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Posted 27th May 2025
The rise of Shadow IT is falling into the spotlight for all IT professionals and cybersecurity roles in 2025. With so much of its use hidden from central view and the consequences potentially so wide reaching, its status as a priority to be addressed is rising sharply. The BCN team has created a guide for the fundamental questions surrounding Shadow IT, what the impact could be for your organisation and how you can begin to tackle it.
‘Shadow IT’ is the term used for hardware, software, devices or IT resources that are at use in your network without the knowledge of the people responsible for your IT. For a Business Technology Partner, MSP or IT team, anything that can’t be seen can’t be controlled and that means the potential risks and dangers of Shadow IT can become business critical very quickly.
The democratisation of technology tools over the last decade has led to a great leap in awareness for the benefits they can achieve, and how they can be applied to all parts of our lives. For businesses, this has been great news in terms of user adoption and understanding, with less resistance to the transformative applications and tools that organisations rely on for productivity, profitability and growth.
However, this increase for a tech savvy workforce does also present a new set of challenges for Business Technology Partners, Managed Service Providers and IT teams. And Shadow IT is perhaps the biggest amongst them.
A Forbes study showed that 80% of company employees are turning to Shadow IT solutions primarily for convenience, bypassing established IT policies with no approval procedure in place. Some stats even go so far as to suggest that a staggering 65% of all Software as a Service applications currently at work in enterprise organisations are completely unseen and unsanctioned by their IT departments.
It’s clear that the people within these organisations are not deliberately attempting to create risks but some of the seemingly small decisions they make can have big consequences. Using their own personal devices, sharing files on unapproved channels and entering company data into unvetted applications are all easy ways that Shadow IT can creep into regular use.
To fully appreciate how dangerous the consequences of Shadow IT, it helps to learn exactly how they may be presented. The BCN team has created a more detailed look at the risks lurking in the shadows of your IT infrastructure.
Unseen is Unsecure
The most obvious and alarming risk posed from Shadow IT comes from cybersecurity. Our collective awareness of the current threat landscape shows how risks from bad actors pursuing cyber threats against your organisation, targeted attacks directed at key industries & individuals and the ever-increasing sophistication and volume of cybercrime in general makes every company vulnerable at some level. The data available overwhelmingly supports this idea too, with almost two-thirds of SMEs in the UK reporting multiple cyberattacks last year. Phishing was stated as the main entry route for these events with Shadow IT issues coming a close second, to demonstrate the size of the challenge currently being faced.
Shadow IT increases your attack surface in an entirely unmanageable way, even with the most robust cybersecurity tools and policies in place, and that should be ringing some serious alarm bells. Quite simply, if something remains unseen by your IT department then it remains unsecure.
Data Management & Loss
In the modern workplace your data is your business. Cloud storage and file sharing for the increasingly large amounts of data that we rely on to do our jobs each day are essential. Our lives too are supported by these applications to such an extent that the lines between work and personal use can blur very easily. A recent study showed that 83% of IT professionals reported that their company data is regularly stored in unsanctioned cloud services.
The convenience of employing tools that we use outside of work to share company information and apply data is often difficult to ignore. This is especially the case when productivity is set as a priority within your company culture and the constraints on people’s time are high.
There are so many dangers involved in this element of Shadow IT. Complete data loss is a real threat if a storage solution is unsecure, unsanctioned and unsupported by the IT Team responsible for data security. System failures that lead to accidental data corruption and deletion can also easily happen with no clear route to recovery when the solutions are outside of organisational control.
There may also be situations where employees are using personal accounts for business-critical data, particularly in cloud-based storage services. If they leave the organisation, for whatever reason, then all access is prevented. Crucially, the sensitive nature of confidential information within the data is compromised too if outside of your control
The rise of AI and Large Language Models such as Chat GPT is another good example, where organisation data may be unwillingly shared outside of the ringfenced security measures in place across your IT environment. Comprehensive data governance using best in class tools can go a long way to preventing this from happening too.
Regulatory Impact
The issue of compliance and regulatory conditions for digital tools and data is firmly established across every industry. Working in accordance with these regulations means adhering to the criteria set out, and importantly, being able to demonstrate this in an auditable way across all systems and users that an organisation has. Shadow IT makes this largely impossible to do in an effective way and the results can become catastrophic.
Many sectors such as the Legal industry companies, the healthcare sector and banking & finance organisations, all have strict legislation to follow that may be immediately violated when Shadow IT becomes involved. This isn’t just limited to sector-specific organisations either. The wider-reaching regulations of the UK Data Protection Act and GDPR are in place to enforce exactly how, why and where personal data is captured, stored and processed. If any of this falls outside of your organisation’s stated locations, policies and procedures then you could potentially face business-crippling fines, huge reputational damage and the operational impact of continued scrutiny for a long time to come.
Stemming the tide of Shadow IT across today’s tech-focussed lifestyles may unfortunately prove a challenge that is too difficult to overcome completely. However, there are several ways that you can address it and begin to take back the all-important control on what digital tools your people are using and how they are doing it.
Acknowledge the Issue
Accepting that there is undoubtedly going to be an issue prevalent in your company is key. This allows you to begin to appreciate why team members are looking at applications outside of your environment and creates the greatest foundation to begin making changes.
Observe & Identify
Establishing what Shadow IT apps and services are lurking in your IT environment is a big initial hurdle to overcome. A technology partner may recommend employ solutions such as Microsoft Defender Web Filtering and Defender for Cloud Apps as a sentral point to begin from
Prioritise Process
There must be an established route and process for the organisation to procure and purchase and digital services, tools and solutions. Giving the people responsible for your IT visibility and input in this process is vital. This can often stop the spread of Shadow IT at the source.
Collaborate
Working with feedback from the people within your organisation that rely on Shadow IT elements in their work is vital. It encourages a comprehensive review of how their roles and tasks may have changed in response to new developments, company targets and other external forces you may not be fully aware of. Sharing all of this information with your business technology partner or IT department in a collaborative way will expose any out-of-date technology practices or inefficiencies in your workflows and can inform choices on what tools may be the best fit for the future.
Educate & Empower
Creating awareness of the security concerns and wider impact of using Shadow IT means letting your people know the full story. Explain what Shadow IT is in a detailed and informed way right across the organisation. You may find that the people involved didn’t realise what they were doing was creating an issue and it will encourage wider discussion on overall security practices too.
Training for the correct way to use unique and strong credentials is a key element to start from. If the team is signing up for services independently then they may also need assistance with choosing a credential manager to help them do so in a secure way.
Helping your people feel heard for any legitimate challenge to the IT products your organisation uses promotes a much more open and transparent culture to take forward. Listening to how they approach their role and the tasks within it often unlocks paths to greater productivity with new ways for tech to support it, all in a centrally managed way.
Working with a technology partner such as BCN is the most effective way to boost your resilience against the dangers of BCN. Through comprehensive and proactive methods, many potential Shadow IT risks can be uncovered, highlighted and attended to with the use best in class, and consistently supported, tools.
A technology partner can also help you draft an entire IT Policy to adhere to as part of any onboarding or training. This may include:
All of which will provide focus on where individual responsibilities are and ensure that regular full audits can be conducted in a simpler way.
The emergence of Shadow IT, and the dangers it brings, illustrate how important the intersection of technology and people’s behaviour is for the modern workplace. It isn’t enough to prescribe solutions based on their efficacy in the digital world; they must be created with people in mind alongside an understanding of the tasks they are performing. This means spending time with them to see how they want to work, and how everything aligns with the ultimate goals and aims of the business.
BCN is a people-centric provider. Our knowledge and experience always begin from this focus, using the very best platforms, tools and applications to help them make their work a success.
A Microsoft Solutions Partner for Security, BCN can deliver the Microsoft security products and services you need to secure your organisation’s critical systems and data.
Contact the BCN team today to arrange an audit of your organisation to uncover Shadow IT use. Find out how you can start taking back full control of your people’s digital behaviour and IT environment in the simplest and effective ways.
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