After the Breach: What the Qantas Incident Reveals About the New Rules of Offshoring

In July 2025, Qantas Airways disclosed a data breach impacting up to six million customers. The breach didn’t originate from faulty tech. It came from a Manila-based offshore call center, where social engineering—not software—was the point of failure.

No financial data was lost. No passports compromised. But confidence? Shattered.

For enterprises operating in regulated sectors—cybersecurity, financial services, healthcare—this was a wake-up call. Not about the dangers of offshoring, but about the dangers of offshoring without control.

There’s a persistent myth in global operations: that cost savings and security are competing priorities. The Qantas breach proves otherwise.

The issue wasn’t that the team was offshore. The issue was fragmented oversight—third-party infrastructure, unclear accountability, and diluted governance. In complex offshore setups with multiple vendors, you don’t just lose visibility. You lose ownership of risk.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: most offshoring models weren’t designed for today’s cybersecurity landscape.

Enterprises now rely on a range of offshore models to scale operations, reduce costs, and access global talent. But each model carries different implications for data security.

Traditional Outsourcing

In the classic business process outsourcing (BPO) model, vendors manage teams, infrastructure, and operations on the client’s behalf. While many BPOs follow industry-standard security protocols, the client’s control over who accesses systems and how data is managed is often limited to contractual provisions. This creates exposure during audits, breaches, or policy misalignment.

Freelance and Gig Platforms

At the opposite end of the spectrum, freelance platforms offer flexibility and speed but provide no centralized control over security. These models are poorly suited for roles involving regulated data or system access, as they lack formal vetting, governance, and device-level protections.

Platform-Based EORs

Technology-led EOR providers (such as global payroll platforms) handle legal employment and compliance, but often outsource recruitment, IT provisioning, and infrastructure to third-party vendors. This model creates a multi-layered vendor environment, where critical functions like system access and data handling are managed externally, increasing breach risk and reducing response speed.

KMC Solutions offers a centralized alternative. Our full-stack model integrates legal employment, recruitment, workspace, IT infrastructure, and compliance into a single, auditable system. This structure eliminates the security gaps introduced by multiple vendors and allows organizations to apply uniform policies across borders—from endpoint encryption and SIEM monitoring to GDPR and DPA compliance.

This distinction—between staffing and secure infrastructure—is why global cybersecurity leaders such as VikingCloud, Kroll, LevelBlue, and Okta have partnered with KMC to build and manage their offshore teams.

Security-conscious organizations select partners based on their ability to enforce consistent controls across locations. At KMC, we do not rely on third-party systems to manage employee data or infrastructure. We operate ISO 27001:2022-certified environments, enforce VPN access and device encryption, and manage all employment contracts and compliance obligations under a unified legal structure.

Consider the following engagements:

• VikingCloud, a provider of cybersecurity and compliance services for Fortune 1000 firms, scaled a 200+ person operation with KMC in the Philippines. We delivered end-to-end recruitment, infrastructure, and governance without vendor fragmentation—ensuring a secure, auditable growth path.

• Kroll, renowned for incident response and forensic investigations, partnered with KMC to ensure that offshore team members operated in environments with clearly enforced data protection and chain-of-custody protocols.

• LevelBlue, a cloud-native security platform, selected KMC to avoid the risks associated with distributed vendor chains. Our model provided centralized IT controls, HR support, and workspace integrity tailored to high-compliance environments.

• Okta, a leader in identity and access management, leveraged KMC’s infrastructure to replicate the data access and identity governance standards used in their North American operations—across a secure offshore talent pool.

These companies understand that offshoring is not simply a hiring decision—it is a security architecture decision.

From Vendor to Infrastructure Partner: The Role of BOT, Assisted Entry, and GCC Models

As offshore operations mature, security-focused firms often seek greater autonomy and control. KMC supports this shift through three scalable models—each designed to extend security leadership across borders without delay or dilution.

Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT)

Under BOT, KMC builds and manages the client’s offshore operation within our secure environment. We handle all compliance, infrastructure, and HR functions. Once the team reaches maturity—typically within 24 to 36 months—we transfer the entire operation to the client, including facilities, systems, and talent.

This model allows firms to move quickly while maintaining long-term control. It minimizes early risk while enabling the client to own their security posture over time.

Assisted Market Entry

For companies planning to establish their own entities, Assisted Market Entry provides strategic guidance and operational execution. KMC supports entity setup, regulatory registration, infrastructure sourcing, and recruitment—ensuring the client's systems are built securely from day one.

We enable clients to enter high-growth markets without compromising on governance, even before internal legal and compliance resources are in place.

Global Capability Centers (GCCs)

GCCs are dedicated offshore facilities built to mirror the client’s headquarters in terms of culture, policies, and security standards. KMC manages site construction, IT environment design, workforce deployment, and ongoing operational support.

These centers are not shared environments—they are purpose-built for clients who view offshore operations as permanent extensions of their enterprise, not as peripheral service hubs. For cybersecurity companies in particular, GCCs offer a way to maintain control of identity access, compliance enforcement, and employee training without the delays of building in-house infrastructure from scratch.

The Qantas breach illustrates a critical truth: risk is not defined by location, but by structure. Offshoring can enhance or compromise an organization’s security posture depending on how it is executed.

Organizations with regulated data, sensitive client relationships, or high-reliability obligations must adopt offshore strategies that integrate infrastructure, legal control, and governance. Partial solutions introduce risk. Full-stack partnerships eliminate ambiguity.

KMC Solutions enables enterprise clients to build offshore operations that are secure by default and auditable by design. Whether through full-stack EOR, strategic BOT transitions, or permanent GCC infrastructure, we help global organizations scale quickly—without sacrificing trust.