It’s a regular struggle between end users and the IT shop: features versus security (and budget, and time, and actual value vs perceived value). The list is actually a lot longer than that, but the general point is this: end users, the drivers for mission success, often feel as though the technical solutions provided to them miss the mark and your Information Technology team feels as though end users don’t understand the unrealistic burden being put on IT to support the business. Sound familiar?

Enter Shadow IT. This is not a new conversation, but when your IT doesn’t, or can’t, provide what the end users need they find workarounds. Share from your personal account. Use the corporate credit card and spend under the limit which requires the procurement team. Heck, just spend the money on your own because that tool is going to save you enough time and frustration that it’s worth it.

But what does that do to your corporate data? Sensitive data shared via uncontrolled toolsets. Stored in “someone else’s cloud”. Unprotected. Uncategorized. Ill-fated to be stolen and used in nefarious ways, if not today, tomorrow.

OK – I’m kind of fear-mongering here, but for a purpose.

If data is the modern-day currency for business success, then not knowing what’s happening to it is absolutely against all better judgement.

In this conversation Hunter and Jay discuss the Shadow IT problem and provide strategies for combatting it – but the focus isn’t on simply locking down your network, it’s understanding the problem and providing solutions that remove the symptoms causing it.

Check out Hunter’s 7 strategies to stop Shadow IT and Joanna Schloss’s Is Shadow IT isn’t going away – and that’s a good thing on CMS Wire.