Shadow IT
In big organizations, shadow IT refers to information technology (IT) systems deployed by departments other than the central IT department, to work around the perceived or actual shortcomings of the central information systems. Shadow IT often introduces security and compliance concerns. Origins. Information systems in large organizations can be a source of frustration for their users. In order to bypass perceived or actual limitations of solutions provided by a centralized IT department, other departments may build up independent IT resources to suit their specific or urgent requirements. It isn't uncommon for resourceful departments to hire IT engineers  and purchase or even develop software themselves, without knowledge, buy-in, or supervision from a centralized IT department. Implications. In most organizations, the prevalence of shadow systems results in a heavily fragmented application landscape, where consistency, security and governability are sacrificed to achieve the necessary level of business agility, whether for the purpose of innovation or mere survival. Benefits. The main benefit of shadow IT is the increased reactivity. The host department has direct power over its shadow IT resources, as opposed to central ones. Also, alignment between departments, a time-consuming and sometimes impossible task, is avoided. For example , with the rise of powerful desktop CPUs, business subject matter experts can use shadow IT systems to extract and manipulate complex datasets without having to request resources from the IT department. The challenge for IT is to recognize this activity and improve the technical control environment, or to guide the business in selecting enterprise-class data analysis tools. Placing barriers to shadow IT can be the equivalent of improving organizational security. A study confirms that 35% of employees feel they need to work around a security measure or protocol to work efficiently. 63% send documents to their home e-mail  address to continue work from home, even when they are aware that this is probably not allowed. Drawbacks. Besides security risks, some of the implications of Shadow IT are: Prevalence. Shadow IT is notoriously hard to measure. Within an organization, the amount of shadow IT activity is by definition unknown, especially since departments often hide their shadow IT activities as a preventive measure to ensure their ongoing operations. Even when figures are known, organizations typically don’t volunteer these. As a notable exception, The Boeing Company has published an experience report describing the alarming numbers of shadow applications which various  departments have introduced to work around the limitations of their official information system. According to Gartner, by 2015, 35 percent of enterprise IT expenditures for most organizations will be managed outside the central IT department's budget. A 2012 French survey of 129 IT managers revealed some examples of shadow IT : Examples. Examples of these unofficial data flows include USB flash drives or other portable data storage devices, instant messaging software, Gmail or other online e-mail services, Google Docs or other online document sharing and Skype or other online VOIP software—and other less straightforward products: self-developed Access  databases and self-developed Excel spreadsheets and macros. Security risks arise when data or applications move outside protected systems, networks, physical location, or security domains.