Shadow IT has always been a menace to the IT department. When employees procure SaaS applications without checking for their compliance, it can push the whole company into severe security threats. Connor Craven writes for SDX central on how shadow IT enters an organization, its threats, and what you can do to prevent its entry.

Here is what he says:

• Shadow IT that runs on an office network can become a track for hackers to enter and hijack the whole system

• The surge in shadow IT takes up too much on the network bandwidth

• According to Harvard Business Review, shadow IT is present since 2007 when employees hired contractors to build databases to streamline their workflow

• With the cloud, employees rely on third-party applications to streamline the business process

• The slow IT approval process for an application is also a reason for shadow IT

• 40-50% of an organization's network traffic is from unknown applications, increasing the severity of risks

• The vetting process shouldn't be merely blocking the apps, but analyzing their potential and then terminating it, if risky

• Network Monitoring software and tools like Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) can help surface shadow IT

What We Think?

More often than not, employees use shadow IT for productivity purposes and not with any malice. When trying to tackle shadow IT, we have maintained the stance that IT leaders should dig deeper into how they can involve the opinions of employees while buying applications rather than blaming them for resorting to shadow IT.

You can read the full article here.