Shadow IT Discovery & Risk Flagging
Employees sign up for tools with a work email and a credit card, or grant an OAuth app access to their Google Drive or Slack, entirely outside any procurement or security review. Each one of these is a small, individually reasonable decision that collectively adds up to a sprawling set of unmanaged applications holding company data, none of which IT knows exists until a security audit, a breach disclosure from the vendor, or an access review turns them up. By then the app may have had broad read access to email or file storage for a year, and nobody can say what data it touched or whether it's still in use.
STARTING PRICE
From €299
Standard tier · Multi-step workflow with AI extraction/decisioning and 2-3 integrations.
Get a quote →Saves roughly 4-6 hrs/week of manual audit log review plus materially reduced unsanctioned data exposure.
How the automation works
We continuously scan your identity provider's OAuth grant logs, network and CASB traffic data, and expense records for signs of unsanctioned SaaS use — new OAuth app authorizations, corporate card charges to SaaS vendors, and DNS or proxy traffic to app domains that aren't in your approved catalog. Each discovered app is scored by risk based on the scope of access it was granted, whether it's from a known-risky vendor category, and how many users have connected it, then routed to security or IT for a fast approve, restrict, or revoke decision. Approved discoveries get added to the sanctioned catalog so they stop generating repeat alerts, keeping the signal-to-noise ratio workable instead of flooding a queue with the same low-risk app every week.
Process flow
- 01
Pull OAuth grants and network signals integration
OAuth authorization logs from Okta, CASB traffic data from Netskope, and SaaS spend records are pulled continuously rather than at a point-in-time audit.
- 02
Identify unsanctioned applications ai
New apps not present in the approved catalog are flagged, with vendor, access scope requested, and number of connected users attached.
- 03
Score by risk ai
Each discovery is scored using access scope (read-only vs. full account access), data sensitivity of the connected system, and vendor risk category.
- 04
Route for a decision output
High-risk discoveries go to security immediately; lower-risk ones batch into a weekly review queue for IT to approve, restrict, or revoke access.
- 05
Update the sanctioned catalog output
Approved apps are added to the catalog so future OAuth grants to the same app stop triggering repeat alerts.
Inputs
- Identity provider OAuth authorization logs
- CASB and network traffic data
- Corporate card and expense records
- Existing approved application catalog
Outputs
- Ranked shadow IT discovery report
- Risk-scored app inventory with access scope
- Revoke/restrict/approve action queue
- Updated sanctioned application catalog
Works with
Prefer a fully custom build instead of an off-the-shelf integration? We scope both options during your free consultation — most jobs like this one work fine on standard connectors, but higher-volume or non-standard systems sometimes need bespoke API work, reflected in the complex tier.
Where this goes wrong if you get it wrong
- OAuth scope names are misleading — an app requesting 'read-only' Gmail access can still read every email in the account, and treating scope labels as a proxy for actual risk without checking what the scope grants in practice produces both false alarms and missed real exposure.
- Revoking an OAuth grant without warning breaks whatever workflow the employee built around it, sometimes mid-process — a payroll integration or a calendar sync losing access silently causes downstream failures that look unrelated to the revocation days later, so revocation needs a heads-up window, not an instant cutoff.
- Personal and corporate instances of the same well-known tool (a personal Dropbox vs. the company's sanctioned Dropbox Business tenant) look identical in network traffic data — distinguishing them requires tenant-level detail from the CASB, not just domain matching, or every employee's personal account gets flagged as shadow IT.
- A one-time discovery scan gives a false sense of coverage — new apps get connected between review cycles constantly, so risk scoring has to run continuously against fresh OAuth grant data, not as a periodic project that goes stale within weeks.
Frequently asked questions
Does this block employees from signing up for new tools?
No, it discovers and scores what's already been connected — blocking new sign-ups is a separate network policy decision your security team can layer on top if desired.
How does it tell a risky app from a harmless one?
Risk scoring weighs the access scope granted, the sensitivity of the connected system, vendor category, and how many employees have connected it — a single low-access scheduling tool scores very differently from a file-access app connected by a finance team member.
Can it see apps connected via personal email, not SSO?
Only indirectly, through network and CASB traffic patterns or expense records — apps connected entirely outside company-managed devices and accounts are outside what any discovery tool can see.
What happens to apps we decide to keep?
They're added to your sanctioned catalog so they stop generating alerts, and their usage continues to be tracked alongside your other approved software.