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Nextcloud as an Alternative to Microsoft 365? Sovereignty Still Requires Security

Nextcloud as an Alternative to Microsoft 365? Sovereignty Still Requires Security

TIPS Publication date: 2026-06-11

Recent discussions within the Dutch government have once again fueled the debate around digital sovereignty. Dutch minister Heerma recently stated that Nextcloud could serve as an alternative to Microsoft 365 within a future sovereign Dutch government cloud environment.

From a strategic perspective, this discussion makes sense. Many organizations are increasingly concerned about dependency on large technology providers, especially when it comes to data ownership, vendor lock-in, and geopolitical influence.

However, an important nuance is sometimes missing from these conversations: digital sovereignty does not automatically equal security.

Open Source Still Needs Continuous Security Management

Nextcloud is a mature and powerful collaboration platform, but like Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or SharePoint, it remains software that requires continuous maintenance and security oversight.

In recent weeks alone, a significant number of CVE vulnerabilities were published affecting various Nextcloud components. These included issues involving:

  • Authentication bypass
  • SQL injection
  • Privilege escalation
  • Weaknesses in OpenID Connect (OIDC) integrations

Several of these vulnerabilities received relatively high CVSS scores and affected core collaboration functionality, including calendars, file sharing, authentication flows, and external integrations.

This does not mean Nextcloud is uniquely insecure. Vulnerability disclosures are part of maintaining any modern software ecosystem. Microsoft products themselves also regularly receive critical security patches. The real lesson is that organizations moving toward self-hosted or sovereign environments inherit more operational security responsibility themselves.

The Responsibility Shifts

When organizations move away from large managed cloud ecosystems, they often gain more control and flexibility. At the same time, they also become responsible for areas such as patch management, vulnerability monitoring, secure configuration, hardening, and visibility into exposed services and integrations.

Large cloud providers certainly have their own risks, but they also operate extensive security and incident response teams. Organizations adopting self-hosted alternatives must ensure they can maintain the same level of operational discipline internally.

This is especially important because modern collaboration platforms are no longer simple file-sharing tools. They include identity management, calendars, authentication systems, APIs, mobile integrations, and third-party applications. Every additional integration increases the potential attack surface.

Visibility Matters More Than Branding

This should not become an “open source versus proprietary software” discussion. Open-source software powers enormous parts of the modern internet and often provides significant transparency advantages.

The real challenge is visibility.

A sovereign platform that is poorly maintained or slowly patched can quickly become a security liability regardless of whether the software is proprietary or open source. The recent wave of Nextcloud vulnerabilities demonstrates how quickly exposure can accumulate across modern collaboration environments.

Organizations need to know:

  • Which software versions are running
  • Which systems are exposed
  • Which vulnerabilities apply to their environment

Without that visibility, security gaps can remain unnoticed for long periods of time.

How BaseFortify Can Help

At BaseFortify, we believe sovereignty and cybersecurity must go hand in hand. Whether organizations run Microsoft 365, Nextcloud, or fully self-hosted infrastructure, maintaining visibility into software assets and vulnerabilities remains essential.

For example, BaseFortify can identify software components such as:

cpe:2.3:a:nextcloud:nextcloud_server:33.0.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

This allows organizations to quickly determine whether newly published vulnerabilities affect their environment and which systems may require immediate attention.

Moving away from large technology providers may improve digital independence, but it does not remove the need for continuous vulnerability management, asset visibility, and strong operational security practices.

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