Best Shadow IT Discovery Tools
HC
Admina team
2023/04/18
1. Admina
Shadow IT has become a major concern for organizations worldwide due to its potential to compromise security, hinder productivity, and increase costs. Personal laptops, specific apps, and unapproved software are some of the common culprits that contribute to shadow IT.
Recent studies have shown that the use of unapproved software has risen to unprecedented levels, with employees tending to download new apps without explicit approval from their IT departments. This trend poses a significant security risk to businesses, as illustrated by the recently published security breach that resulted from unauthorized software.
To mitigate the risks associated with shadow IT, organizations are leveraging various tools, including employee surveys and business units, to identify and monitor unapproved software. Shadow IT discovery tools such as Admina, BetterCloud, Torii, Rippling, and Productiv have emerged as the leading solutions to address this challenge.
In this article, we will provide an in-depth review of these top 10 shadow IT discovery tools and explain why they stand out from other industry solutions.
Admina is a cloud-based IT management platform that helps businesses of all sizes discover, manage, and optimize the usage, productivity, and spending of SaaS apps across their organization. It is owned by parent company Money Forward, a Tokyo stock exchange company that offers its own solutions for over 30 IT products and has 1400 employees.
Admina is designed to be user-friendly and intuitive, with a modern and clean interface that makes it easy for IT admins and managers to navigate and use. It offers flexible pricing plans to suit the needs of different organizations, with options for both monthly and annual subscriptions.
Source: Chrome
Features:
Discover Shadow IT: Admina helps businesses uncover shadow IT within their company using different methods, from ERPs and accounting software to browser extensions.
Employee Onboarding/Offboarding: The platform allows companies to onboard newcomers and safely offboard former employees.
SaaS Account Visibility: Admina provides visibility of SaaS accounts of employees categorized by record on roles and licenses. It offers native app integrations with over 200 SaaS applications.
SaaS Usage Tracking: Admina helps businesses learn more about their SaaS usage to improve productivity and reduce costs.
SaaS Cost Management: The platform offers insights into SaaS spending and identifies cost-cutting opportunities.
Benefits:
Simple and Easy: Admina helps to remove the complexity of IT management tasks, freeing up teams to focus on more critical tasks.
Decrease Costs: Admina optimizes SaaS spending and uncovers savings opportunities for businesses.
More Visibility: The platform offers businesses more visibility into their SaaS usage and discovers Shadow ITs.
Save Time: Admina automates tedious and repetitive tasks and speeds up manual processes.
Pricing:
For small and medium businesses with fewer than 500 employees, Admina charges $5 per employee per month. For larger enterprises with more than 500 employees, Admina offers tailor-made offers to fit their needs. The platform provides a free trial with no credit cards required.
2. BetterCloud
BetterCloud is a SaaS management platform that helps IT departments gain visibility and control over all their SaaS applications. With BetterCloud, administrators can streamline SaaS operations, automate repetitive tasks, and enhance the security and compliance of their SaaS environments. The platform integrates with a variety of popular SaaS applications, such as G Suite, Microsoft Office 365, Dropbox, and Slack, to name a few.
This enables IT teams to gain complete visibility and control over their SaaS applications, regardless of the vendor. BetterCloud also offers analytics and reporting features, enabling administrators to gain insights into SaaS usage and optimize license allocation accordingly. With BetterCloud, IT teams can streamline SaaS management, reduce operational costs, and improve overall efficiency.
Source: BetterCloud
Features and Benefits
Gain visibility and control of all SaaS applications in your environment
Comprehensive reporting and alerting for data-driven decisions
Mitigate security concerns by detecting and remediating risky application access
Identify and consolidate redundant applications to reduce costs
Automated workflows to save time and create custom alerts
Customization abilities for various industries
Scalable architecture features
Pricing: Discover + Platform Tier Plan: $3/user/month
3. Torii
Torii is a SaaS management platform that offers a complete real-time discovery of every application within an organization. It helps businesses gain a reliable system of record for all their SaaS services, users, usage, costs, and risks.
Using multiple discovery methods to discover and map all the sanctioned and shadow IT applications in the corporate network into one unified view enables businesses and most organizations to take control of their SaaS stack.
Source: G2
Features and Benefits
Multiple discovery methods
Real-time shadow IT detection
Advanced data engine
Application risk mapping
Curated employee app hub
Eliminate shadow IT waste
Pricing: Contacting the company for more pricing options and details is recommended. Torii offers a free trial for interested customers to try out its features.
4. Rippling
Rippling is an IT discovery tool that offers a unified platform for IT and HR data management, from onboarding to offboarding, allowing you to manage employees' IT systems and HR data more efficiently.
With Rippling, you can set up new hires 10x faster with its next-generation workflow automation, enabling anyone, including HR and IT personnel, to set up employees' computers and apps in 90 seconds.
Source: Rippling
Features ad Benefits
Unified platform for IT and HR data management
Workflow automation for faster new-hire setup
Easy implementation of security protocols for compliance
Automatic offboarding for employees and contractors
App and identity management
Device and inventory management
Unified workforce directory, groups, and permissions
Pricing: Rippling starts at $8 per user per month.
5. Productiv
Productiv enables organizations to make data breaches go beyond login and data loss and track employee app and feature engagement more accurately. Additionally, it offers segmentation and benchmarks to help corporate networks analyze their SaaS app portfolio and user engagement against their peers.
Through its comprehensive suite of features, Productiv enables teams to collaborate more effectively, stay organized, and stay on top of important tasks and deadlines. From project management and task tracking to time tracking and performance monitoring, Productiv has everything businesses need to stay productive and achieve their goals.
Source: WSJ
Features and Benefits
Comprehensive discovery and visibility
Actionable alerts to discover new SaaS apps in your IT environment
Granular insights into app usage by user, feature, team, and more
Segmentation and benchmarks to analyze SaaS portfolio and user engagement
Deep integrations to track true employee app and feature engagement
Pricing: Pricing information is not available on the Productiv website. Interested customers can contact the company to get a quote based on their specific needs.
6. Zluri
Zluri is a SaaS management platform that helps organizations eliminate and manage shadow IT by providing complete visibility into SaaS apps being used in an organization.
Additionally, Zluri simplifies the procurement and provisioning of SaaS apps, automates user onboarding and offboarding, and ensures compliance with security and data privacy regulations. With Zluri, organizations can streamline their SaaS management processes, reduce costs, and improve productivity while maintaining security and compliance.
Source: GetApp
Features and Benefits
Direct Integration with Apps (600+ SaaS apps)
Single Sign-On (SSO) and Identity Providers (IDP)
Expense and finance management systems integration
Desktop agents
Browser extension
Automation features
Pricing: Limited pricing information is available on the website besides the plans they offer: Growth, Scale, and Enterprise.
7. Snow
Snow is an IT discovery tool that provides comprehensive visibility into your organization's IT estate.
It allows you to identify sanctioned and alternative apps and unsanctioned risky apps and provides detailed insights into application usage, regardless of who procured the subscriptions and how. Snow also offers improved visibility across your hybrid cloud environment, helping you reduce costs and allocate resources efficiently.
Source: Snow
Features and Benefits
Complete IT the visibility to reduce risk and make informed decisions
Snow Commander for a holistic view of your technology estate
Snow Adoption Tracker to track SaaS usage
Asset Discovery & Inventory to eliminate blind spots in your IT environment
Snow SaaS Management for discovering and managing SaaS applications
Pricing: Pricing information is not available on the Snow website.
8. AssetSonnar
AssetSonnar is an IT security information discovery tool that provides a simple, cost-effective, and strategic approach to asset management. By effectively managing your business unit's entire IT toolkit – even from a mobile device – a company will “always be audit-ready.”
Source: AssetSonar
Features and Benefits
Hardware management using a barcode, QR code, and RFID scanning
Cloud software and installed license management
Agent-based and agentless device discovery option
Employee offboarding workflows and access control
Seamless IT department service integration
Full asset visibility through endpoint manager integrations
Pricing: The product is available for a monthly subscription of $69.99 or an annual subscription of $839.89.
9. Netskope
Netskope is an IT discovery tool that provides data and threat protection for unmanaged apps, devices, and cloud services. With the help of this tool, businesses can discover, continuously monitor and secure all cloud devices and services in use and gain complete visibility of their cloud services with an all-mode architecture capable of covering all cloud traffic.
Source: NetSkope
Features and Benefits
Shadow IT and Unmanaged Cloud Protection against security risks
Discover and secure all cloud services in use
Full visibility
Granular control
Data protection
Compliance
Vendor assurance
Pricing: Netskope’s website does not publicly share pricing data for new devices, so interested customers need to contact their sales team for more information about the available packages.
10. Zylo
Zylo is software that discovers all an organization's SaaS applications, monitors usage and spending, protects sensitive data from file sharing, and provides personalized and prioritized SaaS management insights to optimize the organization and IT department portfolio. Zylo empowers organizations to maintain increased productivity, improve user satisfaction, keep data leakage, and maintain security by bringing shadow IT out of the dark.
Source: Software Advice
Features Benefits
Frictionless, constant monitoring of all SaaS applications
Instant and confident triggering of workflows
Identifying and acting on software expenses
Classifying and comparing software portfolios
Using Zylo Discovery Engine data to create an actionable roadmap
Pricing: The pricing for Zylo is not available on their website, and interested customers need to contact their sales team for pricing information.
Conclusion
Shadow IT discovery security tools are essential for organizations to ensure compliance with security policies, manage data integrity risks, protect sensitive data, and reduce operational costs associated with unapproved applications.
These solutions offer a range of features and benefits, such as discovering shadow IT, onboarding and offboarding employees, SaaS account visibility, usage tracking, cost management, security risk mitigation, workflow automation, and application mapping.
Choosing the right solution depends on each organization's specific needs and requirements, and pricing can vary depending on the size of the business and the features included.
Ultimately, a shadow IT discovery configuration management tool can help organizations gain visibility and control over their SaaS applications, ensuring their security posture, compliance, and cost efficiency.
Steps to Empower Your IT Team for Corporate Growth
Amplify Knowledge Sharing
If you find our resources beneficial, consider amplifying their impact. Share these informative articles across your social networks - Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Together, let’s foster a community of empowered IT leaders driving corporate growth.
Discover Admina’s Impact
Ready to take your IT team’s growth to the next level? Discover how Admina’s cutting-edge solutions can optimize your SaaS management, enhance security, and streamline processes. Explore Admina today and unlock new dimensions of success for your IT endeavors.
