How IT teams can get a handle on shadow IT

In modern organizations, employees sometimes adopt SaaS tools and AI solutions to help them get their jobs done efficiently. But when tools are chosen without IT oversight, they’re often called shadow IT.

Shadow IT isn’t inherently a problem. The key isn't to stop it, but to govern it. This is where 1Password SaaS Manager comes in, providing visibility, automated discovery, and lifecycle management to help you bridge the gaps  between IT and business teams.

Success starts with IT and line-of-business partnership

Success comes from collaboration between IT and business teams. The former brings expertise in compliance, efficiency, and security, while the latter knows the tools they need for greater productivity. With SaaS visibility, IT can see how work happens and react accordingly. 

With 1Password SaaS Manager, IT gets a full view of the applications being used. This gives IT the opportunity to support innovation where it makes sense and intervene where required. 

What is business-led IT?

Business-led IT refers to technology decisions made outside central IT, such as employees signing up for new SaaS tools to help them be more productive.

As a result, IT is left trying to chase employees and business units about the new applications they’re using to integrate them into their identity and access management workflows. According to IT professionals, 34% of applications sit outside of the company’s SSO. This is often because IT doesn’t know about a tool being used, the company hasn’t paid for the enterprise-tier license, or it’s simply too time consuming or complex to integrate that app into SSO.

It’s easy to understand why IT leaders might not celebrate the idea of business-led IT if it’s simply used to label and rationalize the transfer of decision-making power to the line of business. However, it could be risky for IT units to ignore this trend, and welcoming it doesn’t mean losing control. Rather, it gives teams the opportunity to establish frameworks for safe business-led IT. 

With 1Password SaaS Manager, IT is able to gain SaaS visibility, compliance oversight, and automated app discovery for the best of both worlds. 

What’s the problem with shadow IT?

Historically, shadow IT  was treated as a problem to be eradicated, a list of risky apps used by "rogue" employees that IT needed to block. But today, we recognize that this mindset creates a dangerous situation. When IT acts as a gatekeeper, business units find workarounds to maintain their productivity, further driving data into the shadows.

The real problem isn't the apps themselves; it’s the compliance and data governance issues they create. Every unmanaged SaaS tool represents  sensitive company data in tools with little oversight and potentially wasted SaaS spend.

With 1Password SaaS Manager, we help IT go  from "blocking" to "governing." Instead of shutting down innovation, IT provides a secure framework, the guardrails, that allows teams to adopt the tools they need. By gaining real-time visibility into these decentralized decisions, IT can move from a cost center that says "no" to a strategic partner that drives business-led growth.

Business-led IT as a strategic framework

It’s not necessary for IT to control every decision in order to maintain oversight. Instead, it’s sensible to frame the environment, put in place guidance and guardrails where needed, and allow other teams to make decisions within this structure. 

With 1Password SaaS Manager, IT teams can discover and inventory apps in use, address overlapping apps or underutilized licenses, approve or restrict access, and automate compliance workflows and access reviews.

For instance, if business teams are using project management tools to help coordinate work, even if central IT already has a licensed solution, 1Password SaaS Manager helps IT gain full visibility, engage with business units to standardize tools, and automate lifecycle management to reduce risk and spend. Business-led IT acknowledges that lines of business require project management tools to operate effectively.

But leaving each team to operate whatever project management app they want isn’t always the right solution. Instead, this is an opportunity for IT to engage with these teams and shape their decisions. With this knowledge and automated communication workflows, IT can reach out to individual teams, get their perspective on their business needs, and get their buy-in to consolidate usage into as few apps as possible to achieve volume discounts and efficiencies in training and support. 

Once IT has partnered with the business to identify which apps deliver value, there needs to be an operating model that includes an Information Security review. Once the IT team decides to move unmanaged apps to their managed app inventory, they can create standardized management processes for renewals and user access reviews.

The benefits of managing shadow IT 

When approaching shadow IT as an indicator rather than an issue, organizations can improve IT-business collaboration and reduce security risk. 

By continuously discovering new SaaS apps, IT teams can automate lifecycle processes to reduce manual workload and human error, boost productivity, and consolidate redundant apps, saving costs. And because business units can adopt the tools they need safely, the company can innovate at a faster speed.

There’s a common misconception that business units want to hide from IT. But in truth, business units are generally more than happy to collaborate with IT. As with most interdepartmental interactions, success in IT/business partnerships is built on mutual respect and an understanding that both parties have expertise and a job to do. 

See how 1Password SaaS Manager can support your IT and business teams to work together securely and efficiently here.