Shadow IoT: A Growing Threat
Posted: Tue Feb 11, 2025 6:40 am
Shadow IT has long been a concern for management, and now there's shadow IoT , writes independent analyst Joe McKendrick on ZDNet .
A survey conducted several years ago showed that most CIOs believed that their enterprises ran 30-40 applications. But according to Symantec researchers, the average enterprise runs 1,516 applications, and that number has doubled in three years.
This is not a sign of CIO naivety, but rather that shadow IT is hard to quantify. Employees install applications outside of official channels, and they don’t show up in the budget. In some cases, this is overlooked, tolerated, or even encouraged because employees need the tools to do their jobs, and IT departments can’t always help them.
Today, CIOs are fighting shadow IT on two fronts. Some applications and clouds are being created by users, while others are being created by a sneaky adversary called shadow IoT.
The former are constantly piling up. 1Password ghana whatsapp data surveyed a representative sample of 2,119 U.S. adults who work in offices with IT departments. In the past 12 months, 64% of respondents had created at least one account without IT’s knowledge. For 32%, it was a single shadow account, 52% had two to five, and 16% had more than five.
End users informally exchange passwords. Security is often an afterthought.
There are benefits to end-user use of shadow IT in business because, security concerns aside, it can unlock new opportunities and improve productivity. IoT is even less benign, and we’re only just beginning to understand its scale. Infoblox research shows that in 2019, the majority of businesses (78%) connected more than 1,000 devices to their corporate networks. This can include company-provided or company-managed laptops and tablets. More than a quarter (28%) of respondents reported connecting 1,000-2,000 devices, and nearly half (48%) reported connecting 2,000-10,000.
A survey conducted several years ago showed that most CIOs believed that their enterprises ran 30-40 applications. But according to Symantec researchers, the average enterprise runs 1,516 applications, and that number has doubled in three years.
This is not a sign of CIO naivety, but rather that shadow IT is hard to quantify. Employees install applications outside of official channels, and they don’t show up in the budget. In some cases, this is overlooked, tolerated, or even encouraged because employees need the tools to do their jobs, and IT departments can’t always help them.
Today, CIOs are fighting shadow IT on two fronts. Some applications and clouds are being created by users, while others are being created by a sneaky adversary called shadow IoT.
The former are constantly piling up. 1Password ghana whatsapp data surveyed a representative sample of 2,119 U.S. adults who work in offices with IT departments. In the past 12 months, 64% of respondents had created at least one account without IT’s knowledge. For 32%, it was a single shadow account, 52% had two to five, and 16% had more than five.
End users informally exchange passwords. Security is often an afterthought.
There are benefits to end-user use of shadow IT in business because, security concerns aside, it can unlock new opportunities and improve productivity. IoT is even less benign, and we’re only just beginning to understand its scale. Infoblox research shows that in 2019, the majority of businesses (78%) connected more than 1,000 devices to their corporate networks. This can include company-provided or company-managed laptops and tablets. More than a quarter (28%) of respondents reported connecting 1,000-2,000 devices, and nearly half (48%) reported connecting 2,000-10,000.