Most business managers have little visibility into their Microsoft SharePoint environments, and believe that the collaboration tool could put them at risk of data theft, according to new research from enterprise provisioning firm Courion.

The company found that, although SharePoint sites are proliferating among organisations, 86 per cent of managers are concerned that sensitive data is finding its way onto these sites without proper safeguards.

Over a third of firms have no policy defining acceptable usage for SharePoint, and around 63 per cent do not have the tools in place to monitor SharePoint usage, access or policy compliance.

"What people are really concerned about is sensitive information being pushed onto these SharePoint sites and shared with people that should not have access to that information," said Courion UK general manager Stuart Hodkinson.

"A huge proportion of organisations recognise that they just don't know what's being pushed out on these sites, or even how many sites they've got, which is perhaps even more worrying."

Hodkinson advised IT managers to gain a clear picture of the number of SharePoint sites on their networks, and who has access rights, before bringing them in line with their enterprise identity management framework.

"Integrating with a data loss prevention solution can also be of significant value because it can track data within SharePoint locations," he added.