Last Updated on June 4, 2026 by Satyendra
Organizations no longer struggle because they lack data. They struggle because they lack visibility into how that data is being accessed, shared, and modified.
SharePoint is now much more than just a platform for collaboration. Sensitive business data, such as financial records, intellectual property, and other regulatory information, dispersed throughout hybrid workplaces, already depends heavily on it in 2026. However, as businesses continue to increase their use of Microsoft 365, visibility, that is, identifying who has viewed, altered, shared, or removed crucial SharePoint information, continues to be a major obstacle.
Most organizations believe that Microsoft’s built-in logging features will meet their auditing and compliance needs. IT and security teams generally find themselves struggling with:
- Limited audit visibility
- Insider Threat Risks
- Permission Sprawl
- Inconsistent Compliance monitoring
That is the reason the SharePoint auditing tool has become a necessity in 2026 and focuses on:
- Context-aware monitoring
- Behavioral analytics
- Permission Intelligence
- Risk-Based Alerting
- Faster Investigations
What to look for in a SharePoint Auditing Tool
Organizations should determine whether the platform satisfies the following criteria before choosing a SharePoint auditing tool:
- Real-Time Activity Monitoring: The ability to detect file access, permission escalation, user logins, and external sharing.
- Permission Analysis: The platform should provide strong visibility into excessive permissions, external sharing access, and broken inheritance.
- Insider Threat Detection: Monitor abnormal user behaviour, unauthorized sensitive file access, mass downloads, and suspicious permission changes in real-time.
- Compliance Reporting: Satisfy GDPR, HIPAA, SOX, PCI DSS, NIS2, and ISO 27001 audit evidence requirements.
- Audit-Ready Reporting: The organization should be able to generate executive reports, audit trails, user activity reports, file access reports, and compliance evidence quickly.
- Hybrid Environments Visibility: The platform should support SharePoint Online, On-Premises SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, and Microsoft 365 integrations.
Quick Comparison Table: SharePoint Auditing Tools
| Tool | Best Suited For | Strength | Permission Visibility | Auditing Capability |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lepide Auditor | Mid-size organizations focused on compliance and security monitoring | Deep SharePoint activity visibility | Advanced | Real-time auditing and alerts |
| ManageEngine SharePoint Manager Plus | Organizations that need centralized SharePoint reporting, auditing, permission management | SharePoint reporting and administration | Moderate | Activity monitoring and reporting |
| SolarWinds Access Rights Manager | Enterprises managing complex access rights and hybrid AD environments | SharePoint access governance | Advanced | Permission auditing and tracking |
| Netwrix Auditor | Compliance-driven organizations requiring audit readiness | SharePoint change auditing | Advanced | Continuous activity auditing |
| ShareGate | Organizations planning SharePoint migrations or tenant restructuring | SharePoint administration and cleanup | Moderate | Governance-focused reporting |
| Quest Change Auditor | Large enterprises focused on compliance and security auditing | Comprehensive change tracking across SharePoint and SharePoint Online | Advanced | Real-time auditing alerts and compliance reporting |
| Varonis | Security-mature enterprises protecting sensitive business data | SharePoint data security analytics | Advanced | Insider threat and access monitoring |
| AvePoint | Organizations standardizing governance across Microsoft 365 | SharePoint governance automation | Moderate | Policy-based auditing |
| Microsoft Purview | Organizations preferring native Microsoft compliance tooling | Native SharePoint audit logging | Basic-Moderate | Unified Microsoft auditing |
| SysKit Point | IT teams managing SharePoint permissions and Microsoft 365 governance | SharePoint governance visibility | Moderate | Permission and governance reporting |
Best SharePoint Auditing Tools: Full List
Below are the 10 best SharePoint auditing tools for 2026 that combine advanced user activity and deep permission visibility to keep Microsoft 365 and hybrid environments secure and compliant.
1. Lepide Auditor
Lepide has really emerged as a top SharePoint auditing solution for organizations requiring deep visibility into user activity, permission changes, and sensitive data access across Microsoft environments. Unlike many traditional reporting tools, Lepide SharePoint auditing takes a more operational and security-centric approach. This is becoming increasingly important as organizations today want monitoring instead of periodic reporting. Lepide offers very detailed and context-sensitive SharePoint auditing with minimal deployment complexity, plus compliance-ready reporting, which is one of the biggest reasons it is widely adopted by organizations looking for rapid time-to-value. This platform helps organizations keep track of:
- User activity across SharePoint environments
- File access, changes, and sharing
- Permission changes and access risks
- Sensitive data access
- Microsoft 365 activity
- Real-time alerts and audit trails
Ideal For: Organizations focused on compliance and operational visibility.
As environments grow, many organizations lose visibility, especially when sharing content externally and supporting extensive remote collaboration. Lepide helps restore centralized visibility into user actions, tracking, permissions, and sensitive data activities throughout the Microsoft ecosystem.
2. ManageEngine SharePoint Manager Plus
This SharePoint administration, auditing, and reporting solution helps organizations simplify governance, improve visibility, and streamline compliance across SharePoint and Microsoft 365 environments. The tool helps organizations keep an eye on:
- User activity and content usage
- Permission changes
- Site and document activity
- Automated compliance reporting
- Administrative actions
Ideal For: IT administrators managing SharePoint environments that require enhanced visibility.
3. SolarWinds Access Rights Manager
SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM), a SharePoint audit tool, aims to assist with audit programs by showing who has access to which SharePoint data and recording an entire audit trail of when they accessed it. SolarWinds ARM assists companies in both tracking and controlling the permissions in their SharePoint and Active Directory environments. The product can help organizations monitor:
- SharePoint permissions
- User access changes
- Role assignments
- Excessive permissions
- Compliance audit trails
Ideal For: Organizations managing complex permissions.
4. Netwrix Auditor
Netwrix Auditor tracks SharePoint activity, permission changes, and configuration changes in both on-premises and online environments. It gives organizations full visibility into user behaviour, security drift, and system updates. The platform supports continuous monitoring of these key events across all platforms.
- User and administrator activity
- Permission changes
- Sensitive data access
- Security risks
- Compliance events
Ideal For: Compliance-driven organizations
5. ShareGate
ShareGate is an advanced management and migration tool that gives specialized functionalities for SharePoint and Microsoft 365. The tool helps simplify complicated IT processes, allowing organizations to effectively deal with old content, set up automatic governance, control permissions, and get reports of their whole SharePoint environment without the need for server installations. The tool has gained popularity for:
- SharePoint permissions
- Content ownership
- Site sprawl and inactive content
- Migration activities
- Governance metrics
Ideal For: SharePoint administrators and migration teams
6. Quest Change Auditor
Quest Change Auditor for SharePoint is a powerful auditing solution that provides real-time visibility into user activity, permission changes, and content modifications across SharePoint environments. Its strength lies in continuous monitoring, detailed audit trails, and instant alerts that help organizations quickly identify unauthorized changes and support compliance requirements. With centralized reporting and broad Microsoft ecosystem coverage, it is particularly well-suited to enterprises that need stronger governance and security oversight.
- User and administrator actions
- Content changes
- Permission modifications
- Configuration changes
- Real-time audit events
Ideal For: Enterprises focused on compliance, governance, and real-time change monitoring.
7. Varonis
Varonis is an enterprise-class data security platform that works as a great SharePoint auditing tool. The Varonis DatAdvantage software tool aggregates user, data, permissions and access event information across SharePoint environments. This tool will alert the organization:
- Sensitive data access
- User behavior anomalies
- Permission exposure
- External sharing risks
- File activity
Ideal For: Security-focused enterprise organizations
8. AvePoint Cloud Governance
AvePoint is a comprehensive SaaS solution that allows for automating SharePoint and Microsoft 365 management. This application reduces the manual IT bottlenecks by applying security policies, simplifies the site creation process, and offers so many auditing features that report on content changes, content access logs, and user activity.
AvePoint enables organizations to automate governance, lifecycle management, and policy enforcement in Microsoft 365.
The solutions cover the following major key capabilities:
- Governance policy enforcement
- Access requests and approvals
- Site lifecycle changes
- Compliance activities
- Microsoft 365 governance events
Ideal For: Organizations automating governance workflows
9. Microsoft Purview Audit
Microsoft Purview helps organizations monitor user and administrator activities across SharePoint Online and Microsoft 365 through native auditing and compliance features, with capabilities varying based on licensing and configuration. It also enables the key functionalities:
- Microsoft 365 user activity
- SharePoint access and sharing events
- Compliance audit records
- Insider risk indicators
- Audit log investigations
Ideal For: Organizations standardizing on Microsoft security tools
10. Syskit Point
Syskit Point serves as a centralized platform for Microsoft 365 governance and administration. It aims at simplifying the complex native admin centres by replacing them with an easy-to-use, integrated dashboard, which enables IT, security teams to manage the cloud environment more effectively.
SysKit Point assists companies in finding ways to increase the transparency of SharePoint permissions, governance, and Microsoft 365 administration.
The software contributes to the provision of the essential functions to the companies:
- SharePoint permissions
- Access reviews
- Site ownership
- Governance changes
- Compliance reporting
Ideal for: IT teams managing Microsoft 365 governance
The future of SharePoint Auditing is Continuous Governance
The future of SharePoint auditing is no longer focused on periodic audits and collecting static logs; rather, it is moving toward continuous governance.
Organizations now require continuous visibility into how sensitive data is accessed, shared, modified, and governed across Microsoft 365, and how these activities impact the broader Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Continuous governance introduces a proactive approach in which organizations monitor permissions, detect anomalies, identify risky behavior, and enforce governance policies continuously rather than during scheduled audits.
Organizations are realizing that governance is not only about monitoring administrators but also about understanding who has access to sensitive data and whether that access remains appropriate. Continuous governance helps maintain least-privilege access, strengthens compliance readiness, and reduces the risk of data exposure.
To get specific, Lepide believes that SharePoint auditing is about pinpointing when permissions become excessive based on the usage (or lack thereof) around data. Should a user have access to a sensitive file, but they have not used that access for a set period of time, that access should be deemed excessive and revoked. Combine this with anomaly detection, as well as visibility over data being shared externally, and you have true governance. None of this can be achieved without a dedicated SharePoint auditing solution like Lepide.
Why Lepide Stands Out in 2026
The single largest operational challenge that today’s organizations face is achieving centralized visibility across complex Microsoft environments. Lepide Auditor for SharePoint enables organizations to address this challenge by centralizing visibility and auditing across their environment and delivering instant access from a single console to monitor who has accessed files, analyze permissions, identify abnormal behavior, and generate compliance reports.
For organizations that are heavily dependent on Microsoft tools, Lepide offers an effective balance between governance, security monitoring, compliance reporting, and operational simplicity. With tight integration that eliminates the need to manage multiple isolated tools and reduces manual investigations, auditing becomes easier, response times are shorter, and overall security confidence is higher.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, Microsoft 365 provides unified audit logging, but retention and context are limited without additional tooling, and reporting often requires manual effort.
Yes, there are dedicated SharePoint auditing tools to watch guest/ external sharing events and alert on violations in real-time.
Begin by high-risk alerts (bulk downloads, permission escalations). Retain them long-term and automate the monthly permission review for your most sensitive sites.
Default Microsoft 365 audit log retention varies based on licensing and configuration, commonly ranging from 90 days to 1 year for standard audit records.