Shadow IT security risks in the age of remote work

Remote work has permanently changed the security perimeter. Employees connect from home networks, coffee shops, and airports — using personal devices, unauthorized applications, and consumer-grade network infrastructure. The result is an explosion of shadow IT: applications adopted by employees without IT approval, evaluation, or security review.

The problem is accelerating with AI. Employees use ChatGPT for drafting emails, Claude for analyzing documents, Midjourney for creating presentations, and Copilot for writing code. These tools are useful, which is why employees adopt them. But each one represents an uncontrolled data pathway — company information flowing to external services without governance, compliance review, or security assessment.

Traditional shadow IT discovery relies on CASB proxies, endpoint agents, or network taps. These approaches share a common limitation: they only see traffic that flows through the monitored path. Remote workers on home WiFi bypass the corporate CASB. Personal devices don't have the corporate endpoint agent. VPN split-tunneling means only some traffic flows through the corporate network.

DNS is the universal layer. Every application on every device — managed or unmanaged, on-network or remote — must resolve DNS before it connects. Securd monitors DNS resolution, providing a complete inventory of every service every device connects to. No agents required. No proxies to configure. No VPN dependencies.

Deploy Securd's roaming client on corporate devices for off-network coverage. Configure DoH endpoints for browser-based protection. Point office DNS to Securd for on-network coverage. Within 24 hours, the dashboard shows a complete inventory of every SaaS application, AI service, cloud provider, and external endpoint your organization's devices resolve.

The inventory alone is valuable — but policy enforcement is where Securd differentiates. Once you see what's being used, create policies that block unauthorized services, allow approved ones, and hold unknown services at the Greywall for review. Shadow IT doesn't disappear — it becomes governed IT.