Shadow IT Solutions — 3 Things You Need To Know About Shadow IT

Things To Know About Shadow IT Solutions

It is usually the work of IT teams to build and implement software systems that their companies could utilize for internal operations. With the increasing growth of cloud-based services, many more products are available today for these organizations to buy, making their jobs simpler, quicker, and more comfortable. The IT departments of firms usually make such software purchases. With the cloud boom lately, Cisco reported that twenty-three percent of any company’s IT spending is dedicated to their cloud purchases. Employees and company users are quickly downloading/purchasing software apps and solutions for easing out their work. This flexibility is coming at a cost; when such software purchases/downloads are made directly by employees without informing the IT teams, this falls into the realms of Shadow IT solutions in cloud computing. Shadow IT impacts can be daunting, but data exposures can be limited by introducing restricted user access with the help of Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) Shadow IT solutions. Things to know about Shadow IT solutions, which could be possible to utilize for internal operations.

What Is Shadow IT?

Shadow IT is also called the Bring-Your-Own-Cloud or BYOC, a term for software, hardware, and other systems used inside any organization not supported by the IT teams, including the unsanctioned apps, etc. All such apps and solutions can pose serious security threats to any firm if it doesn’t pass them. So, when Shadow IT casts its shadow, some stringent data privacy rules have to be brought into its internal security modules. With any such unsanctioned apps downloads, users get the systems at risk of contracting viruses on machines via unknown programs. If personal devices are used to store the company’s data, then accidental/intentional data breach risks hover around.

Who Uses Shadow IT Solutions?

To tell this, everyone! These days, almost all working professionals are using Shadow IT services. These might be even the most significant users of such solutions. They usually understand their risks better than others, so they think that their judgment standards are better than average users in workgroups. Sometimes, employees get lured towards using such shadow IT solutions because following proper protocols of IT infrastructure departments seems cumbersome to them. Going through the approval process for downloading any app, which would otherwise take significantly less time, can sometimes seem superfluous to them. Moreover, many such professionals are used to working with these same programs at work, which they usually use at home, so they manage their convenience and download such apps accordingly.

How Is Shadow IT Affecting Your Business?

As any firm grows, gaining knowledge about all the software, app and systems, which employees have downloaded or are always using, can become a daunting task, especially when IT teams’ sizes are relatively smaller. Implementation of total blockers on systems, refraining employees from downloading any software altogether without administrative approvals, can help, but that would slow down the work processes even further and cause productivity levels to lower and hamper due to refraining such flexibility from the systems. So, for IT professionals, it is needed to strike the right balance of user access and cloud security rights, which can be done via some policies and restrictions imposed for employees; and this can be done with the help of CASB solutions. These efficient CASB Shadow IT solutions can help enterprises ensure cloud security without fading away cloud computing benefits.

Though shadow IT might be seen in a dark light, it is most likely not going anywhere! Things to know about Shadow IT solution is gradually becoming easy and common for organizational departments outside of the IT teams to do app downloads and make software purchases for their use and their teams. So, things to know about Shadow IT services is responsibility ultimately comes down to the organization for determining how to protect any losses that may result from this free access. It is where CASB solutions help firms to attain this security.

Originally published at https://www.cloudcodes.com on October 6, 2021.