This article delves into the risk Shadow IT poses. In a recent report Gartner predicted 30% of breaches due to Shadow IT, this further brings the focus to this topic. Let’s take a look at the report and a few mitigation strategies
1.What Gartner Predicted About Shadow IT
Gartner’s Top Security Predictions in 2016 predicted ‘By 2020, a third of successful attacks experienced by enterprises will be on their shadow IT resources.’. Details of the report may be foundhere (which predicts 30% breaches due to Shadow IT)
Shadow IT brings forward all that remains in the shadow. And that has plenty of sensitive data on it. Shadow IT lets unauthorized parties access sensitive data. Thus, it is easy to see what threats Shadow IT brings. You can’t protect what you don’t know exists. That needs us to enable programs to get that kind of information and take mitigation steps to control it.
2. Why Breaches Shall Increase Due To Shadow IT?
It’s the part where sensitive data can be found without much effort and it also has no security as the organizations are unaware of its existence. Hackers find Shadow IT an easy target due to reason like –
- Shadow IT Weakens Organizational Standards
- Shadow IT Could Let Unauthorized Parties See Confidential Files
3. How To Manage Your Shadow IT Risk?
Mitigation can be hard but the first step is to discover your Shadow IT data. Then comes mitigation.
Here’s some advice from the CSA community. Reference links are provided below
- Ask
Ask employees which services they are using, the IT must take measures and have policies to contain threats. You might also need to utilize a combination of automated and manual discovery tools to get a complete picture of what programs employees are using and not using. The IT needs to get a full overview of all services being used to be able to protect. - Protect Your Data
Implement automatic backup of all endpoint data in the enterprise to capture a real-time view of where employee data lives, when and where it moves and who has touched it—even as it moves to and from non-approved clouds. - Act Fast When The Inevitable Happens
The reality is a breach may be inevitable, but you can recover. With continuous and automatic endpoint backup, IT can quickly evaluate the content of files believed to have been breached and act in good faith to lessen the impact.
Reference:
https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/top-10-security-predictions-2016/
https://blog.cloudsecurityalliance.org/2015/10/14/managing-shadow-it/
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