Every business has Shadow IT.
It’s not just employees signing up for free SaaS tools. It’s also servers, subdomains, and services quietly launched by your own teams — and then forgotten.
- Developers spin up a test server “just for a week.”
- Admins open a port to solve a temporary issue.
- Marketing creates a subdomain for a campaign, pays for hosting, then forgets about it.
Six months later, those “temporary” setups are still online. Unpatched. Unmonitored. Unpaid.
And attackers are looking for exactly that.
Why forgotten assets are dangerous
- Open ports give hackers direct entry points.
- Old subdomains can be hijacked when DNS records remain, but hosting is gone.
- Unpatched test servers run outdated software with known vulnerabilities.
- Exposed services leak sensitive data because nobody remembers they exist.
To an attacker, your forgotten server isn’t “temporary.” It’s an invitation.
Real-world example
A marketing team launched promo.company.com for a three-week campaign. After the campaign, nobody paid for hosting. But the DNS record stayed.
An attacker registered the hosting, took over the subdomain, and served a fake login page. Customers trusted it — after all, it was under the company’s domain.
Result? Credentials stolen. Reputation damaged.
How to spot Shadow IT in your own company
- 🔍 Scan for subdomains. Tools can map every subdomain you own, active or forgotten.
- 🌐 Check for open ports and services. Regular scanning identifies weak points before attackers can exploit them.
- 📋 Keep an asset inventory. Track servers, domains, and cloud resources across teams.
- 🧩 Talk to marketing & devs. They often launch assets outside IT’s visibility.
- ⏰ Review regularly. Shadow IT grows silently unless you actively seek it out.
Final thought
Shadow IT isn’t just employees using new apps.
It’s the forgotten servers, subdomains, and open ports that quietly expand your attack surface every day.
The good news? These risks can be found — if you look for them.
