Remote or Hybrid Work Is Likely the Future, New Research Finds

• Most people want to work exclusive from home
• Older people value remote work more that the younger generation
• 35 percent of companies didn’t provide cybersecurity training to employees

The majority of IT decision-makers believe the future of work will be hybrid or completely remote, which will likely add a lot more pressure on any company's cybersecurity resources, according to new research from Tessian.

Working from home may become a permanent situation for many companies, and the five-day office schedule might be a thing of the past. 75 percent of IT decision-makers say hybrid or remote working is likely the current direction many organizations will take.

Employees are on the other side of the equation, and just 11% of all employees said they want to work exclusively from the office post-pandemic. In the most pessimistic scenario, employees would agree to go back to the office for a maximum of two days. Of course, the numbers are vastly different between men and women, and age plays a significant role.

"People working in accountancy and finance were twice as likely as people in sales and marketing to want to work exclusively in an office post-pandemic - 17% versus 9% respectively," according to the report. "Likewise, men are almost twice as likely as women to want to return to a full week in the office - 22% of men versus just 13% of women."

The important role age plans in the preference is not a surprise. The study shows that "older employees were much more likely to want to work from home, with 92% of respondents over 51 saying so versus 56% of 18-30 year olds."

While this might sound like it's all good news, companies now have to deal with security issues. In this regard, 46 percent of the IT respondents say one of the biggest problems is employees' security practices. Organizations also expect more breaches (40 percent), phishing attacks (39 percent), and less compliance with data regulations (32 percent).

One of the best solutions for companies to mitigate most security issues is an educated workforce, but the study revealed that 34 percent of companies have not undertaken any kind of security training.

A Bitdefender survey revealed that 50 percent of organizations had no contingency planned for the pandemic just a few months ago, compounding the problem. With the near certainty that remote working will continue in the near future, the new paradigm will test cybersecurity, and IT departments will continue to work overtime to compensate for the new wave of risks.