A 2025 BetterCloud security report

Unlocking a safer SaaS stack

Get the most up-to-date insights from 2025 BetterCloud original research on SaaS and file security. Aiming to uncover who most prioritizes SaaS security, and how they differ from the rest, our report reveals how making SaaS security a top goal shapes IT tech stacks, file sharing permissions, monitoring, and other SaaS security best practices. In the 2025 BetterCloud report, Unlocking a Safer SaaS Stack: 10 Research-backed Practices of Security-Focused IT Teams, you’ll learn their concerns, and their best practices for securing SaaS files, apps, and users.

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Discover the latest SaaS security and file governance trends in our 2025 SaaS file security report

Our report highlights an unsettling gap between SaaS file security leaders and remaining organizations. As SaaS files – and their unchecked sharing permissions – continually expand, too many depend on inadequate tools and processes to secure their SaaS stacks and file sharing.

To better understand SaaS security and file governance today, we surveyed IT and security professionals and examined BetterCloud data from thousands of organizations and users—all to understand:

Files in shared vs. individual drives
Potential data loss/leakage when it comes to amount of file sharing permissions
Main concerns and priorities of security-focused IT teams
Key SaaS security and lifecycle management tool investments
How much they use automation
Valuable features for safeguarding corporate data
Crucial pro-tips you can act on today

Highlights of BetterCloud’s Unlocking a Safer SaaS Stack report

In addition to survey results, our report on SaaS security includes internal BetterCloud file sharing and governance data analyzed in May 2025.

BetterCloud internal data on file sharing reinforces need for file security governance, especially on shared drives

Before BetterCloud File Governance, shared drives and the files stored on them were nearly impossible to monitor and remediate. Consider this: with many thousands of files, the average company using Google Workspace has:

70% more files stored Shared drives than MyDrives
50% of files have 1 or no sharing permissions
25% of files have between 5 and an unwieldy 35 sharing permissions.

Do you know who’s been sharing your files? And more importantly, do you know who’s been accessing your SaaS files? Probably not as much as you should.

Sneak peek into SaaS security best practices

According the BetterCloud file security survey research:

30% of organizations are SaaS Security Solvers who prioritize SaaS security first — over taming the SaaS sprawl or improving SaaS operations

53% find sensitive file shared publicly the top security concern out of 8 concerns, and next, at 44% is sensitive emails forwarded to an ex-employee

62% use an SMP or a SaaS spend management tool to monitor SaaS app adoption and usage

89% of SaaS Security Solvers allow external file sharing, and 70% use software to monitor file sharing to maintain file security

43% find automated file sharing policy management, governance, and automation the most important SaaS Management Platform capability out of 7 capabilities

57% of SaaS security Solvers find point solutions for managing SaaS more difficult than an all-in-one, feature-rich SaaS management platform.

94% of SaaS Security Solvers prefer a unified platform to optimize SaaS spending, and automate, discover, manage and secure the SaaS stack

Ready to tackle your thorny SaaS file security problem?

Download Unlocking a Safer Stack, a report on 10 research-based best practices to help you close your file security and governance gap. To get you moving today, you’ll also get actionable suggestions and common sense SaaS file security best practices that can make an immediate difference.