What Is Shadow IT and How Can Organizations Eliminate It?

Do you know what your employees are downloading? In a perfect world, all of the IT systems and software used by an organization would be explicitly approved by the IT department. In reality, your network is closer to the wild west. 

Whether it’s design software for quick touch-up tasks, a cloud-based service to transfer heavy marketing files or a desktop application that facilitates accounting duties – employees across your organization are likely using free software or even paid accounts outside of the knowledge of the IT team.

This unauthorized use of technology is commonly known as “Shadow IT” and it could put your organization at risk.

Shadow IT can increase your organization’s attack surface and make you more vulnerable to supply chain attacks, among other risks. Unregulated or unvetted software can also hamper compliance efforts and cause integration issues with your “approved” IT systems. Finally, Shadow IT is often a cost and resource drain as employees could be using multiple tools across multiple teams to do the same or related tasks.

Keeper solves this problem by giving your IT team security, control and visibility into the software and services used by your organization. 

Why Shadow IT Is a Growing Issue

The process of obtaining approval for new software and program requests from corporate IT departments is often perceived as lengthy and complex, leading to employee frustration. 

As a result, employees tend to bypass established rules and regulations, covertly purchasing, installing or even developing the desired software and platforms to fulfill their needs more swiftly. 

There has been a substantial increase in Shadow IT in recent years, particularly as the adoption of cloud-based applications and services has proliferated. In fact, 61% of employees admit they aren’t satisfied with the tech stack at their jobs and 65% of remote workers admitted to using Shadow IT.

There have, unfortunately, been numerous examples of Shadow IT leading to devastating data breaches. In a particularly egregious example, a popular cybersecurity solution was breached after a senior employee’s credentials were compromised. The attacker was able to gain access to the employee’s credentials by exploiting an unpatched version of the Plex media server which had known vulnerabilities. This unpatched media server is a classic example of Shadow IT.  

Why Is Shadow IT Challenging for IT Teams?

The decentralized nature of Shadow IT amplifies the complexity of its management, presenting unique challenges for IT teams.

• Lack of Visibility: One of the foremost hurdles is the inherent lack of visibility, wherein the diffuse and unregulated usage of technology across various departments makes it difficult for IT teams to identify and monitor all unauthorized activities within the organization comprehensively. This opacity poses a serious threat in terms of security, as Shadow IT introduces unknown variables into the security equation, substantially increasing the risk of data breaches and cyber attacks. 
• Compliance Concerns: Unauthorized technology usage may lead to non-compliance with industry regulations and internal policies, potentially exposing the organization to legal repercussions.
• User Resistance: Employees may resist IT policies, preferring the ease and familiarity of their chosen tools, even if they pose security risks. In fact, 82% of IT professionals have experienced issues with teams when they suggest new tools.

Interestingly, a dichotomy exists in the perception of Shadow IT among IT professionals. While 77% acknowledge the potential benefits of embracing Shadow IT, recognizing the myriad tools available that can enhance employee productivity and efficiency, this acknowledgment comes with the caveat that such unauthorized tools can pose serious cybersecurity risks.

Keeper® Protects Organizations Against Shadow IT Vulnerabilities

With increasing demands, extended IT approval timelines, and a proliferation of applications in the market, employees will persist in seeking new tools to fulfill the requirements of their roles.

Keeper Security’s Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution is a next-gen platform that enables organizations to implement granular access controls, ensuring that only authorized personnel can access critical systems and resources.

KeeperPAM™ provides a set of critical tools to help mitigate the security risks linked with Shadow IT:

• Centralized Credentials Management: Keeper provides a centralized platform to securely store, share and rotate credentials including passwords, passkeys and more, ensuring that users adopt secure practices. 
• Password Masking: Upon sharing credential records from their vault, Keeper users can mask passwords, enabling others to use the credentials to log in without ever exposing the passwords for keyloggers, malware and other sophisticated cyber attacks to prey on.
• Employee Offboarding: Keeper makes the offboarding process easier with features such as role-based access controls and delegated administration. When an employee leaves an organization, IT admins can easily transfer their vault to another user so that credentials aren’t lost while preventing the ex-employee from accessing their vault.
• Real-time Monitoring and Alerts: Keeper provides real-time monitoring of user activities, generating alerts for any suspicious or unauthorized actions, minimizing potential security risks.
• Auditing and Reporting: With Keeper’s comprehensive auditing and reporting capabilities, IT teams get visibility and insights into user activity, access patterns, and changes in permissions – essentially providing an audit trail.
• Secrets Management: Secrets sprawl can be one of the main threats introduced into an IT environment with the use of unauthorized tools. Keeper eliminates secrets sprawl by removing hard-coded credentials from your source code, config files and CI/CD systems.

Keeper’s zero-trust and zero-knowledge architecture means your secrets, credentials and remote connections are only accessible to authorized individuals.

Request a demo of KeeperPAM today to protect your organization.