Do You Know What’s Lurking In “the Shadows” of Your IT?

Implementing proper IT solutions is challenging for the average small business, and difficult without the aid of a proper IT department. Unfortunately, organizations that can’t afford a full-time in-house IT department sometimes resort to methods of managing their technology that can be dangerous for business continuity, data storage, compliance, and security.

The term for this is shadow IT. Shadow IT generally consists of IT solutions that are integrated without oversight. For example, having an employee set up a free antivirus on his workstation, While better than no antivirus at all, this isn’t the ideal solution to your business’s security problems. Going behind the backs of your trusted technology professionals isn’t the right way to approach business technology solutions.

In this case, the employee might have had the best interests of the organization in mind, but went about the implementation of new tech the wrong way. Instead of doing it themselves, they should have asked for permission, or contacted the staff member in charge of making the business’s IT decisions. What happens if the solution is not set up properly? The blame would fall on the employee, even though all they wanted to do was make their job easier.

Another reason why shadow IT might resurface is if there’s an immediate issue that needs to be resolved, but your IT staff doesn’t have the time or money to implement it right away. This could prompt a frustrated employee to resort to “homegrown” solutions that may (or may not) be similar to other tools on the market. Again, the problem here is that there are untrained employees implementing solutions that aren’t enterprise-level. This should never happen; you only want those who have the expertise, knowledge, and relevant training to implement new technology solutions.

So, in theory, we can explain the implementation of shadow IT with two reasons: 1) The absence of a dedicated in-house IT department, which forces employees to perform maintenance themselves, and 2) An overloaded IT department that’s too busy to deal with spontaneous or recurrent issues. What’s the busy business owner to do?

In this case, the ideal solution is to contact a tech services company that can 1) Provide enterprise-level solutions at a reasonable monthly price, and 2) Free your staff from the burden of regular IT maintenance and implementation of new solutions. Companies like ours aren’t out to necessarily replace your in-house team (if you have one, that is); we can, however, give your IT staff more time to innovate without dealing with regular tech hiccups.

Regardless of whether or not you have dedicated in-house IT support, we can provide your business with the flexibility needed to fully leverage your technology. For more information about our managed IT service offering, give SMART Services a call at (586) 258-0650.