Module helps organizations detect and prevent the risks of polywork before they become full-scale insider incidents >>>

As remote and hybrid work persist, and as digital recruitment keeps the talent market fluid, insider threat teams will need to treat polywork as a core investigative scenario. That means building playbooks, refining detection criteria, and ensuring that internal monitoring is paired with external intelligence that can reveal risky behavior beyond your organization’s firewalls.

With Nisos’s Ascend Insider Threat Intelligence module, organizations can finally combine the early-warning advantages of Nisos’ investigative methodology with a platform that delivers continuous visibility. That combination gives insider threat leaders the ability to anticipate risk, not just respond to it.

Strengthening insider threat programs today means fewer surprises tomorrow and better resilience against the evolving risks of polywork.

Polywork is one of many modern insider threats demanding visibility beyond the network perimeter.

With the Ascend Insider Threat Intelligence module, Nisos helps security teams detect internal risks before they escalate, reduce blind spots, and run more proactive insider threat operations.

Contact Nisos to learn more about our Insider Threat solutions.