"Shadow IT," the phenomenon of users installing unauthorized apps or equipment on company systems, used to be a major problem. Stricter governance made most people think it's been fading for years, but with help from COVID, cloud computing is taking the stake out of that vampire's heart.
By John Ghrist
Like many other aspects of computing, using the cloud creates its share of security problems for IT departments. Whether an enterprise is using Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), or Software as a Service (SaaS), the fact that security becomes a shared concern between provider and customer makes for some potential confusion about where responsibility lines are truly drawn. Cloud computing by its nature puts many aspects of software and database use and security outside the direct authority of any user company's IT group, a situation that was the very definition of Shadow IT when the term was invented.