The uncomfortable reality in modern IT: your identity provider (IdP) is blind to 30-40% of your apps.
Disconnected applications, or tools that exist outside IdP control, make up a significant portion of the typical software stack. These apps don't support single sign-on (SSO), system for cross-domain identity management (SCIM), or even basic security integrations, creating unmanaged risk, regulatory gaps, and wasted spend on unused licenses.
Most IT leaders are unaware of the true scale of this problem. Disconnected apps proliferate for reasons that are both technical and economic:
- SSO and provisioning features locked behind "enterprise" paywalls
- Vendors prioritizing consumer usability over enterprise security
- Legacy systems unable to support modern protocols
You can't solve this problem with spreadsheets and good intentions. Managing this chaos requires a disciplined, data-driven approach that helps you focus your finite resources where they'll have the most impact.
Here's how to move from high-level intent to an actionable prioritization matrix—one grounded in operational, security, and financial realities:
1. User base complexity drives up app management difficulty
The diversity and distribution of an application's user base fundamentally determines how difficult it is to manage, secure, and audit.
An app used solely by full-time employees can typically leverage your core HR system as a single source of truth. Introduce contractors, vendors, or acquired business units, and you add fragmented onboarding, inconsistent offboarding, and a patchwork of roles.
Contractor offboarding introduces the biggest blind spots. When someone leaves your core team, Okta or Azure AD handles the deprovisioning automatically.
But contractors bypass your standard processes entirely. They get direct invites to tools like Asana, Slack, or GitHub that never touch your IdP. Failing to promptly remove access for contractors causes a persistent population of orphaned accounts.
When apps are accessed by multiple user groups, each with different privileges, the risk of excessive or inappropriate permissions rises.
In disconnected environments, role management is rarely automated or audited. Thus, you end up with permission creep, i.e. people accumulate access they no longer need, creating security risks that snowball over time.
2. Operational impact should determine your priorities
Application criticality varies widely. Some systems are foundational to core business operations, while others serve peripheral or non-essential functions. The difference matters significantly when you're trying to decide where to focus your limited security and IT compliance resources.
The operational impact of downtime for an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is orders of magnitude higher than for an ad hoc note-taking tool.
If the ERP goes down, you lose revenue. But if the note-taker becomes unresponsive, people turn to a different one and continue working. Yet, both tools might be equally disconnected from your IdP, and, on paper, create identical security gaps.
Many disconnected apps also lack the enterprise-grade resilience you'd expect from critical systems.
Your legacy point of sale (POS) system could handle thousands of transactions per day, but have zero redundancy or backup procedures. If it fails during peak sales hours, it is not just a minor inconvenience. It's a direct revenue loss.
The key question becomes: can your business continue to function if the app goes offline tomorrow? Tools like Figma might slow down your design team, but a communication app like Slack going offline could paralyze the entire company.
Understanding these operational dependencies will help you determine which apps need immediate attention and which ones can wait.
3. Data sensitivity determines your breach exposure
The data stored or processed by an application determines the blast radius of a potential breach. An app that stores public marketing materials poses fundamentally different risks than one that holds customer credit card details or proprietary source code.
Yet, many companies treat all disconnected apps as equivalent security concerns and spread their resources too thin across low-impact targets—while genuine vulnerabilities get ignored.
Applications managing public documentation are a different class of risk than those storing intellectual property (IP), personally identifiable information (PII) of customers, or financial records.
For instance, think about the difference between a team wiki and your contract management system. If someone gains unauthorized access to the company's remote work guidelines, it's embarrassing at best.
But if they get their hands on thousands of signed customer agreements containing sensitive data, you're looking at heavy regulatory penalties and irreparable breach of customer trust.
A rogue customer relationship management (CRM) tool leaking customer data isn't just a PR crisis—it's a compliance failure.
Beyond contact information, the system stores information like deal values, competitive intelligence, and relationship histories that competitors would pay good money for. In short, it's a direct threat to your market position.
Certain disconnected apps, such as contract repositories like DocuSign, require layered controls (encryption at rest, certain retention policies, and audit trails) that go well beyond what's built in.
Thus, mapping your data landscape helps you identify which apps need immediate security investment versus those that can rely on standard precautions.
4. Financial waste compounds quickly in disconnected apps
Disconnected apps quietly consume a disproportionate share of IT spend both through license waste and inflated vendor costs for basic security. The combination turns cost-effective productivity tools into budget black holes.
Unused licenses pile up faster in disconnected apps because there's no automated cleanup. You may be paying for 50 active licenses of a tool like Adobe Creative Cloud, but only 12 are in use.
Those 38 unused licenses cost thousands of dollars annually, but without proper tracking, finance teams assume that everyone listed is an active user. Now, multiply this scenario by the dozens of disconnected apps used throughout the company, and you're looking at significant margin leakage.
And then there's the "SSO tax," wherein many vendors reserve SSO/SCIM behind the most expensive pricing tiers.
Price ranges of $10–$40 per user per month to access SSO aren't unusual, and few organizations can afford that across their entire landscape. As a result, they're forced to accept the security gap and manual management overhead.
Multi-year agreements make the problem worse. Tools that seemed essential when initially purchased often become redundant as business needs evolve. Even though they are no longer business-critical, these tools go unnoticed until renewal, locking in spend that could be eliminated with better oversight.
Also, without regular usage audits, some of these unused subscriptions renew automatically while delivering no value at all. The financial impact compounds annually, turning tactical software decisions into strategic budget drains.
5. Poor security controls expose critical vulnerabilities
Disconnected apps are frequently the weakest links in your security architecture. These apps lack the basic security controls you'd expect from enterprise software.
Lack of multi-factor authentication (MFA), audit logging, or basic encryption is common in low-cost SaaS tools because they treat security as an expensive add-on rather than an essential foundation. These omissions translate to a significant attack surface expansion.
Vendor track records matter enormously. An app with a public record of breaches or unpatched vulnerabilities should move up your remediation list—no matter how "small" its footprint. Previous incidents indicate deeper security culture problems that can't be fixed with a simple software update.
Internet-facing apps, especially those accessible without network restrictions or VPN, are exponentially more likely to be targeted for compromise. Apps that employees can reach from anywhere without VPN protection face constant probing from automated attack tools.
The combination creates a perfect storm of poor vendor security practices and broad accessibility. It acts as a highway into your app environment, bypassing all your company's carefully constructed network defenses.
6. Some apps integrate easily, while others fight back
The technical reality of integration varies widely across disconnected apps. Some can be wrangled into compliance with reasonable effort, whereas others are black boxes.
Tools like Atlassian provide mature APIs even when they lack native SSO—enabling some degree of automation. Others are lost causes with no programmatic access, forcing you to perform permanent manual management.
API availability does not guarantee easy integration. Even when vendors provide decent APIs, building and maintaining custom connectors or even semi-automated CSV processes consumes significant IT bandwidth.
You're not writing code just once, but you're committing to ongoing maintenance each time the vendor updates their system. The total cost of ownership often exceeds what you would pay for an app with built-in enterprise features. So factor it in, too, and not just technical feasibility.
The willingness (or lack thereof) of vendors to support custom integrations is also a decisive factor in your timeline.
Some actively support custom integration efforts by providing documentation and technical assistance, whereas others treat API access as an afterthought and offer minimal support.
The vendor's attitude toward enterprise customers predicts whether the integration investment will pay off in the long term.
Thus, feasibility assessment becomes a strategic decision, and sometimes the cost-effective option is to walk away from an app that refuses to integrate properly.
7. Vendor reliability shapes long-term security risks
The long-term health and responsiveness of your app vendors directly impacts both security and operational continuity. Frequent, quality updates and responsive support distinguish reliable vendors from those that treat enterprise customers as a grudging afterthought.
Financial stability matters more than most IT teams realize. Vendors at risk of going out of business pose operational risks and data exposure if proper offboarding cannot be completed.
Such vendors may cut support staff, delay security patches, or shut down entirely with barely any notice. You're not just at risk of losing functionality; you're also potentially losing access to your own data if proper export procedures are not in place.
Roadmap transparency reveals how vendors think about enterprise customers. Vendors focused on consumer features (TikTok integrations) over enterprise-grade controls are less likely to address your needs.
They're not going to develop the enterprise security features you need, and therefore long-term integration efforts are pointless.
Support quality is critical when security issues emerge. A vendor's track record in handling security incidents is an indicator of how they'll handle future problems that could expose your data.
The priority matrix: turning insight into action
A practical prioritization matrix aggregates these factors to score each disconnected app. Here's how your top three might look:
Note: The value of this matrix depends entirely on the quality and currency of your data.
Why spreadsheets fail (and what actually works)
In reality, maintaining up-to-date records of hundreds of disconnected apps in spreadsheets is a non-starter. Manual processes are not just error-prone; they simply cannot scale to the complexity and pace of SaaS adoption, especially AI apps that bypass IT entirely. Orphaned accounts, license waste, and missed risks accumulate quietly, creating significant exposure between audits.
The fundamental problem is that spreadsheets are like snapshots of your data, whereas your app environment is constantly changing.
Automated, continuous visibility
Platforms like Stitchflow were built to address this precise problem. Rather than asking IT to manually collect and reconcile app/user data, Stitchflow automatically connects to your environment, discovers all apps and accounts—connected or not—and auto-populates your risk matrix with real, continuously updated data.
Key capabilities include:
- Automated discovery: Complete inventory of every app, user, and license—even across fragmented domains, shadow IT, and legacy systems
- Real-time risk scoring: Dynamic, multi-factor risk assessments driven by access patterns, orphaned accounts, and usage analytics
- Actionable remediation: One-click workflows to reclaim unused licenses, remediate access gaps, and generate audit-ready reports
The result: Organizations eliminate blind spots, accelerate risk reduction, and reclaim 15–25% of SaaS spend—without adding to manual workload or complexity.
Moving from reactive to proactive app governance
Disconnected apps are a persistent, underestimated risk vector. Taming them requires moving beyond intuition and manual tracking toward data-driven, operationalized prioritization.
Expert IT teams don't aim for perfect automation on day one—they demand 100% visibility and pragmatic, actionable coverage across the portfolio.
That's how you close the governance gap, deliver measurable results, and future-proof your identity strategy against the next wave of SaaS adoption—including the shadow IT applications that continue to emerge outside traditional procurement channels.
Ready to see what's hiding in your application portfolio? Start by asking: how many apps are you truly governing today—and how many are still in the shadows?
Frequently asked questions
Disconnected apps are applications that exist outside your identity provider (IdP) control—they don't support SSO, SCIM provisioning, or integrate with your core security infrastructure. These apps typically make up 30-40% of your software stack but remain invisible to traditional SaaS governance tools. They matter because they create security blind spots, generate license waste, and expose your organization to compliance risks that manual processes can't effectively manage at scale.
Most organizations struggle to maintain accurate inventories using spreadsheets because disconnected apps change constantly. Effective SaaS governance requires automated discovery tools that can scan across domains, email systems, and network traffic to identify all applications—both sanctioned and shadow IT. Manual audits typically miss 40-60% of actual app usage, particularly contractor access and departmental tools that bypass IT procurement.
Our 7-factor SaaS governance framework evaluates each app across multiple dimensions: user base complexity, operational dependence, data sensitivity, financial impact, security exposure, integration feasibility, and vendor reliability. Apps with high user complexity, business-critical operations, and sensitive data should be prioritized first, even if integration is challenging. The key is using data-driven scoring rather than gut instinct to focus your limited resources where they'll have maximum impact.
Organizations implementing comprehensive SaaS governance typically reclaim 15-25% of their software spend through license optimization and eliminating redundant tools. The savings come from identifying unused licenses (common in disconnected apps without automated cleanup), consolidating overlapping functionality, and renegotiating contracts based on actual usage data. Beyond direct savings, you'll also reduce the hidden costs of manual management and security incident response.
Start with complete visibility—you can't govern what you can't see. Begin by conducting automated discovery to inventory all applications, then apply the 7-factor prioritization framework to identify your highest-risk disconnected apps. Focus on quick wins first: reclaim obvious unused licenses and address apps with known security vulnerabilities. Build momentum with measurable results before tackling complex integration projects. Most importantly, abandon manual tracking methods in favor of automated tools that provide continuous visibility and real-time risk scoring.
Sanjeev NC started his career in IT service desk and moved to ITSM process consulting, where he has led award-winning ITSM tool implementations. Sanjeev was also a highly commended finalist for Young ITSM Professional of the Year in itSMF UK’s annual awards.
