THREAT‑WATCH
Glossary
Shadow IT
Software, devices, or cloud services used within an organization without the knowledge or approval of the IT/security team.
Shadow IT usually starts innocently, an employee signs up for a free cloud tool to solve an immediate problem, but it means data flows through a system the security team can't monitor, patch, or include in incident response. It's grown substantially with the ease of signing up for cloud SaaS tools with just a credit card, and it directly enlarges the attack surface in ways that don't show up in official asset inventories.