Shadow IT includes hardware, software, and services running outside IT and security teams' visibility or approval. It can include unapproved applications employees install, browser extensions with excessive permissions, and endpoints provisioned once and never enrolled in any monitoring platform. These unmanaged assets create visibility gaps because existing security controls do not monitor them.
Many organizations rely on network discovery scans to measure asset coverage. While useful, network discovery only identifies endpoints that respond during the scan window. Powered-off devices, isolated network segments, and software that does not expose listening ports can remain invisible. As a result, network discovery measures network reachability, not monitoring coverage.
Wazuh is a free and open source security platform that unifies SIEM and XDR capabilities across endpoints and cloud workloads. It collects system inventory data directly from each monitored endpoint, allowing security teams to compare what network scans report against what the Wazuh-monitored endpoints report.
This comparison helps identify unmanaged endpoints, unauthorized software, and monitoring gaps.