Telework and the Most Used Apps: Trends of the Past Few Months

Zscaler, A specialist in cloud security, today publishes the new data that has arisen from the constant monitoring of his dashboard Work directions from anywhere It shows how the trends in teleworking in Italy have changed in the past 12 months compared to other European countries, and the apps that have generated the most traffic.

Every day, Zscaler’s Security Cloud processes 150 billion transactions, providing one insight into how company employees connect to their applications in the cloud or corporate data center and what they connect to, when their traffic is protected by the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange, a cloud – an original security solution that connects Users, applications, and devices are secured over any network, anywhere.

Since Italy went into lockdown in March 2020, most Italian workers have had to adapt to the peculiarities of a modus operandi that has so far been little used: telework or telework. A year on, many companies are considering whether a full return to physical offices makes sense from a financial, logistical and welfare perspective for their workforce.

Moving to remote work

Zscaler’s data shows how, before the seriousness of Covid-19 became clear, the vast majority of European workers overwhelmingly worked from their desks.

January 2020

Zscaler cloud UK traffic was predominantly in the office (87%) compared to remote traffic (13%)
85% of Spanish traffic was in the company versus 15% from remote
84% of the traffic in Italy was in the company versus 16% remotely
In the Netherlands the figure is 88% in the company versus 12% in the distance
The largest number of workers physically in the company is found in Germany, with 95% of all traffic coming from the office

In March 2020 there has been a major change, but perhaps not quite as much as one might expect.

In the UK, only 41% of the traffic was recorded remotely, while 59% stayed in the office
Data on Germany also reported an increase in remote activity, but the vast majority of traffic continued to come from the company (25% remote – 75% in the office)
Given that Italy was one of the first European countries to be hit hard by the pandemic, the comparison here is even steeper, with 69% of traffic moving to telework and the remaining 31% in the company.

Didier Schreiber, Regional Marketing Director for Southern Europe Averma in Merito: This data shows how remote working skills have evolved in different countries based on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their populations. It will be interesting to see how traffic patterns in different countries now interact with the changing situation, especially as companies have accelerated transformation efforts to allow employees to work from anywhere safely. Circumstances in the past year forced companies to adopt this new business model, but when the situation permits, will companies continue to adopt these new work habits permanently given the massive investment in cloud technology? “.

Most used applications while working remotely

Zscaler also analyzes remote traffic volumes for individual applications. While it is not surprising that you will find at the top of the ranking of the most used apps Outlook / Office 365On the other hand, it might come as a surprise to find consumer apps in such advanced sites as YoutubeAnd the Facebook e Netflix, Prove that many of those who work remotely use their companies’ computers for recreational activities.

As interesting brackets, Zscaler Working from Anywhere Trends Dashboard also demonstrated the recent success of Disney’s new broadcast platform, Disney +, which launched in Italy in late March 2020. Over the past six months (October 2020 – March 2021), it has seen the largest increase in Traffic volume for any application in Italy on commercial laptops, an increase of 476%!

“This data indicates what we all expected but could not really confirm – that is, when working remotely, corporate devices play a dual role alongside business use: they have, in effect, become multimedia players for the whole family and are used for entertainment. , Just like the special device. “ Announce Didier Schreiber, Regional Marketing Director for Southern Europe at Zscaler, who continues: “This is an understandable result of the intersection between work and home life, but this situation must also be addressed from a cybersecurity perspective. This type of activity can circumvent corporate security controls. As data risks multiply with remote work on a large scale and it becomes difficult to maintain Security of the current company, the responsibilities of the CISO should be broader. They will no longer have to restrict themselves to providing remote access in a safe and efficient way to the entire workforce, but also to adapt to the new level of risk involved in the home office culture. So they will have to learn Quickly and to illuminate the new risks emerging from the new work environment and the creation of a new culture of safety. “