Seven in ten workers in the UK are using cloud technologies that are not managed or supervised by their company, a study has found.

Media was the worst-offending industry in the study – with 83% of employees using unauthorised services – and while manufacturing was the best, it still has half of its workforce using uncontrolled cloud technology.

The research, commissioned by Cloudstanding, was conducted with IT professionals, managers and C-suite executives in the UK, across a variety of sectors, ranging from SMEs to enterprises with 5000+ employees.

Just over 45% of these respondents identified employee mobility, which has experienced significant growth off the back of emerging cloud services, as the biggest business need in the next year, followed by disaster recovery and big data analytics.

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Meanwhile, four in ten respondents were concerned about deployment, and 37% about the complexity involved in the use of cloud technologies.

Maarten ten Broeke, co-founder at Cloudstanding, said companies are “in the dark” when it comes to which cloud services are being used by their employees, how much sensitive corporate data is being uploaded and shared, and whom it is being shared with.

“Cloud services enable productivity and efficiency for employees,” he said, “but unless it is properly managed and secured by companies, there will always be the risk of data leaks and security threats entering the company from external sources.

“Greater, company-wide education, from the C-suite to the IT department, on the benefits of integrating cloud services would help to minimise the risk of hidden usage.”