More than 80 per cent of employees admit to using non-approved software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications in their jobs, a new survey has found.
The survey was carried out by Stratecast, a branch of analysts Frost & Sullivan, and commissioned by McAfee. It asked 300 IT staff and 300 “line-of-business” employees of businesses that employ 1,000 staff or more for their views on “shadow IT” – SaaS applications used by employees for business, which have not been approved by the IT department or obtained according to IT policies. The employees represented different industries, and came from North America, the UK, Australia and New Zealand.
Only 19 per cent of line-of-business employees and 17 per cent of IT employees said that they did not use any non-approved SaaS applications. According to respondents, the average company uses about 20 SaaS applications, seven of which are non-approved.
“That means you can expect that upwards of 35 per cent of all SaaS apps in your company are purchased and used without oversight,” CEOs and CIOs were warned by Stratecast.
