Back 
It’s been over two years since offices around the world closed their doors, sending employees to work from home to ride out a series of pandemic lockdowns. Those two years saw a succession of commands to close, reopen, close again, and reopen again, during which office workers in many industries embraced remote work and the benefits of eliminating the commute and providing a better work-life balance. And now many organisations have settled into a happy middle ground, embracing a range of “hybrid” work models.
But it is quickly becoming apparent that desk location is not the only variable in “hybrid” working models. Devices, applications, even personas, identities, and organisational structures are now hybrid, leading to the inevitable emergence of new security challenges. Today hybrid approaches are being driven by demands for flexibility and agility, but—if we get it right—hybrid work environments have the potential to unlock topline business benefits and create a significant competitive advantage.
In order to understand the opportunities of “hybrid” models let’s first consider the implications for security:
Hybrid locations
This is the one we are most familiar with from trends articles. We are seeing reluctance from many employees and organisations to return to a traditional office environment five days a week. For security professionals, a fixed environment is one that you can put physical perimeter security around, and somewhere that the networks are known and trusted. When employees access systems outside of that highly provisioned and secure environment there are potentially additional requirements to secure access networks. Life gets more confusing because “home workers” have become “remot