To conclude Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we’re shining a light on one of the most common and insidious security challenges in businesses: shadow IT.
Shadow IT refers to any hardware, software, or cloud service used by individuals or operational teams without approval or oversight from central IT.
Commonly driven by the desire to enhance productivity or fill gaps in available tools, Shadow IT creates blind spots that cybercriminals exploit.
Addressing it is a complex challenge, one which a data-first approach can be instrumental in helping solve by improving visibility, governance, and accountability.
How Shadow IT shows up
Shadow IT can take many forms within a business.
For example, staff may install unapproved SaaS tools, store work files in personal cloud accounts, or use consumer apps for collaboration.
One report by Lumos found that 64% of employees admit to using unsanctioned SaaS apps for work, and 52% of organisations have no clear policy to manage Shadow IT.
On average, enterprises use between 270 and 364 SaaS applications.
Gartner also estimates that in large organisations, as much as 30 to 40% of IT spending sits outside central control.
Why shadow IT poses cybersecurity risks
The cybersecurity risks on Shadow IT hinges on its lack of official visibility and the expansion of an organisations attack surface.
If IT teams do not know a tool or service exists, they cannot check its security, compliance, or data handling practices.
If users upload sensitive data to unapproved apps, reuse credentials or miss key safeguards like multi-factor authentication or encryption, an organisation’s attack surface greatly expands.
When data moves outside of monitored systems, incident response becomes slower, compliance weaker and the cost of recovery higher.
How a data-first approach can help curb Shadow IT
- Creates visibility
A data-first approach starts by uncovering all SaaS and cloud services in use. It shows who owns what, where data is stored, and which tools are unapproved.
A centralised, data-driven inventory turns hidden usage into insight, making it easier to assess and prioritise risks.
- Builds data-led policy and communication
Using real data to guide policy makes it easier to explain why certain tools are approved and others are not.
When people understand how their choices affect data security and compliance, they are more likely to follow the rules.
- Provides better alternatives
Data about tool usage reveals where employees turn to shadow IT because official systems don’t meet their needs.
IT can use this insight to improve approved tools and make secure options more accessible and efficient.
- Monitors and educates
Data-driven monitoring tools detect unsanctioned activity in real time.
Regularly sharing this data with teams helps them understand how their actions expose or protect business information.
- Aligns business and IT
Shared data connects IT, operations, procurement and legal around the same risks and goals.
This alignment turns shadow IT from a hidden problem into a managed, measurable one.
How Rio can support
At Rio, we help organisations stamp out Shadow IT practices through a data-first approach. This can look like:
- Running discovery workshops and using SaaS-mapping tools to create a full picture of approved and unapproved applications.
- Designing governance frameworks that connect data, security, and compliance policies in a practical way that fits your organisation.
- Deploying tooling to monitor the use of unsanctioned services, integrate with CASB systems, and automate approvals.
- Working with users to improve the adoption of IT-approved tools, reducing the need for workarounds.
- Delivering training and awareness programmes that make the risks of Shadow IT tangible and relevant to day-to-day work.
Shadow IT may offer convenience, but it is one of the primary drivers of data security and compliance risks for organisations today.
The core message: managing shadow IT is essential to protect what matters most—your data.
With a data-first approach, organisations can improve visibility and governance, helping support productivity without increased risk.
If you are to take one message away from this Cybersecurity Awareness Month, let it be this: your data should be the focus of your cybersecurity strategy.
When you know where your data is, who owns it, and how it moves, you can take control and build a strategy that keeps secure what cyber criminals seek to exploit.