Shadow IT – tech used in an organization that is not administered by that organization’s IT department – accounts for the majority of the cloud tech at most companies. Understandably, the risk this implies might keep a security pro up at night; Gartner estimated in 2016 that by 2020, a third of successful attacks experienced by enterprises will be on their shadow IT resources.
I remember it like it was yesterday, but it was 20 years ago. As I approached my boss’s desk, I saw her do something amazing: she made a smaller window appear on top of her screen, displaying the icons of her open applications. She quickly toggled and selected another. In an instant, she’d gone from Outlook to Excel. No mousing around, no hunting to open the app. I squawked. What the heck was that? That, my friends, was my alt-tab Eureka! moment.
As engineering teams grow, obvious difficulties arise. It’s simple math. You can’t keep up with everyone, and everything, in the same way as you did when the team was small. To maintain the high level of impact you’ve always had, your ways of working need to change.
It’s 3 a.m. and you’re up again tossing and turning, a stampede of wild thoughts running through your head about your latest work issue. Maybe it’s a project gone south, a recurring problem rearing its head again, or a difficult relationship with a coworker. Either way, it’s up to you to calm your mind, talk yourself through your worries, and get a good night’s sleep.
“Wait. I don’t remember telling you the name of my hometown,” I said with an eyebrow cocked. “No, but I’m an intel analyst. So I know.” Truth be told, I was surprised the conversation hadn’t included more moments like this. I’m sitting in a tavern a few klicks down the road from the FBI’s training academy in Quantico, VA.
