Short answer
Security workarounds are unofficial ways people bypass, modify, or route around approved processes to get work done. They can create cyber risk, but they also reveal where security controls, business workflows, tools, incentives, or guidance may not fit real work. Mature human risk management programs treat workarounds as risk signals, not just employee misbehavior.
Why workarounds deserve a closer look
Every organization has two versions of work.
There is the official version, where processes are clean, systems connect neatly, approvals happen in order, policies are understood, and everyone follows the path exactly as designed.
Then there is Tuesday.
On Tuesday, a customer needs an answer quickly. A file is too large for the approved system. A vendor portal is down. A manager needs access before a meeting. A policy is hard to interpret. A deadline is real. A tool is slow. A client wants a document in a different format. Someone discovers that the fastest way to finish the work is not quite the approved way.
That is where workarounds appear.
Workarounds are often treated as signs of noncompliance, and sometimes they are. People may use unauthorized tools, share data through risky channels, reuse credentials, skip verification, bypass approval steps, or move information into places where it does not belong. Those behaviors can create serious cyber, privacy, operational, and regulatory risk.
But workarounds also tell leaders something important: the system is not matching the work.
That is why workarounds belong in a mature human risk management program. They are not only behaviors to correct. They are evidence. They show where the secure path is too slow, too confusing, too hard to access, too poorly communicated, or too misaligned with how people are expected to deliver results.
A workaround is often an employee saying, through behavior, “The official process does not help me succeed here.”
Leaders should listen before they lecture.
What is a security workaround?
A security workaround is an informal or unofficial action that helps someone complete a task while bypassing or modifying an approved security, IT, compliance, or operational process.
Some workarounds are small. An employee emails a file to a personal account so they can work on it from another device. A team uses an unapproved collaboration tool because it is easier for a partner. A manager shares a password temporarily because access provisioning is taking too long. Someone screenshots data instead of exporting it through an approved report. A department uses a public AI tool to summarize text because the approved option is not available yet.
Other workarounds are more systemic. A business unit builds its own shadow workflow. A vendor access process is routinely bypassed because it slows delivery. Teams use shared accounts because the identity model does not support how work is assigned. Employees ignore a control because it produces too many false positives. Managers approve exceptions informally because the formal path feels disconnected from business reality.
Workarounds are not always malicious. In many cases, they are adaptive. People are trying to get work done inside constraints that may not have been designed with their daily reality in mind.
That does not make the risk acceptable. It makes the cause more useful.
If the only response to workarounds is “tell people to stop,” the organization may suppress the visible behavior while leaving the underlying condition untouched. The workaround may go underground, become harder to see, and continue producing risk.
Why workarounds increase human cyber risk
Workarounds create risk because they often move work outside the controls designed to protect it. That can affect data, identity, access, visibility, auditability, vendor oversight, incident response, and accountability.
A file shared through an unapproved tool may not have the right access controls, retention rules, data loss prevention, or monitoring. A shared password may help a team move quickly but creates accountability and revocation problems. An unapproved AI tool may process sensitive information in ways the organization has not reviewed. A skipped vendor verification step may open the door to fraud. A personal device may bypass endpoint protections. A manual exception may never make it into the system of record.
The risk is not limited to the one action. Workarounds can become habits. Habits can become team norms. Team norms can become shadow process. Once that happens, the organization may believe the official control is working while the real workflow is happening somewhere else.
That is one of the reasons workarounds are so valuable as risk signals. They show where the control environment and the work environment have drifted apart.
In human risk terms, workarounds often connect to other conditions: unclear ownership, role ambiguity, operational complexity, resource constraints, competing priorities, low trust in tools, escalation friction, and automation complacency. They are rarely isolated.
A team does not usually wake up and decide to create risk for fun. More often, people are balancing pressure, convenience, customer needs, unclear guidance, and imperfect systems. Human risk management has to understand that full picture.
The AI and agentic risk angle
AI has made workarounds easier to create and harder to detect.
Before AI, a workaround might have required a new tool, a manual process, or a workaround shared by a team. Now an employee can ask a public AI tool to summarize sensitive content, rewrite a customer message, analyze data, generate code, interpret policy, draft a contract clause, or produce a risk explanation in seconds. The convenience is powerful. So is the temptation.
This is especially likely when employees feel a gap between what they are being asked to do and what approved tools allow them to do. If the business is encouraging AI-enabled productivity but the approved AI environment is limited, confusing, unavailable, or poorly explained, people may improvise. That improvisation may be well-intentioned and still risky.
Agentic AI adds another layer. Employees may use agents or automated workflows to move information between systems, trigger tasks, gather data, draft messages, or interact with tools. If those agents are not governed, reviewed, or integrated into the organization’s security model, they can create hidden pathways for data exposure, unauthorized actions, or accountability gaps.
This is why AI governance needs to include workaround detection. The question is not only whether the company has an AI policy. The practical question is whether employees can do their work safely within approved AI pathways. If they cannot, shadow AI will grow.
In many organizations, unapproved AI use is not a sign that people hate governance. It may be a sign that the approved operating model has not caught up with how work is changing.
That is fixable. But first, leaders have to see it.
What workarounds look like in real work
Workarounds often appear in places where business pressure and process friction meet.
In sales, a representative may use an unapproved file-sharing link because a prospect cannot access the approved portal. The customer experience improves in the moment, but sensitive material may move outside controlled channels.
In finance, a team may informally accept vendor updates because the formal verification process is slow and the payment cycle is tight. The workaround saves time until an impersonation attempt finds the gap.
In HR, a manager may store employee information in a local spreadsheet because the official system does not provide the view they need. The spreadsheet becomes useful, copied, emailed, and eventually forgotten until it contains far more sensitive data than anyone intended.
In IT, a team may use shared credentials for a service account because individual access management is cumbersome. Everyone understands why it happened. Later, nobody can confidently say who did what.
In learning or communications, a team may use public AI to simplify policy language, create campaign copy, or summarize employee feedback. The output may be helpful, but the input may include data that should not have left approved systems.
In operations, a regional team may create its own process because the global one does not fit local timing, language, systems, or customer expectations. Local adaptation can be smart. It can also create inconsistent risk.
The pattern is rarely “people ignoring security because they do not care.” The pattern is usually “people solving the problem in front of them with the tools and time they have.”
That is why the best response starts with curiosity.
How workarounds show up as measurable risk conditions
Workarounds can be measured through both direct and indirect signals.
Direct signals include use of unapproved applications, unauthorized AI tools, personal email forwarding, unmanaged devices, shared accounts, policy exceptions, repeated manual overrides, unusual file-sharing patterns, and access requests that do not match role expectations.
Indirect signals are just as important. Employees may report that official tools are too slow, that guidance is unclear, that security processes are hard to navigate, or that they are under pressure to meet goals that conflict with approved procedures. Managers may describe unofficial processes that “everyone knows” but no one has documented. Incident reviews may reveal that the real workflow differed from the expected workflow.
Survey data can help identify where employees feel forced to choose between productivity and security. That phrase matters: “forced to choose.” When people experience security as a blocker to legitimate work, workaround risk rises.
Simulations and advisory interviews can also reveal workaround conditions. Ask employees how they actually complete high-risk tasks. Watch where they hesitate. Look for phrases like “technically we are supposed to,” “usually we just,” “if it is urgent,” or “the official way takes too long.” Those phrases are gold for human risk analysis.
The aim is not to catch people out. The aim is to identify where the secure path is not yet the easiest reasonable path.
Why “more training” is not always the answer
Training has a role. Employees need to understand why certain workarounds are risky and what safer options exist. But training alone will not solve a workaround that exists because the official process is genuinely difficult to use.
If the approved file-sharing tool does not work for external partners, people will find another way. If access approvals take days for work that needs to happen today, managers will push for informal paths. If AI guidance says “do not use unapproved tools” but the approved tool cannot perform the needed task, employees will test the boundary. If a reporting process takes too long, people will message someone they know instead.
When the system creates friction, behavior adapts. That is not a training gap in the classic sense. It is an operating model signal.
A mature HRM program looks at both the person and the environment. Does the employee understand the risk? Do they know the approved path? Is the approved path usable? Are incentives aligned? Does the manager reinforce the right behavior? Is the tool fit for purpose? Is the control designed around real work?
Sometimes the right intervention is a course. Sometimes it is a nudge. Sometimes it is manager guidance. Sometimes it is a process redesign. Sometimes it is a better tool. Sometimes it is a clearer exception path.
If every problem becomes a training problem, the organization may miss the chance to fix the thing that made the behavior likely in the first place.
How to reduce workaround risk without shaming employees
Reducing workaround risk starts with understanding why the workaround exists.
The first question should be: what job is this workaround helping people get done? That does not excuse unsafe behavior, but it helps leaders identify the business need underneath it. If that need is legitimate, the organization should create a safer way to meet it.
The second question is: what makes the approved path hard? It may be slow, unclear, inaccessible, poorly integrated, inconsistent across regions, or simply unknown. Small design fixes can sometimes reduce large behavior risks.
The third question is: what are people being rewarded for? If employees are praised for speed, responsiveness, customer satisfaction, and delivery, but secure processes are slow or invisible, the incentive system may be quietly encouraging workarounds. Leaders should align security expectations with performance reality.
The fourth question is: who owns the fix? A workaround involving AI use may require IT, security, privacy, legal, HR, communications, and business owners. A vendor workaround may require procurement, finance, security, and the business relationship owner. Workaround reduction needs ownership, not a general hope that people will behave better after a reminder email.
The fifth question is: how do we make the safer path easier to choose next time? This is where communications, nudges, learning, tool improvements, workflow redesign, manager enablement, and policy clarity work together.
The tone should be respectful. Employees are often the first to discover that a process does not work. Treating them as useful sensors rather than problems to be corrected makes the organization smarter.
How Cybermaniacs approaches workarounds as part of human resilience
At Cybermaniacs, we see workarounds as one of the clearest signs that human risk is a system problem. A workaround may involve an individual behavior, but the cause often lives in the surrounding conditions: unclear ownership, competing priorities, low control usability, operational complexity, weak escalation paths, or pressure to move faster than the process allows.
A mature human risk management program should identify where workarounds exist, interpret what they reveal, measure their risk, and improve the system around them. That means combining learning data, behavioral signals, surveys, advisory insight, simulations, operational context, and manager feedback.
Cybermaniacs helps organizations do that through platform, content, managed services, advisory support, campaigns, simulations, and human risk measurement. We help leaders move beyond “people are not following the process” toward better questions: where is the process failing the work, where is behavior creating exposure, and what intervention will actually improve the condition?
This is where human risk management becomes commercially useful. It helps security and business leaders reduce risk without creating unnecessary friction. It also helps employees succeed without having to choose between doing the work and doing it safely.
That is the sweet spot: safer behavior, better systems, and fewer heroic little shortcuts holding the business together.
Practical takeaways for leaders
Security workarounds should be treated as measurable human risk signals. They reveal where official controls, tools, policies, or workflows may not fit real work.
Leaders should look for workaround patterns in unapproved tools, shadow AI use, file sharing, access management, vendor processes, payment changes, data handling, shared accounts, and repeated exceptions.
Workarounds should be investigated with curiosity before correction. The key question is why the workaround exists and what business need it is serving.
Training is useful, but it may not be enough. If the approved path is too slow, confusing, or impractical, employees will continue finding alternatives.
Reducing workaround risk requires an integrated response: clearer guidance, better tools, manager enablement, workflow redesign, targeted learning, practical nudges, and ownership for improvement.
FAQ
What is a security workaround?
A security workaround is an unofficial action that bypasses, modifies, or avoids an approved security, IT, compliance, or operational process. Examples include using unapproved tools, sharing credentials, forwarding files to personal accounts, skipping verification, or using public AI tools for sensitive work.
Why do employees create security workarounds?
Employees often create workarounds to get work done when the approved process is slow, unclear, unavailable, poorly integrated, or misaligned with business needs. Workarounds are often adaptive, even when they create risk.
Are workarounds always bad?
No. Workarounds can reveal creativity and problem-solving, but they can also create cyber, privacy, compliance, and operational risk. The important question is what the workaround reveals about the system and whether a safer path can be created.
How does AI increase workaround risk?
AI increases workaround risk because employees may use unapproved AI tools to summarize, draft, analyze, translate, code, or process information quickly. If approved AI options are unclear or unavailable, shadow AI use can grow.
How can organizations measure workaround risk?
Organizations can measure workaround risk through surveys, interviews, SaaS and AI usage patterns, DLP events, access exceptions, shared account reviews, incident analysis, manager feedback, and workflow mapping.
How can companies reduce security workarounds?
Companies can reduce workarounds by understanding why they exist, improving approved processes, simplifying guidance, aligning incentives, enabling managers, creating safer alternatives, and measuring whether behavior changes over time.
Closing thought
Workarounds are not just signs that people are breaking the rules. They are signs that the rules, tools, pressures, and workflows deserve a closer look.
That perspective changes the conversation. It moves leaders away from blame and toward design. It helps security teams see where controls need to fit the business better. It helps employees see that safe behavior is not meant to make their jobs harder. And it helps the organization reduce risk in a way that is realistic, respectful, and measurable.
The workaround is the clue. The condition is the story. The opportunity is to fix both.
