We've all been there. Uploading a file to our personal Google Drive because it's simpler. Emailing a work document to our personal email to print out at home. Using Dropbox instead of Sharepoint to send out a proposal. 

This practice, which seems harmless, is called Shadow IT. But these apps may present security risks that your current infrastructure doesn't support, leaving your employees and company at risk.

And according to a new survey, the usage of these unsanctioned apps is rising. The survey found that 51% of employees will continue using their preferred applications, even if the company has banned the usage of those apps. Further, 92% of employees want full control over the tools they use for work. 

What to do? Enter Shadow IT Discovery.

Avanan has a patent for Shadow IT discovery.

Avanan's patent covers the technology that detects and monitors usage of cloud services based on the analysis of corporate email. 

Based on email analysis (Office 365 and/or Gmail), we will give you a direct line of
sight into cloud applications in use at your company. Avanan identifies emails from cloud applications to users that suggest they have been using a cloud application. For example, emails containing messages such as "Thank you for registering" or "You have a notification" suggest that a user has been using a cloud application. When such an email is found in a user's mailbox, a security event is created with the type of Shadow IT.

Avanan's patented technology is able to uncover unsanctioned services by looking for email-based evidence of SaaS subscriptions or usage. That communication is already delivered to Avanan in the context of providing an extra layer of security. So Avanan clients can receive this information without additional configuration or deployments. This means that the file sharing apps and collaboration tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams that compromise Shadow IT platforms can be easily assessed, regulated and monitored. 

Your employees are going to use the apps they want to make their lives easier. But it doesn't mean that there has to be an added security risk. Shadow IT protection ensures that the organization will remain safe.