Understanding and Addressing Unauthorized IT Activities to Strengthen Data Protection
When it comes to improving your company's IT security, one of the vulnerabilities you need to address involves possible 'shadow IT' among your employees.
What is Shadow IT?
Although shadow IT sounds like something out of an espionage thriller, in reality it's a day-to-day problem for many companies. It refers to the issue of unauthorized IT activities among your employees.
Examples of Unauthorized IT Activities
These include the following:
- Using software, apps, or computing devices that haven't received approval from management or IT personnel.
- Downloading unapproved programs to computing devices.
- Transmitting or storing data using inappropriate methods (which likely increase the chances of the data getting compromised); one simple example is an employee using a personal Dropbox account to store unencrypted files containing sensitive financial information.
Why Shadow IT is a Problem
Your employees shouldn't rely on personal IT solutions for work-related tasks. They need to abide by the policies your company has laid out. But are you aware of your employees' unauthorized IT activities?
The Scope of the Issue
An article from CSO Online points out a survey on cloud services showing that only 8% of businesses know the full extent of shadow IT activities in their company.
Challenges in Monitoring
It's difficult to keep track of unauthorized activities, especially when employees also use personal computing devices for their work. This problem undermines the efforts of companies to keep their data secure as a means of protecting customers, safeguarding business secrets, and complying with various cyber-security regulations spelled out and enforced by government and industry bodies.
When you contact us, ask about our IT security services. One of the services we offer is to evaluate your company for cyber-security vulnerabilities, including unauthorized activities on the part of employees.
How We Can Help
We can help you conduct an audit on your company to help ensure that you're complying with regulations. The results of our investigations will give you get a better sense of your vulnerabilities and insights into how to tighten security so that you're less likely to suffer from compromised data and successful cyber-attacks.
Ready to strengthen your IT foundation? Let Kotori Technologies help you build clear, enforceable IT policies and take the stress out of managing your IT services.
