A spreadsheet can take down your organization
IT departments spend countless hours securing perimeters. They implement Zero Trust architectures, deploy identity and access management systems, and rigorously vet every new vendor that touches the network. Dashboards monitor network traffic down to the packet, and AI tools hunt for anomalies. Yet, despite this security, the most critical financial and operational decisions are likely being made on an application invented in the 1980s: the spreadsheet.
While IT teams are busy locking down the cloud, business users are running mission critical processes on unmonitored, ungoverned spreadsheets and other end user applications. It is a massive vulnerability hiding in plain sight and is the ultimate blind spot in enterprise risk management.
Spreadsheets are out of control
The spreadsheet lifecycle often looks deceptively simple. IT provisions Microsoft Excel or Google Workspace, ensures the software is patched, and manages user access. But what happens after that initial provisioning is a complete black box.
Business units take these applications and build incredibly complex, undocumented models and reports and share them across the organization. There is little version control, no reviews, and no audit trail. When a user downloads sensitive data from a secure system into a spreadsheet to manipulate it, that data instantly leaves the governed environment. This is the ultimate form of Shadow IT, operating entirely under the radar.
This problem can cause Billion Dollar loses
Companies rely heavily on spreadsheets to forecast revenue, price products, assess market risks, and optimize logistics. When a complex model breaks, IT suddenly receives support tickets to “fix it”
But it’s not that simple. The incident at JPMorgan Chase is a prime example. A simple copy and paste error in a spreadsheet contributed to a staggering $6.2 billion loss. How can IT support this sprawling problem without the visibility into how these models are constructed or connected. The sheer volume of files created and modified daily makes manual tracking impossible.
The Solution: Automated Discovery
The only sustainable way to bridge this gap is through automated discovery. By implementing intelligent, automated tools, IT can continuously scan the enterprise environment to locate, inventory, and analyze every spreadsheet and End User Computing (EUC) application. More importantly, these tools can rank the risk of these files based on complexity, data sensitivity, and connectivity. allowing IT to find and control mission critical models. By shining a light on Shadow IT, companies can gain trust of their models without disrupting workflow.
Learn how Incisive Software’s automated discovery and risk management solutions provide total visibility into the EUC landscape, empowering enterprises to secure their most critical business models without slowing down innovation.