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The emergence of cloud computing and proliferation of mobile devices has revolutionised the way we work and live. Employees drive significant changes in businesses IT infrastructure, due to the fact that they are more informed. Moreover, they can gain easy access to the latest technology and apps, which are mostly free or have a very low price. The result is ‘Shadow IT’,” which divides the company in two sides: IT department and the rest of the people.

IT DEPARTMENT AND THE REST OF THE PEOPLE
When this division is made, businesses are off to a bad start. All parties think that the two sides have parallel scopes and intersection intervenes only when it comes to “we need to replace the computer systems”, “the antivirus needs to be updated on all computers”, or “let’s do an inventory to see what software is being used”.

IT people face rejection from users mainly because users don’t fully understand the IT department’s role, which leads to frustration. Users especially do not want to understand the IT department’s role when it comes to their personal devices, which they also use for work tasks (BYOD problems). As in personal life, communication is the key.

Managers need to explain to both sides that they need to work together to achieve the same objective: increase productivity and enable innovation through technology, while maintaining the health of the network and secure data. IT staff would understand the reasons behind employees’ usage of non-approved apps, software and devices, and would work together with them to overcome the potential threats coming from this situation. On the other hand, when it comes to work tools, non-technical personnel would be more open about discussing their wish list with IT.

IT admins and other IT members must realise that their non-IT colleagues do not get up in the morning with thoughts like, “Today, I am going to use Google Drive just to annoy the IT guy” or “It’s the perfect day to add one more app to shadow IT”. They just want to do their work in a more convenient way.

In the end, both parties have pertinent reasons to like/hate shadow IT.

Pros from users’ side:

• Increased productivity
• Faster collaboration
• Less hassle from IT
• Option to work with the tools that there are familiar with from their personal life.

Cons from IT personnel side:

• Lack of control on technologies, computers and software being used
• Security risks
• Futile spending on company systems
• Scalability and maintenance issues.

The resolution is somewhere in the middle. IT departments should see an opportunity in shadow IT and take advantage of it by finding a way to support users in their chosen tools – and encourage them to collaborate more with IT. After all, company’s lower costs and increased productivity have priority, while securing data should be implicit.

Securing data is easier when IT security professionals know where confidential data resides and where it is being transferred. If IT people manage to transform shadow IT in official means of progress and innovation, they will become heroes and perception about them will be upgraded.