“Shadow IT” is a sinister title for a serious problem: setting up tools, systems, and applications without working with your organization’s IT team. For large, busy organizations where IT approvals come with long wait times, it’s tempting for developers, engineers, architects, and any other employee to want to set up their own systems and applications. However, doing so without working with IT creates a security, operations, and financial risk for your company.
Here's a quick overview of what shadow IT is and how you can mitigate its risks to your company:
Shadow IT: Slow is Fast, and Fast is Slow
Everyone in an organization is likely busy and has goals to meet and metrics to track. In many cases, we prefer to get services spun up quickly, without proper consideration of scale and security as time goes on. These can be as simple as hardcoded secret keys, or as big as full-on applications deployed in a personal account.
Shadow IT generally becomes an issue when a developer or otherwise determines that there is a simple and easy fix to make the deadline. These "quick fixes" quickly turn into permanent features in products and cause enormous headache and cost to resolve in the future.
I like to tell people: “slow is fast, and fast is slow.”
You can avoid the headaches, unnecessary cost, and interdepartmental friction by avoiding the “fast” way and going to IT first. Make your IT team aware of the changes you need, and they might recommend or offer existing solutions to resolve the issue. This may add an extra week to the project, but it saves months of work to redesign applications in the future.
A Real-Life Example: A Customized but Useless Solution
A more specific instance of Shadow IT happened when a company I worked for contracted with a third party. This company was hired to deliver a custom solution for us. The solution was contracted and built quickly without forethought about scaling or security.
By the time it had come to the attention of IT, it had already been built, and the third party was paid handsomely for their efforts. However, the solution, although “working,” was completely insecure, unscalable, and useless outside of the demo that the third party gave to show their work was done. Because of this, the project would have needed months to re-design properly. Instead, the project was removed, and the company took the loss.
Had IT been aware of the third party and the project in general, these concerns could have been worked into the project design in the first place and done properly the first time.
Managing Shadow IT: Replacing Bad Shortcuts with Best Practices
Here are some ways you can mitigate the risk of shadow IT in your organization:
1. Create a culture of collaboration
One of the core causes of shadow IT isn’t speed or cost – it’s the fear that IT will be an obstacle instead of a help. Work to foster relationships in your organization so people trust your IT team to get the job done and done well, rather than holding up decisions and workflows or simply saying “no.”
2. Find a centralized solution for governance
As Mike Towers, Chief Security & Trust Officer at Veza, said in a recent RSA session, many enterprises face a growing problem of “access sprawl” and decentralization.
“According to our research . . . the average organization uses over 360 SaaS apps and over 1200 cloud services,” Towers said. “Most of those applications and most of those services are dependent on completely unique permissioning models. And our theory is that access control is not just about the front door, who can get in and who can’t, but what actions can you take once you’re inside these platforms.”
Towers advises finding a centralized governance solution for oversight, security, and management that can unify and abstract these fractured systems and permissions structures to streamline workflows, secure data, and prevent silos.
3. Achieve comprehensive visibility
An essential part of that centralized control is visibility. What data is entering and leaving your network? What are the typical traffic patterns? Can you track which accounts, systems, and apps are using the most data and resources? Explore solutions that will give you a simplified view of your network and help you see potential risks and anomalies that could come from unauthorized shadow IT resources or threat actors.
4. Use AI with discernment
Grip’s 2025 SaaS Risks Security Report estimates that 91% of AI tools are unmanaged. Consider both technical solutions and processes that help you gain both centralized control over your organization’s use of AI and teaches other teams to use it securely. Best practices like keeping proprietary data out of public and insecure AI platforms are simple to teach and essential for long-term security.
Shadow IT is a chaos factor that threatens security, operations, communications, and budgets across your company. Investing time and energy into building a healthy, collaborative culture, achieving centralized control and visibility, and empowering other teams instead of slowing them will pay off by rewarding your company with agility.
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