The Dangers of Shadow Apps.

• Author: Bandos, Tim
• Position: FOREFRONT

Businesses everywhere should be increasingly concerned about the risks posed by unsanctioned shadow apps--any software applications that have not been cleared by a company's information security team, but that employees use anyway. Because these apps are not sanctioned, they usually are not monitored or secured in the same way that approved apps are, making them vulnerable to exploitation by criminals and insider threats. Some of the most common kinds of shadow apps and the dangers they pose to the wider organization include:

Browser extensions. Web browser extensions are historically difficult to secure but pose a significant threat to data security, making them a perennial favorite among cybercriminals. A compromised browser extension can be used to deliver malicious URLs, turning that browser into a potent cyber weapon. Every day, Google is forced to remove dozens of such browser extensions from its Chrome Web Store, and that is just one vendor.

Many recendy discovered malicious extensions have...