Casting Shadows

          I once worked in a corporate environment where I was told I could not install an open-source, free browser on the company-owned PC that sat on my desk. When I asked why, I was told, “We don’t want to support multiple browsers in our environment, so we chose [popular proprietary brand], and that’s what we’re going with.”

          At the time, both were equivalent in terms of vulnerabilities, and the open-source browser had more functionality. I asked, “Well, what if you don’t support it, and I won’t complain if I ever have a productivity problem. In fact, if there’s anything that doesn’t work right with my open-source browser, I’ll just switch over to the corporate browser, and use that for the specific task.”

          Nope. Corporate was dead-set against using this software.

          But I wasn’t the only one who seemed to have this urge-- someone had made a version of the browser that runs from a flashstick. I never even bothered unplugging the flashstick. I was willingly violating corporate policy in order to enhance my productivity.

          You want shadow IT? Because this is how you get shadow IT.