Picture this: It’s 8:45 a.m. on a Tuesday, and you’ve just fired up your laptop. Within minutes you have 10 different browser tabs and apps open, including one for messaging, another for email, and another for the presentation you’ve been working on.

You work from the quiet comfort of home for several hours before heading to the office to participate in a couple of in-person meetings. But first, you open the corporate conferencing app on your smartphone so you can listen to an important call on the way.

By 2:30 p.m., you’re in line at your favorite coffee shop, where you’ll use the public wireless.

That’s what it’s like to be part of the modern-day hybrid workplace.

These kinds of flexible work scenarios are fast becoming the way work works for millions of employees across all kinds of industries. And while they’re great for productivity, these scenarios can be a nightmare come true for the teams that handle cybersecurity.

That’s because hackers are having a heyday as people move from coffee shops to conference rooms to the living room couch, accessing sensitive data all along the way. Cybercriminals are exploiting all kinds of vulnerabilities, sending more malicious payloads than ever through cloud-based apps — ones that can put corporate networks at risk with every reconnect and return to the office.

In other words, these new ways of working require a new approach to security. Protecting users, apps and data in the era of hybrid work requires constant vigilance.

Although the task can seem daunting, the latest developments in zero trust architecture and cloud-based security can help you to put the right framework in place. You just have to know where to begin.

The massive move to hybrid work — and what it means for IT

Ask 12 different executives for an explanation of “hybrid work” and you’re likely to get 12 different answers.

Because the hybrid workplace model is still largely evolving, we’re essentially in the midst of a testing phase for various approaches. Flexible work options are becoming the norm for the foreseeable future, and the overarching goal, no matter the company, is the same: empower people to do their best work wherever, whenever, and however they’re most productive.

It may sound straightforward on the surface. But as IT teams working behind the scenes are well aware, supporting secure flexible work is anything but simple.

For example, consider what happened at the height of COVID-19 lockdowns and stay-home orders. In the rush to roll out remote work during a global pandemic, many organizations made lightning-fast adaptations. They increased SaaS subscriptions, accelerated cloud migrations, adopted desktop as a service (DaaS), and expanded tech stacks to include all kinds of vendors.

While these transitions helped many teams discover just how much can be accomplished with work-from-anywhere programs and policies, they also revealed vulnerabilities and risks.

One survey found more than half of employees newly working from home used personal laptops for work, often with no new tools to secure them. Many traditional VPNs proved ineffective at keeping network breaches at bay on a large scale, and web-based attacks increased exponentially. Hackers used the lack of control to circulate spyware, malware, ransomware, and more, all with notable success — in fact, 44 percent of executives faced cybersecurity attacks as a direct result of remote work.

Now, as more people begin to work from even more locations, it’s time to reevaluate enterprise security. More than 80 percent of employers plan to embrace hybrid models, and half are putting hybrid programs in place this summer. That means there will be apps to monitor, networks to maintain, endpoints to secure, and devices to patch.

Compared with traditional security infrastructure designed to protect corporate resources in the datacenter or private cloud, securing the hybrid workplace will require a much more holistic approach.

Successful security in the era of hybrid work

To understand what the future of hybrid workplace security will look like, consider what happened at Synopsys.

Before 2020, the software company relied on a “hard exterior shell” to protect against external threats. It was up to IT staff to determine who could gain access, and they had to practice constant caution in isolating network traffic.

Then the company adopted a zero trust security framework, and everything changed.

Now, when someone attempts to interact with Synopsys’ network, workspace, or other resources, access is granted only after authorized users pass through security protocols based on identity, multi-factor authentication, and device posture. Further security checks continually verify employees’ identities and devices at every turn, before granting additional access to systems and files, rather than allowing free movement after someone passes through the gateway.

Many organizations take this a step further with the Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) model to build on the framework of zero trust network access (ZTNA). With SASE, organizations can integrate WAN edge security to protect branch users and direct internet access to protect web and SaaS application activity.

Together, these end-to-end solutions ensure security follows each user no matter where they’re working, which devices they’re using or which apps they’re accessing. As the experts at ESG put it, “Through a unified approach to application delivery, secure access, and digital workspace, organizations can ensure quality of service and consistent security, and maintain efficient management for access across all types of applications for users regardless of location or device.”

Get the full ESG report today and check out Citrix Workspace to learn more about our approach to secure hybrid work.