They Click. You’re Compromised.

Over the past few weeks, security researchers spotted fake Microsoft apps sneaking into company environments. They looked legitimate, tricked employees into clicking “approve,” bypassed multi-factor authentication, and gave attackers access to email and files in hundreds of organizations.

This is today’s version of shadow IT. It’s not the marketing team buying Dropbox anymore. It’s every employee connecting AI tools, meeting assistants, and calendar plug-ins, often without IT even knowing. Each one becomes a potential backdoor that traditional security tools don’t catch.

In this issue: how fake apps bypass MFA, why your tools don’t catch them, and what to do about it.

What’s Actually Happening

Consider what's actually happening in your environment right now:

• That sales rep just connected a "Meeting Assistant" AI to transcribe calls. It now has read access to every calendar invite, including dial-in codes and confidential merger discussions.

• Your IoT temperature sensors from 2019 are still phoning home to a vendor that got acquired twice and shut down last year. The domain expired. Someone else owns it now.

• A developer spun up a test environment in AWS nine months ago for a POC. It's still running, still has prod data, still uses default credentials. The project was cancelled, but no one told the infrastructure.

These aren't just hypotheticals, they mirror real-world patterns.

Why Traditional Security Misses This Completely

We built our security stacks when threats came through the front door. Firewalls watched the perimeter. EDR watched endpoints. SIEM correlated logs. But shadow IT doesn’t trigger these systems it operates through legitimate channels:

• OAuth tokens look like normal user authentication

• SaaS connections use standard HTTPS

• Personal devices access through the same VPN as managed ones

• Service accounts authenticate with valid (if ancient) credentials

Your security tools are watching for forced entry while employees are handing out the keys.

Building Visibility That Actually Works

Forget the vendor pitch about "complete visibility." Here's what actually moves the needle:

• Start with OAuth Archaeology -- Pull your OAuth grant logs today. You’ll find apps you never approved with wide-reaching permissions, just like those impersonating RingCentral, Adobe, SharePoint, and DocuSign.

• Map the Lateral Movement Paths -- Your flat network where everything can talk to everything is not architecture; that’s surrender. Visibility into what actually talks to what is your first line of defense.

• Identity Lifecycle Reality Check -- Check for service accounts without credential rotation in 12+ months. Many orgs find long-forgotten identities still authenticating, often with elevated privileges.

The Bottom Line

You can’t protect what you don’t see. And you can’t lock down everything without breaking business. Users will work around roadblocks. The goal isn't to eliminate shadow IT, it’s to see it, assess risk, and make informed decisions.

Some shadow IT drives innovation. Let it, just do so with visibility, context, and governance.

Because protecting what you can’t see starts with finding it.