Over the last few years I’ve found I’m becoming more and more sensitive of the ever-widening gap between what we as IT/Security people do to protect the user from themselves, and giving the end user the freedom and support to use the best tools available to get real work done. There are a lot of great apps and other tech out there that corporations tend to quickly dismiss as “non-approved”, unneeded and/or frivolous toys. So I was pleasantly surprised when I noticed this excellent article over at the CIO Magazine website about corporate users ever-increasing knowledge and use of consumer technology to get things done, regardless of corporate IT Policy.
These are your employees, and their message couldn’t be clearer: Technology, at least in their eyes, has made them significantly more productive. But CIOs shouldn’t be patting themselves on the back just yet. For this productivity boost the study credits the Internet, not enterprise IT, not the technology you provide, not, in short, you. And while Pew’s finding undoubtedly includes people who use the Internet to access your corporate applications, Lee Rainie, the Pew project director, says the research is not pointing to what a good job CIOs have been doing.
The author has some great tips on how to harness that “Shadow IT” and use it to advance your goals instead of rallying against it. I would love to hear how other IT/security folks deal with this. I always try to balance security needs along with giving the users the tools needed to help them get work done. After all, that is why we are there in the first place. =)
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Jim