Cisco's New Weapon in the Fight Against Shadow IT

Shadow IT is a phenomenon that's growing, and by some reports getting worse. Occurring when employees bring their own, unauthorized software into the workplace, it's a case of employees doing the right thing the wrong way and exposing the company to potential damage, intrusion, or even legal hassles. So Cisco (News - Alert) brought out its new Cloud Consumption as a Service, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product designed to spot and help prevent shadow IT operations.

Cisco developed Cloud Consumption as a Service after noting some key points in recent research, including the bombshell report that the average large enterprise turned to 1,220 individual public cloud services. This is about 25 times the amount commonly estimated by IT departments, and the number of public cloud tools is only growing, up 112 percent over the last year alone. Without controlled adoption of public cloud tools, businesses open up to potential difficulties of the regulatory environment, business continuity, data protection, and more.

With this, organizations can monitor the use of public cloud tools and discover just where all that use is going. It helps to understand new potential risks, and also points that IT may need to address with more approved tools, allowing employees to have the necessary tools to do a job, but in a fashion that's sufficiently controlled to keep the business' systems safe.

Those interested in picking up the service can do so from the various Cisco channel partners around, or from Cisco directly. Prices run between $1 and $2 per employee per month, depending on the overall size of the business, and a free 30 day trial is available. Several firms have already tried out the service and found it valuable; CityMD discovered that its IT department offered formal support for 15 to 20 cloud services, but employees were using 522 such services.

Not only does shadow IT represent some major potential exposure in terms of liabilities, it also represents a failure on the part of IT itself to supply the necessary tools employees need to get the job done, whatever that job may be. Employees shouldn't have to turn to smuggled tools and outside sources just to handle a work day. While IT can't possibly know about all the tools out there that everyone could be using, and some shadow IT is engaged in out of personal preference rather than actual need, it's clear that at least some departments just don't have the right tools for the job.

With Cisco's Cloud Consumption as a Service, companies can get a better handle on what's being used, and what needs to be brought in on a sanctioned basis to remove the need for shadow IT in the first place. Without that need, employees will be more likely to use the tools of which the company approves, and prevent much of shadow IT from even happening.