Word.ws English Dictionary

shadow IT

shadow IT noun: software used or deployed without the approval of a central IT department, typically to bypass limitations and restrictions.

Noun

shadow IT (uncountable)

  1. Software used or deployed without the approval of a central IT department, typically to bypass limitations and restrictions.
    • However, there are also many shadow IT systems which might be a spreadsheet or database, and there can be anything up to 800 of those in place at any time. Add into this any number of services secretly buying systems without informing IT departments and it is a big spaghetti mess. One chief...2022, Victoria Betton, Towards a Digital Ecology: NHS Digital Adoption through the COVID-19 Looking Glass, CRC Press, →ISBN

Questions about shadow IT

What does shadow IT mean?
Shadow IT means software used or deployed without the approval of a central IT department, typically to bypass limitations and restrictions.
What part of speech is shadow IT?
Shadow IT is a noun.

Words near shadow IT in the dictionary

  1. shadow governments
  2. shadow grass
  3. Shadow Hills
  4. shadow histories
  5. shadow history
  6. shadow IT
  7. shadow libraries
  8. shadow library
  9. shadow map
  10. shadow mapping
  11. shadow maps

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shadow IT (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “shadow IT.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shadow_it. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.