An estimated 58 percent or more of American knowledge workers are now working remotely. This number is up by more than 30 percent from pre COVID-19 averages, and dwarfs previous figures that reported roughly seven percent of the U.S.’s 140 million civilian employees worked from home. To many, this mass exodus from the conventional workplace has been a welcome shift in employer expectations and telework policies. For organizations that don’t typically allow remote work, however, enabling it at a moment’s notice has raised serious logistical, compliance and security challenges.

Many companies in technology, insurance, professional services and certain other industries already have a large portion of employees who work from home at least some of the time. These were relatively well prepared for the current circumstances. Others have been caught completely off guard, unprepared and without the proper equipment for tens, hundreds or thousands of employees, or infrastructure to enable them to access company systems securely from dispersed locations.