Two-thirds of senior management (67%) don’t know where their company data resides whilst 74% don’t track files stored on Cloud services, according to company employees.

Varonis Systems surveyed staff from over 400 organisations and found that of those that are synchronising files via Cloud services, only 9% of respondents’ companies have a process for authorising and reviewing access to cloud repositories in place.

Additionally, 78% of respondents claimed they would prefer to use their existing permissions and storage if they were able to provide collaboration and file synchronisation services similar to those available in the Cloud.

Equally, the majority of respondents (57%) reported that bring your own device (BYOD) would be more attractive for their organisation if they could provide secure access to their internal file shares for collaboration, said the report.

Earlier this month Gartner reported that the rise of BYOD policy is the main security concern for employers.

David Gibson, VP of strategy at Varonis, said: “The results clearly show a lack of control by those organisations that have adopted cloud file sync services. The most disturbing findings were the number of companies that report they have no way to track what data is being stored in the cloud, no process to manage access to that data (or plans to do so), and that management doesn’t know where enterprise data is stored.

“This should act as a wakeup call for organisations to develop a conscious strategy to ensure secure collaboration as quickly as possible.”