The numbers tell the tale: 90% of organizations had a leak of sensitive or confidential information over the past year. That's one of the take-aways from a new study from security analysts at the Ponemon Insitute.

But increasing use of these tools in the workplace, even for legitimate business reasons such as collaboration, puts a lot of private information at risk. And companies are starting to notice.

How bad is the situation? According to the Ponemon study, 60% of organizations have employees who frequently or very frequently put confidential files on services like Dropbox without permission. And just about that same percentage (59%) reported that what controls they do have in place were inefffective at managing who has access to sensitive files.

The problem is that mobile and remote workers want to have access to their files where and when they need them. But the idea of just having critical company information out in a public cloud makes a lot of companies nervous. Risks of data loss and falling out of compliance are too high to ignore.

"Consumer file-sharing services are effective, for consumers, but they lack the security, reliability and granular permission settings that business requires," said Andrew Dixon, Sr., Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Igloo Software, a cloud-based business collaboration company. "And that means they can quickly become just another way for information to fall into silos or slip into the wrong hands."

Read the full article here.

Check out Igloo's infographic on the history of file sharing.