How to Break Shadow IT and Solve Enterprise Application Compliance Problems

What's Shadow IT?

Gartner analyst Simon Mingay wrote in a research report that Shadow IT in a broad sense includes "investment in the acquisition, development and/or operation of IT solutions outside the formal control of formal IT organizations". To put IT simply, Shadow IT refers to a department or individual who uses IT-related hardware or software without knowing the IT or security group in the organization. In reality, employees in general enterprises rely on software that has not been approved by IT departments. Business departments bypass IT departments and use applications on the cloud to complete their work efficiently and quickly. These are also called "shadow IT".

Although "shadow IT" and "business value" doesn't sound directly related, using shadow IT is quite simple and direct. But when shadow IT was exposed, IT revealed many security vulnerabilities to IT departments. Enterprise employees can easily bypass the IT team's approval, but they cannot check the reliability and security of the selected application in depth. Employees unconsciously input important enterprise data into unauthorized cloud services, which makes enterprise data security a gamble directly.

In fact, nearly 80% of employees in general enterprises rely on this software that has not been approved by IT departments. Faced with this situation, what should IT leaders do if they find that these unsafe applications are being used by employees or are sharing sensitive information? It's obvious that it's natural to react quickly and demand that these applications be stopped immediately and that employees who violate the company's data security regulations be punished. However, the value gained by IT leaders from the discovery of Shadow IT is equally important for future IT decisions.

What is the problem with Shadow IT?

If IT executives find that employees are using free file sharing applications, the next step is to find out why employees use them. For what reason do so many employees bypass FTP and other systems and secretly use these applications for file sharing? Only by breaking the root cause of Shadow IT entering the enterprise can we improve the current situation of the enterprise and truly protect the data security of the enterprise.

It's easy to find out that many employees express their weakness in the processing efficiency of existing enterprise application systems. FTP is time-consuming and complex, and email is limited by attachment volume, so professional software procurement costs are high. The huge amount of data and the impatient urging of customers make them need a fast way to transfer files. Although the situation of each enterprise is different, fundamentally, the biggest reason for employees to use these file transfer software is that they can handle their work at any time and anywhere with a low cost or even zero cost.

Breaking Shadow IT and Solving Enterprise Application Compliance Problems

Recognizing the above problems, we will find that it is not enough to order employees to stop using unsafe file sharing applications. No matter how hard IT leaders try to control the organization's data, employees can choose unsafe solutions. Enterprises can choose compliance solutions such as Raysync. The goal of Raysync is to help enterprises and IT departments solve the normative problems of file sharing and provide easy-to-use and high-speed file transmission solutions for enterprise employees to improve office efficiency. Enterprises using Raysync software can use account management to help control file flow, and the high-speed transfer engine independently developed by Raysync can meet the extreme speed transfer of TB-level large files and massive small files.

Raysync is flexible enough to meet the various demands of enterprises. At this stage, Raysync introduces the flow version, which can be purchased by enterprises according to their needs. Enjoy the file transfer service of Raysync professional version at low cost, effectively control the cost consumption, eliminate the waste of resources, and realize the cost optimization. It provides a one-stop enterprise-level large file transfer solution, and it is an efficient way to obtain policy cooperation between employees and companies.