Emily Newton is an industrial and tech journalist who's passionate about how technology is revolutionizing each sector. She's an experienced editor and enjoys her role as Editor-in-Chief of Revolutionized.
Shadow IT encompasses any system or program that employees use for work without the explicit approval of the information technology department. Workers don't typically engage in the practice for malicious reasons. Instead, they usually do it after finding that whatever the IT department provided falls short somehow.
Many employees don't initially make the connection between shadow IT and risks. Their initial priority is to maintain productivity. They may search for tools to do those things without ever considering that the IT department may not approve of their methods and resources.
However, the risks exist, even if employees don't immediately recognize them. That's especially true if workers use programs that have vulnerabilities for hackers to exploit and if they access or store sensitive work-related information while using those tools. If you are in the process of mitigating risks in shadow IT, here are the five best practices that you should abide by.
