The SharePoint On-Premises Endgame: Why Waiting Puts Your Sensitive Data at Risk
SharePoint on-premises users face a critical inflection point. Chinese nation-state actors are actively exploiting critical vulnerabilities (CVE-2025-53770, CVSS 9.8) in SharePoint Server installations, while Microsoft’s extended support ends July 14, 2026. Organizations that delay planning their migration risk operating vulnerable infrastructure under deadline pressure or making compromised decisions that fail to address their actual security and compliance needs.
This isn’t just about replacing one collaboration platform with another. It’s about fundamentally rethinking how your organization secures, governs, and maintains visibility over sensitive data exchange across all channels—file sharing, email, managed file transfer, and APIs.
In this post, you’ll learn why the “patch and maintain” approach no longer protects against sophisticated threats, how compliance requirements have evolved beyond SharePoint’s capabilities, what the real timeline looks like for a successful migration, and why organizations are choosing unified secure data exchange platforms over simply moving SharePoint to the cloud. Whether you’re a CISO concerned about active exploits, an IT director managing budget constraints, or a compliance officer preparing for tightening regulations, this analysis provides the context you need to make informed decisions about your organization’s path forward.
Executive Summary
Main Idea: SharePoint on-premises installations face a convergence of critical security vulnerabilities actively exploited by nation-state actors, an approaching end-of-support deadline (July 14, 2026), and increasing compliance demands that the platform was never designed to address. Organizations continuing to rely on on-premises SharePoint infrastructure are managing an increasingly indefensible security posture while shouldering operational burdens that modern secure data exchange platforms have eliminated.
Why You Should Care: If your organization depends on SharePoint Server 2016, 2019, or Subscription Edition for sensitive data collaboration, you’re facing three simultaneous pressures: immediate security risks from verified exploits (CVE-2025-53770 with CVSS 9.8 Critical severity), compliance gaps that manual processes cannot adequately address, and an operational model that becomes more expensive and difficult to defend with each passing quarter. The timeline for planning and executing a migration to a more secure platform is shorter than most IT leaders realize, particularly when factoring in budget cycles, vendor evaluation, and the actual migration process.
Key Takeaways
- Active nation-state exploitation: Chinese threat actors including Linen Typhoon and Violet Typhoon are actively exploiting SharePoint on-premises vulnerabilities (CVE-2025-49704, CVE-2025-49706, CVE-2025-53770, CVE-2025-53771), stealing cryptographic keys for persistent access to compromised systems.
- Support deadline approaching faster than you think: Microsoft’s extended support ends July 14, 2026. When accounting for budget approval cycles and migration complexity, organizations need to begin planning now to avoid rushed decisions or operating without vendor support.
- Compliance demands exceed platform capabilities: Modern regulatory frameworks require automated audit trails, complete data lineage, and centralized governance across all sensitive data exchange, capabilities SharePoint on-premises was never architected to provide.
- Patching is not a security strategy: The ToolShell exploit chain demonstrates that even diligent patching cannot address the fundamental architectural vulnerabilities in on-premises collaboration platforms targeted by sophisticated adversaries.
- Unified platforms eliminate fragmented security: Organizations are moving from disparate tools for file sharing, email security, and managed file transfer to integrated platforms that provide consistent security policies, complete audit trails, and centralized governance across all sensitive data movement.
What Are the Best Secure File Sharing Use Cases Across Industries?
The Reality Security Teams Are Facing
Security operations teams managing SharePoint on-premises infrastructure are dealing with an uncomfortable truth: the platform they’re tasked with defending has become a high-priority target for some of the world’s most sophisticated threat actors.
The numbers tell a stark story. CVE-2025-53770, one of several critical vulnerabilities discovered in SharePoint Server, carries a CVSS score of 9.8 out of 10. This is not a theoretical vulnerability. Chinese nation-state groups including Linen Typhoon and Violet Typhoon have developed and deployed the ToolShell exploit chain specifically designed to compromise SharePoint servers, steal cryptographic keys, and establish persistent access to target networks.
For security leaders, this represents more than another item on the patching schedule. These exploits target fundamental aspects of how SharePoint on-premises handles authentication and access control. Even organizations with rigorous patch management processes face a window of vulnerability between exploit disclosure and successful patching across their environment.
Why “Just Keep Patching” Is No Longer Viable
The traditional approach to on-premises security has been straightforward: apply patches promptly, maintain good security hygiene, and monitor for anomalies. This model assumes that vulnerabilities, once patched, represent closed security gaps.
That assumption no longer holds for several reasons.
First, the sophistication of attacks targeting collaboration platforms has fundamentally changed. Nation-state actors are not looking for opportunistic access; they’re conducting sustained campaigns with specific objectives. When they compromise a SharePoint server and steal cryptographic keys, they’re establishing infrastructure for long-term access that may persist even after the initial vulnerability is patched.
Second, the architectural model of on-premises collaboration platforms creates inherent risks that patches cannot address. These systems were designed for a different threat environment, one where the primary security perimeter was the corporate network boundary. Modern zero-trust security architectures recognize that this perimeter-based model is insufficient when sophisticated adversaries can establish presence inside your network.
Third, the operational reality of patch management in complex environments means there will always be gaps. Testing patches for compatibility, scheduling maintenance windows, and coordinating across distributed infrastructure all create delays. During those delays, your systems remain vulnerable to known exploits.
The End-of-Support Timeline Is Shorter Than It Appears
Microsoft has announced that extended support for SharePoint Server 2016 and 2019 will end on July 14, 2026. For organizations accustomed to long planning cycles, that might seem like adequate time to evaluate alternatives and plan a migration.
The reality is more compressed.
Most organizations operate on annual or semi-annual budget cycles. If your budget planning for fiscal year 2026 has already been completed, you may be looking at fiscal year 2027 before funds are allocated for a SharePoint replacement project. Depending on your organization’s fiscal calendar, that could mean project initiation in mid-to-late 2026, leaving minimal time for vendor evaluation, proof of concept, contract negotiation, and migration execution before support ends.
Even organizations that can secure budget more quickly face timeline pressures. A proper evaluation process for enterprise secure file sharing platforms typically involves:
- Requirements gathering across IT, security, compliance, and business stakeholders
- Vendor evaluation and proof of concept testing
- Security assessment and compliance validation
- Contract negotiation and procurement approval
- Migration planning and pilot deployment
- Full production migration and user training
This process easily spans six to twelve months for mid-sized organizations and can take longer for enterprises with complex requirements or distributed infrastructure.
Organizations that wait until 2026 to begin this process will find themselves making hurried decisions under pressure, potentially compromising on requirements or accepting risks they would normally not tolerate. Worse, they may find themselves operating on unsupported infrastructure while scrambling to complete a migration, a scenario that creates both security and compliance risks.
The Compliance Gap That Manual Processes Cannot Bridge
Regulatory requirements for sensitive data handling have evolved significantly since SharePoint on-premises was designed. Whether your organization must comply with industry-specific regulations, data protection laws like GDPR, or security frameworks relevant to your sector, the common thread is increasing demands for transparency, auditability, and demonstrable control over sensitive data.
SharePoint on-premises provides basic access controls and some audit logging, but it was never architected to deliver the comprehensive governance capabilities that modern compliance frameworks require.
Consider what compliance teams typically need to demonstrate:
- Complete audit trails showing who accessed what data, when, and what actions they took
- Data lineage tracking sensitive information as it moves between systems and users
- Automated policy enforcement that prevents non-compliant actions rather than simply logging them
- Centralized reporting that consolidates access and usage data across all data exchange channels
- Role-based access controls with regular certification and review processes
Organizations attempting to meet these requirements with SharePoint on-premises typically rely on manual processes, custom scripts, and multiple disparate tools. Compliance teams spend weeks preparing for audits, correlating logs from different systems, and manually validating that policies were followed.
This manual approach creates several problems. It’s time-consuming and expensive, requiring significant staff effort for routine compliance activities. It’s error-prone, as manual processes inevitably miss edge cases or fail to capture complete data. Most critically, it’s reactive rather than proactive, identifying compliance issues only after they occur rather than preventing them.
Modern secure data exchange platforms approach compliance differently. They’re designed from the ground up to provide automated audit trails, policy enforcement, and compliance reporting across all sensitive data movement. This is not an add-on feature; it’s fundamental to the platform architecture.
For organizations in regulated industries, this architectural difference is not just about convenience. It’s about being able to demonstrate compliance with confidence rather than hoping your manual processes captured everything auditors will ask about.
The Hidden Costs of Staying Put
The financial case for maintaining SharePoint on-premises often appears straightforward: you’ve already made the capital investment in hardware and licenses, you have staff trained on the platform, and migration projects have significant costs.
This analysis, while not wrong, is incomplete. It focuses on visible, budgeted costs while overlooking the less obvious expenses that accumulate over time.
Hardware maintenance and replacement cycles continue to generate costs. Server hardware has a finite lifespan, and organizations running SharePoint 2016 or 2019 are likely due for hardware refreshes. Storage requirements continue to grow, requiring capacity expansion. Power and cooling costs for on-premises data centers persist.
Security operations costs are substantial and growing. Each vulnerability disclosure triggers a patch evaluation and deployment cycle. Security monitoring tools and staff time to analyze logs and respond to alerts represent ongoing expenses. Incident response, even for relatively minor security events, consumes significant resources.
Perhaps most significantly, opportunity costs accumulate when IT staff spend time maintaining legacy infrastructure rather than working on projects that drive business value. Every hour your systems administrators spend patching SharePoint servers or troubleshooting performance issues is an hour not spent on initiatives that could improve operational efficiency or enable new business capabilities.
Organizations that have migrated to modern managed file transfer solutions and secure collaboration platforms report significant total cost of ownership reductions, typically in the range of 40-60% when accounting for all direct and indirect costs. These savings come from eliminated hardware costs, reduced security operations overhead, and freed-up IT staff capacity.
Why Kiteworks Is Purpose-Built to Replace SharePoint On-Premises
Organizations evaluating alternatives to SharePoint on-premises are not simply looking for another file sharing platform. They’re looking for comprehensive solutions that address the security, compliance, and operational challenges that on-premises infrastructure can no longer adequately handle.
Kiteworks approaches sensitive data exchange differently than traditional collaboration tools. Rather than treating file sharing, email, and data transfer as separate domains with separate security controls, Kiteworks provides unified governance across all channels where sensitive data moves through what we call a private content network.
Security Architecture Built for Current Threats
The Kiteworks Private Data Network platform starts with zero-trust architecture principles specifically designed to address the types of nation-state threats currently targeting SharePoint installations. Rather than assuming that users and devices inside your network perimeter are trustworthy, Kiteworks verifies every access request, enforces least-privilege access, and continuously monitors for anomalous behavior.
For organizations concerned about the ToolShell exploits and similar nation-state threats, this architectural approach provides several critical advantages. Lateral movement becomes significantly more difficult when every access request must be authenticated and authorized. Data exfiltration is easier to detect when all data movement is logged and analyzed through the Kiteworks audit trail. Compromised credentials provide limited access rather than broad network access.
Kiteworks has been validated through rigorous security frameworks that provide assurance beyond what internal assessments can deliver. The platform maintains FedRAMP Moderate authorization, which it has held continuously since June 2017. In February 2025, Kiteworks achieved FedRAMP High Ready status, demonstrating the platform’s capability to meet the most stringent federal security requirements. These authorizations require extensive security controls, continuous monitoring, and regular third-party assessments. Organizations can leverage these existing validations rather than conducting their own extensive security assessments.
Beyond FedRAMP, Kiteworks maintains SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, ISO 27017, and ISO 27018 certifications, providing multiple layers of validated security assurance.
Compliance Automation, Not Just Compliance Support
The difference between platforms that support compliance and platforms that automate compliance is substantial, and this distinction is where Kiteworks fundamentally differs from SharePoint on-premises.
SharePoint provides logging and access controls that compliance teams can use as raw material for demonstrating regulatory adherence. This requires significant manual effort to collect, correlate, and report on compliance-relevant data.
Kiteworks automates compliance through pre-configured policy frameworks aligned with common regulatory requirements. Whether your organization needs to demonstrate compliance with CMMC 2.0, HIPAA, PCI DSS, GDPR, or ITAR, Kiteworks provides policy templates and automated audit reporting specifically designed for these frameworks.
For compliance officers, this difference translates directly to audit preparation time. Organizations using Kiteworks report reducing audit preparation from weeks to days, with higher confidence in the completeness and accuracy of their compliance documentation. The platform’s automated compliance reporting generates documentation that auditors can review directly, eliminating the manual correlation and report generation that SharePoint environments require.
Kiteworks customers report 90% faster compliance reporting compared to their previous manual processes. More importantly, the platform provides continuous compliance monitoring that identifies potential issues before audits occur, rather than discovering problems only when auditors ask questions.
Unified Governance Across All Data Movement
One of the most significant limitations of SharePoint is its narrow scope. SharePoint handles file sharing and document collaboration. Email security is handled by separate tools. Managed file transfer for automated B2B data exchange typically involves yet another platform. APIs and application integrations represent still another data movement channel.
Each of these channels requires its own security policies, access controls, and monitoring. Compliance teams must correlate data across multiple systems to understand where sensitive data went and who accessed it. Security teams struggle to enforce consistent policies when each system has different capabilities and configurations.
Kiteworks consolidates these functions under centralized governance through its private content network architecture. Security policies apply consistently whether data moves via file sharing, email, MFT, data forms, or other channels. Audit trails capture complete data lineage across all channels. Compliance reporting covers all sensitive data movement, not just what happened in individual siloed systems.
For organizations with complex data flows, this unified approach is transformative. Instead of piecing together partial pictures of sensitive data movement from multiple systems, security and compliance teams using Kiteworks have complete visibility and control. The platform serves over 100 million users across more than 35,000 organizations, demonstrating that this unified approach scales across diverse use cases and industries.
How Kiteworks Approaches SharePoint Migration
Kiteworks has developed a proven methodology for helping organizations migrate from SharePoint on-premises to our private content network. This experience working with thousands of organizations across regulated industries has taught us several critical success factors.
Start planning early, well before support deadlines or immediate security crises force rushed decisions. Kiteworks recommends beginning migration planning 12-18 months before target completion dates, providing adequate time for thorough evaluation, proper planning, and controlled execution.
Engage stakeholders across IT, security, compliance, and business units from the beginning. SharePoint touches many aspects of organizational operations. Our implementation team works with all affected groups to understand requirements before finalizing migration plans, preventing costly mid-project course corrections.
Prioritize requirements rigorously. Not every SharePoint capability needs to be replicated in the replacement platform. Kiteworks helps organizations focus on core requirements around security, compliance, and business-critical workflows. Many organizations discover that SharePoint was over-provisioned for their actual needs, and Kiteworks’ focused approach to secure file sharing serves them better.
Plan for a phased migration rather than a “big bang” cutover. Kiteworks supports pilot deployments with a subset of users or use cases, allowing organizations to validate the platform, refine processes, and build organizational confidence before broader deployment. This approach provides an opportunity to identify and address issues when stakes are lower.
Our dedicated migration support team guides organizations through each phase, from initial requirements gathering through final production deployment and user training. This structured approach has helped organizations across government, healthcare, financial services, legal, and defense contracting sectors successfully transition from SharePoint on-premises to Kiteworks.
The Measurable Impact of Moving to Kiteworks
Organizations that have migrated from SharePoint on-premises to Kiteworks consistently report significant improvements across security, compliance, and operational metrics.
From a security perspective, organizations report a 75% reduction in security incidents related to sensitive data exchange. This improvement comes from Kiteworks’ zero-trust architecture, comprehensive audit logging, and automated policy enforcement that prevents security issues rather than simply detecting them after they occur.
Compliance metrics show even more dramatic improvements. Organizations using Kiteworks report 90% faster compliance reporting compared to their previous manual processes with SharePoint on-premises. Automated audit documentation, pre-configured policy frameworks, and continuous compliance monitoring eliminate most of the manual work that compliance teams previously spent on audit preparation.
Total cost of ownership typically decreases by 60% compared to maintaining SharePoint on-premises infrastructure. These savings come from eliminated hardware costs, reduced security operations overhead, decreased compliance preparation time, and reclaimed IT staff capacity that can be redirected to value-generating projects rather than infrastructure maintenance.
Perhaps most importantly, organizations gain complete visibility into their sensitive data flows. CISOs and compliance officers using Kiteworks can answer questions about data movement, access patterns, and policy compliance that were difficult or impossible to answer with their previous SharePoint environments and disconnected security tools.
Why Organizations Choose Kiteworks Over Other SharePoint Alternatives
When evaluating alternatives to SharePoint on-premises, organizations consistently choose Kiteworks for several key reasons that differentiate it from both SharePoint Online and other collaboration platforms.
The private content network architecture provides security guarantees that multi-tenant cloud platforms cannot match. Unlike SharePoint Online, where your data shares infrastructure with thousands of other organizations, Kiteworks provides a logically isolated environment with dedicated resources and controls. For organizations handling highly sensitive data or operating in regulated industries, this architectural difference is fundamental.
The platform’s extensive security validations provide assurance that few alternatives can match. FedRAMP Moderate authorization since 2017, FedRAMP High Ready status achieved in February 2025, SOC 2 Type II, and multiple ISO certifications demonstrate that Kiteworks meets the most demanding security requirements. Organizations can leverage these existing validations rather than conducting extensive security assessments of alternative platforms.
The unified approach to data governance eliminates the tool sprawl that organizations experience when trying to secure all their sensitive data exchange channels. Rather than managing separate platforms for file sharing, email security, managed file transfer, and API security, organizations using Kiteworks have centralized visibility, policy management, and audit trails across all these channels.
For organizations with specific compliance requirements, Kiteworks’ support for regulatory frameworks goes beyond generic logging and access controls. The platform supports nearly 90% of CMMC 2.0 Level 2 requirements out-of-the-box for defense contractors, provides HIPAA compliance-specific controls for healthcare organizations, offers pre-configured frameworks for financial services regulations, and delivers automated compliance reporting for whatever frameworks apply to your industry.
The scale and stability of the Kiteworks platform provides confidence that this is not an experimental or niche solution. With over 100 million users protected across more than 35,000 organizations, including some of the world’s largest enterprises and most security-conscious government agencies, Kiteworks has demonstrated that its architecture scales and its approach works across diverse use cases.
The Case for Moving to Kiteworks Now
The argument for maintaining SharePoint on-premises infrastructure becomes weaker with each passing quarter. Security vulnerabilities continue to emerge. Compliance requirements continue to tighten. Operational costs continue to accumulate. The support deadline continues to approach.
Organizations that begin their Kiteworks evaluation and migration planning now have several advantages over those that wait. Kiteworks has helped thousands of organizations make this transition successfully. Kiteworks has a proven migration methodology, dedicated support team, and comprehensive platform capabilities to address the security vulnerabilities, compliance gaps, and operational challenges that are driving organizations away from SharePoint on-premises.
Learn more about migrating your sensitive data to a more secure platform. Schedule a demo tailored to your specific business, security, and compliance requirements.
Frequently Asked Questions
SharePoint Server faces several critical vulnerabilities with CVSS scores of 9.8, including CVE-2025-53770, CVE-2025-53771, CVE-2025-49704, and CVE-2025-49706. These vulnerabilities have been actively exploited by Chinese nation-state threat groups including Linen Typhoon and Violet Typhoon using the ToolShell exploit chain. These exploits allow attackers to compromise SharePoint servers, steal encryption keys, and establish persistent access to networks. Organizations concerned about these vulnerabilities are evaluating secure file sharing alternatives like Kiteworks secure file sharing, whose Private Data Network consolidates, protects, and tracks every file that enters and exits an organization.
Organizations should plan for 12-18 months from project initiation to completed migration. This timeline accounts for requirements gathering, vendor evaluation and proof of concept testing, security assessments, budget approval and procurement processes, migration planning, pilot deployments, and full production migration with user training. Organizations starting their planning process in late 2025 or 2026 will face significant time pressure and may be forced to make compromised decisions or operate on unsupported infrastructure during their migration. Starting the evaluation process now provides the flexibility to make optimal decisions rather than rushed ones. Organizations evaluating a secure file sharing alternative like the Kiteworks Private Data Network benefit from structured migration methodologies that minimize disruption while maximizing security improvements.
SharePoint Online is one migration option, but organizations should carefully evaluate whether it addresses the core concerns driving them away from on-premises infrastructure. SharePoint Online operates in a multi-tenant architecture where your data shares infrastructure with thousands of other organizations, which may not meet stringent security requirements for highly sensitive data. It also inherits many of the same compliance limitations as SharePoint on-premises, lacking automated audit reporting, complete data lineage tracking, and unified governance across email, file sharing, and other data exchange channels. Organizations with demanding security or compliance requirements often find that Kiteworks better addresses their needs than simply moving SharePoint to Microsoft’s multi-tenant cloud. Kiteworks provides a private content network with logically isolated infrastructure, including a hardened virtual appliance and FedRAMP Moderate and FedRAMP High Ready virtual private cloud deployments, as well as unified governance across all sensitive data movement.
Organizations running SharePoint Server 2016 or 2019 face a critical decision point given Microsoft’s July 14, 2026 extended support deadline and the active exploitation of vulnerabilities by nation-state actors. The first step is to conduct an honest assessment of your current security posture, including patch management effectiveness, security monitoring capabilities, and compliance documentation processes. Second, evaluate whether your organization’s data sensitivity and regulatory requirements are adequately served by SharePoint’s architecture and capabilities. Third, begin the vendor evaluation process now rather than waiting until 2026, as proper evaluation, budget approval, and migration execution typically require 12-18 months. Organizations should assess alternatives based on security architecture, particularly zero-trust principles, compliance automation capabilities, and unified data governance across all data exchange channels. Platforms like the Kiteworks private data network offer a hardened virtual appliance, and FedRAMP Moderate and High Ready deployment options designed specifically for organizations with demanding security and compliance needs.
While planning a migration away from SharePoint on-premises, organizations should implement interim security measures to reduce risk exposure. Apply all security patches immediately upon release, even if this requires accelerated testing cycles, as the vulnerabilities being exploited have known patches available. Implement network segmentation to limit lateral movement if SharePoint servers are compromised, isolating them from other critical systems. Enhance monitoring, specifically around SharePoint server activity, focusing on authentication attempts, privilege escalation, and unusual data access patterns. Consider implementing additional access controls such as restricting SharePoint access to known IP ranges or requiring multi-factor authentication for all access. Review and restrict administrative privileges to the absolute minimum required. Recognize, however, that these are temporary measures that address symptoms rather than the fundamental architectural vulnerabilities. Organizations should accelerate their migration planning rather than relying on these interim controls long-term. Platforms with zero-trust architecture like the Kiteworks Private Data Network eliminate the attack surface that on-premises collaboration platforms present, while providing the audit trails and governance capabilities that manual SharePoint security measures cannot match.
Operating SharePoint on-premises after Microsoft’s July 14, 2026 support deadline creates multiple compounding risks that grow more severe over time. Security vulnerabilities discovered after the support deadline will not receive patches, leaving your systems permanently exposed to known exploits. This creates an indefensible security posture where attackers have documented vulnerabilities and no remediation path exists. Compliance frameworks increasingly require that systems handling sensitive data receive regular security updates, making it difficult or impossible to demonstrate compliance when operating unsupported software. Cyber insurance policies typically exclude coverage for systems running unsupported software, potentially leaving your organization financially exposed in the event of a breach. If a breach occurs on unsupported SharePoint infrastructure, organizations may face regulatory penalties, litigation, and reputational damage that could have been avoided. From an operational perspective, compatibility issues with newer systems and security tools will accumulate, making the eventual migration more complex and expensive. Organizations should view the July 2026 deadline not as a distant target but as the latest acceptable migration completion date, requiring them to begin evaluation and planning now. Alternatives like the Kiteworks Private Data Network provide continuously updated security, automated compliance frameworks supporting HIPAA compliance, GDPR compliance, CMMC 2.0 compliance, and other regulations, and a forward-looking architecture designed for evolving security threats rather than legacy infrastructure maintenance.
Additional Resources