Mitigate Shadow IT

Reveal Shadow IT & Shadow AI to Mitigate Risk

AI tools are accelerating shadow IT faster than organizations can track. Zylo continuously discovers new applications across financial, identity, and operational systems—providing the visibility needed to uncover shadow IT and AI before they create security, cost, or compliance risks.

Identify & Remediate Shadow IT

Discover

See who purchased the application, which tools were expensed, and how much was spent.

Inspect

Analyze discovered applications alongside spend and usage data to understand adoption and risk.

Take Action

Take steps to approve the application, consolidate it with an existing tool, or eliminate it entirely.

Discover Shadow IT with Multi-Source Detection

Connect Zylo’s discovery engine to spend signals across accounts payable, expense systems, resellers, marketplaces, and other financial data sources. Zylo’s AI-powered matching models uncover and categorize new applications.

Centralize Your Software Data in a Single Place

Bring application, spend, usage, and contract data into a single inventory that you can trust with a reliable view of every application across the organization.

Monitor Software Adoption in Real Time

Track discovered applications, ownership, and adoption trends with interactive dashboards. See emerging shadow IT and AI tools early so you can intervene before risk and redundancy spread across the organization.

Salesforce dashboard showing $8.19M annual payments, 1,000 provisioned users with 96 inactive, and renewal due 4/30.

Stop Shadow IT Before It Creates Risk

Unknown applications create hidden risk across your SaaS environment. Identify unmanaged tools, reduce security exposure, and bring every application under governance.

Frequently Asked Questions About Identifying and Remediating Shadow IT

What is shadow IT and why does it create risk for organizations?

Shadow IT and shadow AI are applications purchased by departments and individual employees, not IT. In 2026, on average, shadow IT makes up 45% of an organization’s applications. Because these applications were not vetted by IT, organizations may experience:Financial risk: uncontrolled and wasted spendSecurity risk: unknown data breach and reputational damageCompliance risk: regulatory violations and fines

How do shadow IT and shadow AI enter the organization without IT visibility?

Shadow IT and shadow AI enter the organization via decentralized purchasing by departments and individual employees, typically through expense channels. In large enterprises, expensed applications represent 41% of the software stack but less than 1% of total SaaS spend. Teams acquire the tools needed to do their jobs, often without considering the financial, security, and compliance implications to the business.

How does Zylo discover shadow IT across financial systems, expense reports, and other data sources?

On average, 51% of software purchases are miscategorized in expense reports, which is where shadow IT hides. Zylo’s AI-powered financial discovery continuously identifies and categorizes every application entering your organization, regardless of where or how it was purchased. Trained on the industry’s largest SaaS dataset, Zylo’s discovery model delivers the most complete and accurate view of software spend across the enterprise.

How can organizations assess the security, cost, and compliance risks of shadow IT?

In the enterprise, 67% of expensed applications receive a “Low” or “Poor” risk score (Cloud Confidence Index). Assessing shadow IT risk requires detecting and investigating newly discovered applications. With Zylo, teams can automate alerts for new purchases, signaling a review of the applications and allowing IT to examine security details to assess the impact on the organization’s security posture.

What steps can organizations take to remediate, prevent, and govern shadow IT once it is discovered?

Remediating shadow IT requires identifying ownership, understanding usage, and evaluating risk. Zylo helps teams review newly discovered applications, determine who purchased them, and assess adoption patterns. Organizations can then approve the tool, consolidate it with an existing solution, or eliminate it entirely, while establishing governance policies to prevent future unmanaged software adoption.