What is the impact of shadow IT on my organization?

Shadow IT is what we call users signing up for an app on their own. In the context of Atlassian apps, we refer to these apps as Discovered apps.

One of the many advantages of Atlassian apps is that it’s easy for your users to get up and running quickly with the software tools they need. This is great because it cuts down on barriers to getting work done. However, it means users at your company may be using apps and instances that you’re not aware of.

These apps and services are generally known as Shadow IT because your IT department has no influence or control over them. In the context of Atlassian, you’re unable to centrally manage these apps from your Atlassian organization. This means that you won’t find them under the Apps tab at Atlassian Administration with the rest of your organization’s apps.

Shadow IT isn’t inherently bad. You may find that giving your users the opportunity to administer their own apps works well for your company. Your teams may be most efficient when they can choose their own tools and set them up according to what works best for their team. However, there are also cases where you may want to track and even prevent these apps from getting started. The rest of this page explains why that may be the case.

Shadow IT may impact the security of your data

You have no visibility or control over what users do with their own apps. This is a problem because users may use them to save sensitive information, which you won’t be able to access. In addition, if one of your users adds an external user to the app, someone not associated with your organization could get access to your company’s content and sensitive data.

Shadow IT may impact your bills

Users and apps that you’re not tracking may increase your costs when you don’t expect it. If more users than you realize have access to Atlassian apps, you may have a higher payment than you anticipated for your Atlassian Guard Standard bill. Your company may also start paying for more apps than are needed when the same ones are set up to address similar needs.

Shadow IT may create more work

If you find out shadow IT apps exist, you may spend more time than you anticipate chasing down the admins of those apps. You may decide that you don’t want these apps to exist or that you want to manage them yourself. If this happens, it will be more work to figure how how to handle them and consolidate those apps.