What Is Shadow IT? All You Need To Know About Shadow IT
Shadow IT trouble looms over current cloud-based work systems that encourage BYOD work culture, but CASB solutions eliminate Shadow IT harms to firms.
About Shadow IT
Cloud computing has converted the corporate corridors and made them a lot more flexible for the employees and end-users. Employees nowadays are enjoying the freedom to bring their own devices to offices, which they can even use to access organizational data to carry out their official tasks even when they are not inside the office premises with the help of these personal devices. This gives rise to Shadow IT. And, with this BYOD work cultures in cloud computing methods, a thing of concern that is taking roots is the increase in data theft cases etc., which are all happening owing to free data access anywhere anytime. Today, in most organizations, employees tend to use many unauthorized or unsanctioned apps on their personal devices and even access sensitive organizational data using them. Let us understand this by an example. Let us assume that DropBox is an authorized app for a particular organization and some employee finds an alternative to this DropBox app and keeps on using it at his convenience; thus, giving rise to Shadow IT, which are such unsanctioned apps being used inside the corporate offices of, which the IT admin does not have the knowledge that those particular apps are being used.
Scenarios Exemplifying Shadow IT Problems
- An employee needs to accomplish a said task at office, but there are not available the required features to do that. And in this cloud era, there are now available many other easy apps, usually, that is cloud-based, easily available online, through which, those tasks can be completed easily and speedily. In this case, employees download such external apps without bringing into the knowledge of the IT admin of the enterprise. So, these tasks of employees get completed without the IT staff knowing about such unauthorized downloads, giving rise to Shadow IT.
- Sometimes, for some official task, the employee may use his own developed application to complete that said task without putting it to the knowledge of IT staff of his enterprise. In this scenario, the employee might have taken the help of some unauthorized apps to build that particular application. So, this entire thing shows how Shadow IT trouble comes into the radar of normal office functioning in today’s cloud-focused era.
How Can Firms Deal with Shadow IT?
Shadow IT must be dealt by enterprises in a way that security of sensitive organizational data does not come at risk. Firms can easily avail the benefits of CASB solutions provided by Cloud Access Security Brokers so that they can control the access to their critical data either from inside of their on-premise networks or over the cloud by availing such useful cloud security solutions. Corporate policies need to be properly established as this helps in fostering growth and improving individuals’ contributions. What most firms must know now is firstly about their shortcomings and also the proper solutions available around, rather than just trying to oppress employees’ productivity and growth. There are many Shadow IT solutions available to help the firms in attaining greater cloud security.
Shadow IT Solutions for Better Cloud Security
Shadow IT solutions come under the CASB solution suite, which is provided by CASB vendors. Deploying such solutions helps to report any policy violation attempts which in turn checks the potential breaches from happening and curtail the loss owing to such thefts. The attempt made to use of any of the unauthorized and unsanctioned apps is immediately reported and quickly acted upon to avert the loss. Admin is alerted via these reports that generate immediately whenever any such violation attempt in made indicating such wrong use.
CloudCodes CASB Solutions Counteract Issues Arising due to Shadow IT
Shadow IT can be easily controlled by joining hands with an efficient CASB solution. Though it might not be totally prevented, it can surely be controlled by the enterprises. CloudCodes CASB Solutions help firms working with cloud computing models to bridge any security gaps. CloudCodes Shadow IT solutions are so impeccable that overcast their shadow on any of these Shadow IT threats looming around; thus helping corporate to eliminate such threats almost perfectly.