Remote or hybrid work have become the de facto standard for many companies, post-pandemic, as more employees demand more flexible workplace policies. Therefore, organizations looking to support hybrid work will require a long-term strategy that ensures their infrastructure is equipped to securely facilitate this new flexible work environment.

Remote work is no longer a trend — in 2022, remote workers represented 30% of the overall workforce. Cloud services and mobile devices have made the work environment more flexible, and organizations have implemented bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies to enable employees who are working from anywhere to get more done.

Today, Netskope partnered with the Cloud Security Alliance to release the Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and Data Security Survey Report, a survey focused on data protection needs in cloud and hybrid work environments. Unsurprisingly, the report found that the biggest pain point organizations identify with trying to modernize their data protection strategy is that current DLP deployments show limitations when it comes to cloud and remote work use cases, and they are a nightmare to manage.

Hybrid work, which involves splitting the working week between in-office and remote work time, is the new normal that many companies have been adapting to after the COVID-19 pandemic crisis forced them to work remotely to continue providing services. A recent study indicates that, in fact, 58% of companies have been encouraged to promote a hybrid return to the office. In addition, it estimates that 48% of employees will be following a hybrid or remote model in the next two years.

It should come as no surprise to anyone who has lived through the last three years that the way we work has changed drastically. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic forced organizations to figure out how to better enable their employees to work from home securely and easily. The result was an acceleration of trends that were already underway. Work is now hybrid, and adaptability and flexibility continue to be key requirements for organizations working to secure a distributed hybrid workforce.

Organizations seeking cyber insurance coverage are typically required by their insurer to provide evidence of a panoply of controls around information security, disaster recovery, and related risk and technology requirements and best practices.

The COVID-19 pandemic has indelibly changed the way we all work. As the world has opened back up and organizations have begun making the return to the office, many employees still want a hybrid work model. In an ideal hybrid working model, employees feel empowered and more productive given the freedom to do their work from any location or device, whenever it’s most convenient. Users need fast, secure access to their data, regardless of where their applications are located.