Cisco Launches Service to Address Shadow IT

Cisco this week announced Cloud Consumption as a Service, a new software-as-a-service product aimed at helping businesses address the increasing shadow IT challenge.

The company explains that business groups have been circumventing the IT department to access public cloud services they believed they needed to do their jobs for years, but that only recently have CIOs started to understand the full extent of shadow IT and the risks it poses to their business.

Cisco’s new software-as-a-service product is designed to discover and monitor public cloud services an organization is using and help reduce security risks.

According to Cisco, a recent analysis has revealed the extent of the shadow IT challenge, noting that the average large enterprise uses 1,220 individual public cloud services at the moment. The company also notes that the figure is actually 25 times larger than estimated by IT professionals. Moreover, the company explains that the average number of public cloud services increased 112 percent over the past year, while also going up 67 percent over the past six months.

Moreover, the uncontrolled adoption of public cloud services poses significant risks to business, ranging from regulatory compliance and data protection, to business continuity, cost and service performance.

The new product can provide customers with greater visibility into their cloud usage, which means that they can make a better idea about the risk they are facing. Thus, they can also proactively ensure they have the appropriate security to keep their organization protected.

The new Cisco Cloud Consumption as a Service is available globally, with pricing depending on the size of the business. 

In 2015, Cisco acquired a series of companies in an attempt to improve its cybersecurity services offerings, including Portcullis, a UK-based consultancy offering such services to clients in both enterprise and government sectors. In June, it announced plans to acquire San Francisco-based OpenDNS, a company known for its DNS service that adds a level of security by monitoring domain name requests.