Why shadow IT is a risky bet for OT departments
Line of business departments running shadow IT without the CIO‘s blessing is nothing new. But what are the implications when an operations technology group in a factory decides to run IT on its own?
Shadow IT has a bad rap. The phenomenon occurs when line of business (LoB) departments unilaterally make IT decisions and use their own budgets to make IT purchases. Thirty years ago, the shadow IT concept was practically unheard of, as central IT controlled access to enterprise-grade digital technologies and served as gatekeepers of the knowledge necessary to use them. Fast-forward to today, and LoB departments—including operations technology (OT) groups responsible for production, maintenance, and other industrial processes—are more empowered to do IT on their own, often with no central IT input or oversight.
Lots of things can go wrong, as OT groups consider new technologies such as Industrial IoT and artificial intelligence to boost automation, increase efficiency, and gain new insights into operations. Unsecured IoT devices or unpatched servers become attack vectors and potentially turn into staging points for distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) or ransomware attacks. Systems that are poorly implemented may create headaches down the road or shutdowns on the shop floor. And even if the shadow IT project is well-planned and does what it’s supposed to do, when it comes time to scale the system or extend it to other facilities or use cases, it may need to be ripped up because it hasn’t been architected to work with other systems.
Shadow IT is not just a buzzword or fad. It’s a real trend, along with the rise of other IT implementation models controlled by LoB departments. Some LoB managers spend more than 30 percent of their time making IT-related decisions, according to a C Space report. This includes identifying IT needs, researching solutions, and keeping up to date on new technology. Scenarios may involve client departments demanding central IT resources (and getting them) as well as LoB departments hosting embedded IT, with database administrators or technologists coordinating with central IT on new projects. However, the report also pointed to the growing prominence of shadow IT.
“Shadow IT comes up, because it’s easier and faster to get things done,” says Colleen Schulz, a senior C Space consultant who co-authored the report. “It could involve getting an application onto a phone or a large application for the department.”
IDC predicted IT spending funded by non-IT business units to reach $609 billion in 2017 and be nearly equal to funding by IT departments by 2020. In discrete manufacturing, IT spending by LoB groups was expected to exceed IT organization spending, the IDC report says. LoB spending on IT will often be coordinated with or approved by central IT, but IDC says that its estimates include shadow IT as well.
The classic shadow IT example is the sales department installing Salesforce on its own, or the website team signing up for Stripe to accept online and mobile payments. Databases, banking services, and even industrial applications at one time required knowledgeable IT staff to implement and maintain them. Nowadays, such systems are much easier to activate and use by LoB employees or IT specialists working under LoB managers.
Problems can arise, though, when a system goes down or can’t be configured. That’s when the IT cavalry must be called in to save the day—or mop up the mess.
C Space co-author and senior consultant Jon Strobel says that in many respects, shadow IT is connected with a generational shift as more millennials enter the workforce with the expectation that workplace technologies will be as sophisticated and easy to use as what they encounter in their personal lives. There is also the bring your own device (BYOD) trend, in which a worker may prefer to use their own phone or tablet instead of the one supplied by central IT.
