Shadow IT is a growing reality for organizations worldwide.
According to software marketplace G2, 80% of workers admit to using SaaS applications without getting IT approval. Another survey by Productiv, a SaaS intelligence platform provider found that between 2020 and 2021, shadow IT increased by nearly 8% in organizations.
Shadow IT is also a growing problem for organizations worldwide.
If this problem is not addressed, it can lead to chaos in more ways than one. Automation with a centralized and automated platform like Josys can help organizations of any size conquer shadow IT and eliminate its undesirable effects.
Shadow IT and the Challenges Associated with it
Shadow IT emerges when people install and use IT resources without the knowledge, oversight, or explicit permission of the IT department. The resource may be a piece of hardware or software, enterprise application (SaaS or on-prem), or even an online service.
Shadow IT creates many kinds of challenges for organizations. For one, it increases sprawl in the IT environment. As more systems are added to it without the IT team’s knowledge, its size and complexity increase. This prevents personnel from getting the visibility required to control the environment and its costs, plan the required capacity, avoid under-utilization, and properly integrate resources as needed by the business. Sprawl also hinders user productivity and increases compliance risks.
Shadow resources also create security risks for the organization. Per one 2022 report, nearly 7 in 10 organizations were compromised by unknown or unmanaged assets aka shadow IT in 2022. The security blind spots created by unauthorized or illegal IT resources are hard to see, much less fix – increasing the risk of cyberattacks and data breaches.
Considering the serious issues that shadow IT can cause, organizations must act decisively to reduce its size. The best and most effective action is to adopt an automated employee IT lifecycle management platform like Josys.
Conquer Shadow IT with Automation and Josys
The Josys platform is designed to help organizations of any type and size effortlessly manage their employees’ technology-related needs and optimize their activities throughout the employment journey.
Josys acts as the “center of the IT universe”, eliminating the need to use multiple tools to manage devices, apps, and people – and their various interactions. Its single, centralized console automates and simplifies many IT activities, including user provisioning and de-provisioning, device assignment and un-assignment, and application inventory, discovery, and management. Doing so allows all employees can access the tools and systems they need to perform their roles. It also ensures that enterprise data and assets are protected from unauthorized and malicious users.
The platform seamlessly integrates with 100+ SaaS apps, HR systems, IDPs, and other cloud systems to capture information about devices, users, and applications, and enable tracking and management. It also discovers all the users and devices connecting to the network, automatically maps every device and app to one or more authorized users, and creates records for each resource from one or more sources.
For example, it creates detailed user lists by importing information from Google Workspaces, SmartHR, or Azure AD. More and more such sources will be added to the platform in future, so any organization can easily manage their users and user details from one single location. Similarly, IT admin can upload a CSV file with device information into Josys, post which they can manage every device connected to the network at every stage, from provisioning and assignment to deprovisioning and end-of-life. In this way, Josys ensures that nothing escapes the eye of the IT team.
If unauthorized or unsanctioned applications are added to the enterprise environment, shadow records are automatically created. IT admins can either accept these records to convert the resource from unauthorized to authorized, or delete if the resource is deemed unsafe. They can also all discovered apps under the purview of managed apps, integrate the apps with the sanctioned infrastructure, and even send notifications to the employees to stop using unsanctioned resources.
All in all, Josys leverages the power of integration and centralization to simplify IT management and increase IT management efficiency. It also increases visibility into the IT estate, helping to minimize the growth of shadow IT.
Conclusion
Employees usually adopt shadow IT resources for one of two reasons. One, they feel that these resources can increase their work productivity more than IT-sanctioned resources. Two, they don’t want to wait for IT approvals to use their preferred hardware or software. Either way, shadow IT makes it harder for IT teams to discover and manage these resources, and minimize the resultant security and compliance issues.
Josys can address the problems created by shadow IT. Its centralized, user-friendly console offers one-click provisioning, de-provisioning, discovery, validation, and record-keeping of users, devices, and applications – everything needed to minimize shadow IT and maintain high security and compliance in the enterprise.
To know more about Josys, talk to our team. Click here.
