We view data as our most valuable non-liquid asset. For years, the 3-2-1 backup strategy served as the industry’s fiduciary standard for data protection, a reliable safeguard against hardware failure and human error. However, the threat landscape has fundamentally shifted. Modern ransomware now specifically targets backup repositories to strip away an organization's leverage. To maintain true operational continuity in 2026, the traditional model must evolve into the 3-2-1-1 rule.
Right now, someone on your team is signing up for a free app using their work email. They have no idea they just created a security hole that your entire IT setup can’t detect. The shadow IT risks for Greater Vancouver small businesses are exploding, and the most dangerous part is that most business owners have no idea this invisible network even exists.
Shadow IT is any technology, software, or cloud service that employees use without the knowledge or approval of their company's IT management. It’s not malicious. Your team isn’t trying to sabotage you. They’re trying to get work done faster. But that well-intentioned workaround could be the thing that takes your entire business down.
Gartner found that 41% of employees acquired, modified, or created technology outside of IT's visibility in 2022. That number is projected to reach 75% by 2027. Three out of every four people on your payroll will be using tools you don’t know about, connecting to systems you can’t monitor, and storing company data in places you can’t protect.
For small businesses, the situation is even worse. According to Productiv's analysis of thousands of SaaS applications, small companies average app portfolios where 68% of tools qualify as shadow IT. That means more than two thirds of the software your team uses every day was never reviewed, never approved, and never secured by anyone responsible for protecting your data.
A Capterra survey found that 57% of small and midsize businesses have experienced high-impact shadow IT efforts occurring outside the purview of their IT departments. And 76% of those businesses believe shadow IT poses a moderate to severe cybersecurity threat. The threat is real. Most companies just can’t see it.
Your team isn’t breaking the rules for fun. They’re breaking the rules because the approved tools are too slow, too clunky, or simply unavailable. And when IT can’t deliver what employees need fast enough, they find their own solutions.
The scale of the problem is alarming:
That last statistic from Gartner should stop every Greater Vancouver business owner in their tracks. Your people know the risks. They just don’t care enough to stop.
The shadow IT risks for Greater Vancouver small businesses have accelerated dramatically since generative AI tools became mainstream. Employees are pasting client proposals into ChatGPT. They’re uploading financial spreadsheets to AI summarization tools. They’re feeding sensitive project data into platforms that store, process, and potentially train on that information.
Microsoft research found that 71% of UK employees admitted to using unapproved AI tools at work, with 51% doing so at least once a week. If those numbers reflect what is happening in just one country, imagine the scale across North America. Gartner predicts that by 2030, 40% of organizations will experience security breaches directly caused by shadow AI usage.
This isn’t a future problem. This is happening today in offices across Langley, Surrey, Burnaby, and every other community in the Lower Mainland. Every time an employee copies confidential data into a free AI chatbot, that data leaves your control permanently. And unlike a misplaced USB drive or an unsecured laptop, you’ll never get it back. There’s no recovery process for data that has already been ingested by a third-party AI platform operating under its own terms of service.
Traditional shadow IT involved an employee signing up for a project management app or a file sharing service. Risky, but limited in scope. AI tools are fundamentally different because they connect to more systems, process massive volumes of data, and often retain the information that gets fed into them.
The key risks of AI shadow IT include:
For professional services firms, legal offices, and accounting practices across the Fraser Valley, a single employee uploading client files to an unauthorized AI tool could violate privacy regulations and destroy the trust that took years to build.
IBM's 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report revealed that 35% of all data breaches now involve shadow data, which is data stored in unmanaged and unmonitored locations. Breaches involving shadow data cost 16% more than average and take 26.2% longer to identify.
Think about what that means for your business. When a breach happens through shadow IT, your security team doesn’t even know where to look. The data is sitting in a tool they never knew existed, managed by a vendor they never vetted, protected by security controls they never configured. By the time anyone discovers the breach, the damage has been compounding for months.
The shadow IT risks for Greater Vancouver small businesses extend beyond security incidents. There are direct financial consequences that most owners never see:
For small businesses with less formal procurement processes, the problem compounds quickly. When every department is free to sign up for whatever tools they want, duplicate subscriptions pile up, licensing waste grows, and budget leaks in directions no one is tracking.
Eliminating shadow IT entirely is not realistic. Locking down every tool and forcing employees through bureaucratic approval processes will only push them to find more creative workarounds. The goal is visibility and governance, not total restriction.
You can’t secure what you can’t see. The first step is understanding exactly what tools your employees are actually using. This means auditing network traffic, reviewing expense reports for unauthorized software subscriptions, and simply asking your team what they have signed up for.
Most business owners are shocked by what they find. If you think your company uses 20 or 30 applications, the real number is likely double that. Productiv's data shows that companies average around 142 shadow IT apps in their portfolios. Every one of those unknown tools represents a potential entry point for attackers and a place where your data might be sitting unprotected right now.
The businesses that successfully manage the shadow IT risks for Greater Vancouver small businesses don’t try to ban everything. They create clear, simple policies that give employees a fast path to approved tools while establishing non-negotiable security boundaries.
An effective shadow IT governance framework includes:
The single most effective way to reduce shadow IT is to give your employees better tools than the ones they’re finding on their own. When the approved solution is faster, more reliable, and easier to use, the motivation to go rogue disappears.
This is where having a dedicated IT partner changes everything. A managed IT provider monitors your entire environment continuously, identifies unauthorized tools before they become security incidents, and ensures your team always has access to the technology they need to be productive.
Every day that shadow IT goes unaddressed in your business is another day that sensitive data sits in places you can’t see, protected by security controls you didn’t configure, managed by vendors you never vetted.
The shadow IT risks for Greater Vancouver small businesses are not going away. They’re accelerating. AI tools are making it easier than ever for employees to move company data outside your security perimeter in seconds. The question isn’t whether your team is using unauthorized tools. They are. The question is how much damage those tools have already caused and what you’re going to do about it before the next breach makes that decision for you.
Coleman Technologies helps businesses across Langley, Surrey, Abbotsford, and the entire Fraser Valley take control of their IT environment. From shadow IT discovery and SaaS auditing to comprehensive managed security, Coleman Technologies acts as your complete IT department, giving you full visibility into every tool, every connection, and every piece of data in your organization.
Stop guessing what your employees are using. Start knowing. Call Coleman Technologies at (604) 513-9428 or book a free 30-minute consultation at colemantechnologies.com to find out what is hiding in your network.
Sources:
Can your team recall what you discussed during your last mandatory cybersecurity training session? We doubt it, and not because you did a bad job (we’re sure you did an excellent job on that PowerPoint, champ). It’s just that small business security training is far from engaging by default, and it’s seen as more of a requirement than anything else. If you want to shift this “annual compliance” perspective, you’ll have to make some changes, and fast.
Artificial intelligence, or AI, has upended the way that we discuss technology in business, society, and individual everyday life. While we mostly focus on the benefits of the technology, there are many downsides to consider as well. That’s what we’d like to discuss today; how AI has a dark side to it that potentially requires regulation.
Would you feel safe staying at a hotel that, instead of unique locks, each door used the same key as all of the others? Probably not—because if someone got in, they could take whatever they wanted. That’s similar to how old-school cybersecurity worked. Once someone got into a company’s network, they could access almost everything, making it easy for hackers to steal information. But today, many businesses use a better security framework called zero-trust security. In today’s blog, we discuss what zero-trust security is and why it’s safer.
A business’ compliance with the regulations it operates under is a huge issue that many inside your organization won’t understand but has to draw some attention. Let’s look at some of the variables that go into compliance to outline just how important it is.
While the word “audit” can easily be a scary thought for businesses, there are certain cases where an audit serves an organization’s direct benefit. Take, for instance, the ones that occur internally to identify and correct security issues and vulnerabilities. These audits are not only a positive endeavor for businesses; they’re extremely important to carry out.
Let’s talk about why this is and review a few standard practices you should prioritize as you go about this process.
Your business is likely subject to certain compliance laws and regulations depending on the type of data you collect from your clients or customers. Today, we want to emphasize the importance of your business considering regulation and compliance when managing its data and IT resources, as without doing so, you run considerable risk.
Perhaps predictably, the word “insure” has roots that tie it closely to “ensure,” as it is meant to ensure a level of security after some form of loss. Nowadays, that loss often pertains to data, making cyber insurance an extremely valuable investment for the modern business to make.
However, in order to obtain this kind of insurance, businesses commonly need to meet some basic requirements. Let’s go over some of these requirements now.
Cybersecurity is important. Scroll through a few pages of our blog and you’ll see article after article talking about threats and ways to make yourself and your business less vulnerable to cyberthreats. As an IT professional, however, I’d be so much happier if the state of the world didn’t require such a massive effort just to protect oneself and we could just talk about cool stuff you can do with modern technology all the time!
But alas, strong cybersecurity is crucial to virtually any organization, and it’s becoming even more important by the month.
When I was a kid, there was a Tex Avery cartoon where Droopy Dog was chasing down a crook who escaped from jail. There was a particular scene where the crook (I think it was a wolf in a black-and-white striped jumpsuit) takes a bus, a plane, a ship, and a taxi to a secluded cabin, and then closes a series of increasingly complex doors with a large number of locks, in order to hide away from the pursuing cartoon basset hound.
Of course, when he turns around, exhausted by all the effort he puts in, he realizes that Droopy is standing right behind him, and greets him with a monotone “hello.”
I haven’t seen this cartoon since I was 7 years old, but I almost always think about it when I am using multi-factor authentication.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act is a regulation passed by the US congress in 1996 to help streamline the healthcare system while maintaining individual ePI privacy over individuals’ health records. This regulation was put in place to allow people to transfer their health coverage, but also to minimize the risk individuals take on as far as fraud and abuse of their health records is concerned. This week we’d thought we’d discuss four ways your technology can help your organization keep its HIPAA compliance.
Cloud computing is a major growth industry as businesses and individuals look to use the computing strategy to either save money or get resources that they would typically not be able to commit to. With cloud computing becoming more and more integrated into business each year, it stands to reason that the once Wild West of cloud computing would start to see a lot more regulation. This week, we’ll take a look at how the cloud is regulated and what to expect out of cloud regulation down the road.
The vulnerability in the CISA’s emergency directive affects all supported Windows Server operating systems. It’s been named Zerologon, and If left unpatched, it could allow an unauthenticated threat actor to gain access to a domain controller and completely compromise your network’s Active Directory services. The vulnerability gets its name because all the hacker has to do is send a series of Netlogon messages with the input fields filled with zeroes to gain access.
We’ll start with healthcare, as it is the most prevalent. Healthcare data is protected, and that protection is regulated, and all for good reason. This information is the most personal information an individual has and it has no business being in possession of anyone but the provider, the insurer, and the patient. The most well-known regulation for healthcare in the United States is called the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). It was developed to keep personal health data and personally identifiable information (PII) secure. This was necessary as there have been new systems implemented to transfer health and insurance information between healthcare providers and insurers.
With so many people using credit, debit, and prepaid gift cards to pay for goods and services, the economic ramifications of digital payment fraud, data loss, and other side effects of continued reliance on these methods of payment have led the companies that issue these cards to band together to create what is now known as the PCI Security Standards Council. Since its inception in 2006 the PCI Security Standards Council has been overseeing the establishment and coordination of the PCI DSS, or Payment Card Industry Digital Security Standard. Let’s take a look at how PCI compliance works.
Let’s start with IT security because it’s undeniably important if you want to maintain not just IT regulatory compliance, but business on your own terms. IT security, like the act of complying with regulations, is an act of risk mitigation. In the case of IT security, the risks are many and complex. You have the risk of operational issues like downtime. You have the risk of system corruption from hackers and other outside entities who are trying to break through (or in) and get access to your assets. There is also internal risk to physical systems, central computing infrastructure, and every endpoint on the network.
In IT security, the amount of risk often dictates what kind of action is necessary, since reacting to the problems themselves isn’t a viable option. Thus, when protecting your network from threats, you will likely have to be much more comprehensive about your attention to detail as you would even under the most strictest compliance standards.
Compliance also is all about minimizing risk, but to stay compliant, it’s more about focusing on following set-in-stone rules than it is about keeping systems secure. Most of the regulations that have been passed down by a government entity, third-party security framework, or customer contract have very specific requirements. This gives network administrators a punch-list of tasks that need to happen to keep their organization’s IT compliant with their various IT mandates.
Insofar as it works to maintain digital asset security, many regulations are created to ensure that risky behavior is not introduced, while others are very specific about what data needs to be protected, and what systems need protection. In fact, some regulations barely touch the IT infrastructure, only dictating that the business purchase regulation-compliant hardware.
Compliance standards typically depend on which vertical market your business does business in, or more specifically, how it uses sensitive information in the course of doing business. That doesn’t speak to your organization’s complete IT security strategy. In order to keep all of your digital (and physical) assets secure, there needs to be a dedicated plan to do it. After all, today the user is the most common breach point.
With that truth it is important for the business that operates under the watchful eyes of a regulatory body to understand that you may be compliant, but still be at risk. It’s important that aside from meeting all the compliance standards set forth by your industry’s regulatory mandates, you need to put together a cybersecurity strategy that prioritizes the ongoing training of your endpoint operators.
At Coleman Technologies, our technicians are experts in modern compliance standards and cybersecurity. Our team can work to simultaneously build an IT infrastructure, the policies to govern that infrastructure, and the endpoint monitoring and protection solution that will keep your business secure from threats, while also being compliant to any mandated regulations your business is under. Call us today at (604) 513-9428 to learn more.
Today’s world is driven by data. As a result, information systems have to be secured. That really is the bottom line. Business is all about relationships and without proper security protocols in place, there are some very serious situations that could completely decimate the relationships you’ve worked so hard to forge. While today’s hackers have a lot of different ways to breach an organization’s network, data breaches that occur as a result of lax security are unforgivable from a customer standpoint. Some organizations can spend more on security than others, but it with the landscape as it is today, it has to be a priority, no matter your IT budget.
Here are some of the regulations all business owners and IT administrators should know:
That’s just a few of the regulations business owners and IT administrators have to be cognizant of. For business owners there are several more, like the federal and state tax codes, and the adherence to the Affordable Care Act. All these regulations seem pretty straightforward and necessary until you begin to roll them out for your business. Then they just get expensive. In the first-ever Small Business Regulations Survey conducted by the National Small Business Association, the numbers reported, although not comprehensive by any means, weren’t pretty. To put it frankly, the cost to the small businesses that reported, would sink as many or more new businesses.
“The average small-business owner is spending at least $12,000 every year dealing with regulations,” NSBA President Todd McCracken said, “This has real-world implications: more than half of small businesses have held off on hiring a new employee due to regulatory burdens.” The report goes on to state that the average regulatory costs to start a new business venture add up to a whopping $83,019. These figures don’t take in to account the dozens of man hours each year spent on these very complex problems. It should be stated that the NSBA has been a long-standing advocate of reducing regulations on small businesses.
Regulators are paid to be skeptical, but overall they are put in place for a purpose, as oversight to ensure sustained adherence to data protection laws. How much can they demand from a small business? The question begs for analysis, as to listen to entrepreneurs talk about them regulations are unnecessary, but as stated before, these regulations aren’t just implemented willy-nilly. They have empirical evidence of immoral or unethical wrongdoing attached to them. Moreover, it becomes clear that the financial pain these entrepreneurs are in is indefinite, which means that it is highly debatable. The truth is that each scenario needs to be seen in perspective in order to understand just how much certain regulations are costing a business.
One thing is certain: that the average small business pays more for their regulatory compliance programs than larger businesses in the same market do. That disparity is a main point of contention for many small business owners, as it directly affects a company's ability to compete. Some studies have seen organizations that have less than 20 employees charged nearly 60 percent more than slightly larger businesses. Getting into which regulations are onerous and which are necessary would take an examination of each one in detail, so it’s worth it to repeat that these regulations were bred out of situations where individuals were hurt, making them an important part of the oversight process.
To Comply or Not To Comply? That Is the Question
Small business owners who have been reprimanded or fined as a result of a lack of regulatory awareness have a tendency to get the message, but if an organization is notoriously noncompliant and has slipped past regulators, there is a tendency for them to stay the course; and, that course is filled with nothing good. Many european and multinational corporations are expecting to invest $1 million toward their GDPR compliance. Obviously this figure, despite being higher per user, will be substantially lower for small and mid-sized businesses. The cost, however, remains significant, and while an organization could probably get around it for a bit, when it hits, it could just sink the whole business.
According to Infosecurity Magazine, the average cost of compliance with GDPR is costing enterprises and average of $5.5 million, which comes in about a third of the estimate cost of noncompliance, $14.82 million. That’s a lot of cheddar. It stands to reason that if you are going to spend upwards of 10 percent of your yearly IT budget on ensuring your organization is compliant, that you meet the criteria under the regulation. The best way to do that is by finding affordable solutions that won’t take as big of a chunk out of your operational budget every year.
More than the capital, a business that doesn’t adhere to simple IT regulations probably isn’t adhering to other regulations. Would you want to do business with someone that you know won’t do what’s asked of them to protect YOUR data? Unreputable businesses that are looking to gain an edge by not meeting regulations will pay later for not spending now, end of story.
Compliance and Your Business
Finally, we get to your business. How are you going to plan for your compliance burden? The best way is to educate yourself on what exactly your business needs to plan for by looking at the regulatory mandates, sure, but more often seeking out organizations who have already insulated themself from the risks associated from noncompliance. This is where a managed IT service provider (MSP) can be a godsend. Since we take security compliance extremely seriously, and deal with multiple businesses that represent several vertical markets, we have the perspective that can provide a clear strategy on how to avoid problems staying compliant.
Moreover, MSPs like Coleman Technologies use extremely sophisticated monitoring, management, and reporting software to reduce risk and put our clients in the best position to prepare for any audits or assessments that need to be completed by regulators. Since the regulatory landscape is constantly changing, our IT professionals are in a unique position to serve as both IT administrator and regulatory consultant.
If you are searching for a way to control your compliance situation, look no further than the IT professionals at Coleman Technologies. We can deploy our strategies made up from tried and true industry best practices to virtually eliminate any risk your organization would have as a result of compliance concerns. Call us at (604) 513-9428 today to get started.
Despite what detractors say, regulations are in place for good reason. They typically protect individuals from organizational malfeasance. Many of these regulations are actual laws passed by a governing body and cover the entire spectrum of the issue, not just the data involved. The ones that have data protection regulations written into them mostly deal with the handling and protection of sensitive information. For organizations that work in industries covered by these regulations there are very visible costs that go into compliance. Today, we look at the costs incurred by these organizations as a result of these regulations, and how to ascertain how they affect your business.
Coleman Technologies is a managed IT and cybersecurity partner for growing businesses that can’t afford downtime, breaches, or guesswork. For over 25 years, we’ve helped organizations across British Columbia run stable, secure, and scalable technology environments—backed by 24/7 support, enterprise-grade security, and clear accountability. We don’t just fix IT problems. We take ownership of them.
Get the Knowledge You Need to Make IT Decisions
Technology is constantly evolving, and keeping up can feel overwhelming. Whether you want to understand cybersecurity threats, explore automation, or learn how regulations like PCI DSS impact your business, we’ve made it easy to access clear, straightforward insights on key IT topics.
20178 96 Ave C400
Langley, British Columbia V1M 0B2
Mon to Fri 7:00am–5:00pm
