If you work in a business, the pressure is always on. You need to work faster, collaborate easily and know everything, across the organization. Customers expect 24×7 access and instant satisfaction. Digital challenges require digital solutions “” and employees often can find them in the cloud, without wading through IT processes and rules “” and without considering governance, risk and compliance.

Welcome to the realm of Shadow IT. These ungoverned “work around” solutions “” from file hosting services to using personal smartphones on the corporate network “” can introduce serious security blind spots and elevate corporate risk.

Savvy CIOs know that you need to strike a balance “” between productivity and control, and collaboration and compliance. In the end, management must find ways to empower employees to use tools that will make the organization more agile, while mitigating risk and enhancing security. It’s more important than ever for organizations to identify the right solution or combination of solutions that best protect them from security threats without disrupting employee productivity.

That’s why we created a new report: “The Upside of Shadow IT: Productivity Meets IT Security,” based on a survey of 1,000 US IT professionals. You can read it here. And watch this space “” we’ll be exploring how actively managing Shadow IT can become a competitive advantage.

To learn more about the findings in “The Upside of Shadow IT,” download the full report and watch the explainer here >>.

Read the next post in this series here.

Michelle Morgan-Nelsen