The reported issue of slow website and SaaS application access for users in the San Francisco branch office, despite being connected to a Netskope data plane in New York, can be attributed to the geographical distance between the user location and the data plane. The Netskope Security Cloud operates through a distributed network of data planes strategically placed in various regions. When users connect to a data plane that is geographically distant, it can result in latency due to longer network traversal times. In this case, the closest Netskope data plane to San Francisco might be unavailable or experiencing high load, leading to performance issues. To address this, consider optimizing data plane selection based on proximity to the user location or investigating any data plane availability or performance issues.