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Essay On Shadow IT

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How to Harness the Power of Shadow IT
CIOs today face a unique HR-related challenge: Not only to recruit and retain the best possible staff, but also to deal with the technological expectations of an entire organization's employees, when some of those employees were born in an era before color televisions, while others have grown up with smartphones and laptops as staples of daily life.
The modern workforce is comprised of five generations, from near-retirement Traditionalists born in the 1940s to the young adults of Generation Z just now entering the professional world. In the decades constituting this wide age gap, the accessibility of digital technologies has increased exponentially, as has the digital experience of end users. The …show more content…

The risks are real. Storing data on unauthorized platforms, for instance, not only puts sensitive information at risk of being stolen, it also may violate compliance laws like HIPAA and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the US or the General Data Protection Regulation in the EU. Shadow IT may cost large amounts of money for organizations that unwittingly purchase two or more applications that perform the same general service. Cross-platform incompatibility can also waste time and exacerbate user frustrations with an organization's own information technology.
For all its drawbacks, however, shadow IT is not inherently negative. In fact, shadow IT that is embraced by a motivated IT department can be an important element in an organization's digital transformation, opening it to new processes, platforms, and applications.
The existence of shadow IT shows employees' growing comfort with digital technologies, as well as a desire to interface with new solutions. It often highlights weak spots in current IT infrastructure, and fosters a sense of autonomy and freedom to innovate amongst departments willing to seek out solutions on their own. As long as IT has adequate oversight and is equipped to manage the problems that shadow IT presents, the issue in many cases can be leveraged into a positive for any organization with the right mindset.
Transformation of IT
Harnessing the power of shadow IT requires multilayered management by an IT department empowered to create change in

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