Quest alternative for Microsoft 365
Quest keeps years of your audit trail. Who knows what those files hold?
Quest moves, recovers and audits Microsoft tenants: On Demand Migration and Recovery are tools a customer keeps, and On Demand Audit stores a searchable log for up to ten years. 1Security answers what the log cannot: what the files contain, who and which AI agent can reach them today, which device or location is new, and whether your controls hold up, then lets you fix it from the same screen. Many customers run it next to Quest, not instead of it.
- Verified 25 Oct 2026
- Keep both or switch
- Free side-by-side POC
- Every claim sourced below
Fair first
What Quest does well.
Written so a Quest customer nods. These are real strengths, most of them in areas 1Security does not enter, and a team that relies on them keeps them while 1Security takes the security side.
Tenant-to-tenant migration
On Demand Migration moves mail, OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams and Microsoft 365 Groups, Power BI and Power Platform between tenants, migrates Windows devices to Entra without reimaging, and is listed on Microsoft’s app certification record as publisher attested.
Backup and recovery of identities
On Demand Recovery and Recovery Manager for Active Directory back up and restore Entra ID and Active Directory users, groups, attributes and memberships, hosted in the region you choose.
Hybrid audit depth and long storage
On Demand Audit keeps audit events for up to ten years at a fixed subscription price, correlates on-premises Change Auditor events with cloud activity, flags Kerberos and Tier Zero abuse, and gives auditors delegated, read-only search.
Delegation across many tenants
Nova hands help-desk operators and local administrators narrow roles through service accounts, automates licence assignment and service settings by policy, and ships more than a hundred reports for multi-tenant estates.
What the log cannot say
Four questions an audit archive was never built to answer.
On Demand Audit records that something happened. Each gap below is a question a security team asks right after that: what was in the file, who else could reach it, is this normal for this person, and what do we do now. None of them is a search away in Quest, by design: it is an audit and migration suite, not a security one.
- 01
Sensitive data in content, not only in file names
Quest stores audit events and permission rows: file names, actors, timestamps, who holds which role. It never looks inside a file or an email, reads no sensitivity label and runs no OCR; the "sensitive mailboxes" in its reports are the ones you designate yourself. 1Security scans the content of files and emails with its own engine, more than 300 detectors plus OCR for scans and photos, on any licence, and discards the content when the scan ends.
- 02
Who can reach what, as one answer
Quest’s permission reporting lives in Enterprise Reporter, an on-premises install with SQL Server that collects per workload on scheduled discovery runs and, for Teams, needs its account to be a member of every team. 1Security resolves direct grants, sharing links, groups, site roles, inheritance, apps, agents and guests into one answer per file, live, from one read-only connection.
- 03
Anomalies on people, places and devices
On Demand Audit’s anomaly detection flags unusual spikes on tenant-wide series such as sign-in failures, files shared or guest activity, and its sign-in auditing needs Entra ID P1, risk events P2. 1Security learns what is normal for each user, app and agent, classifies sign-ins by country, VPN, Tor and datacenter network, spots devices you have never seen and shows whether Conditional Access covers them, without premium sign-in logs.
- 04
From finding to fix, and on to the auditor
On Demand Audit searches, visualizes, alerts by email and exports up to 50,000 rows to CSV; changes are made elsewhere and nothing maps to a regulation. 1Security stages more than 40 actions in a review queue with a grace period and a revert, maps the same findings to eleven frameworks with weekly snapshots and evidence packs, and hands enriched events to your SIEM over REST and MCP.
Side by side
1Security vs Quest, row by row.
Three states, not two: where Quest has a lighter version of something, the row says so, and where Quest is ahead the row says that too. Every Quest cell carries a number that resolves to a public source below the table; the products compared are On Demand Audit, Enterprise Reporter and Nova.
- 15Covered
- 0Partial or lighter
- 0Not covered
- 1Covered
- 11Partial or lighter
- 3Not covered
| Capability | 1Security | Quest |
|---|---|---|
| Gaps and incidents | ||
| Activity history | 1SecurityCovered Up to 3 years as part of the platform, each event carrying the user, file, device, location, app and the sensitivity of what was touched | QuestCovered Raw audit events stored for up to 10 years; 7- and 10-year retention appear as paid add-on SKUs in reseller price lists2 |
| Sign-in logs | 1SecurityCovered Per-user sign-ins with network, device and Conditional Access coverage | QuestPartial or lighter Entra sign-ins and risk events audited; needs Entra ID P1 for sign-ins and P2 for risky sign-ins1 |
| Anomaly detection | 1SecurityCovered Learns what is normal per user, app and agent; threshold you set and re-apply to history | QuestPartial or lighter Unusual spikes on tenant-wide series (sign-in failures, lockouts, files shared, guest activity); results depend on the viewer’s time zone1 |
| Locations and networks | 1SecurityCovered Country, city, VPN, Tor and datacenter classification, map, per-user travel, on any licence | QuestPartial or lighter Location and country columns on Entra sign-in events (P1); no map, no VPN, Tor or datacenter classification documented1 |
| Devices | 1SecurityCovered Every device touching data, unmanaged ones flagged, disable action | QuestPartial or lighter Device information column on sign-in events; Entra device reports in Enterprise Reporter; no unknown-device discovery or device action1 |
| Sensitive data detection | 1SecurityCovered Own engine with 300+ detectors and OCR, on any licence; Purview detections as a second opinion | QuestNot covered Not in the documentation of On Demand Audit or Enterprise Reporter; "sensitive mailboxes" are the ones you designate1 |
| Email and mailboxes | 1SecurityCovered Outbound sensitive content, delegated sending, shared mailboxes, actions on messages | QuestPartial or lighter Mailbox logins, non-owner access and forwarding rules audited, mailbox permissions reported; no message content or outbound sensitive data1 |
| Administration, compliance, AI | ||
| Permission graph | 1SecurityCovered Direct grants, links, groups, site roles, inheritance, apps, agents and guests resolved into one answer per file | QuestPartial or lighter Enterprise Reporter: per-workload reports on SharePoint Online sites, OneDrive links, mailboxes, Entra apps and Teams, collected by scheduled discoveries into SQL Server on your own server6 |
| Remediation | 1SecurityCovered 40+ actions across users, sites, files, apps, licences, devices, agents and email; review queue, grace period, revert, read-back confirmation | QuestPartial or lighter On Demand Audit searches and alerts only; changes run through Nova delegation, Microsoft portals or the Security Explorer add-on; no review queue, grace period or revert documented1 |
| Compliance mapping | 1SecurityCovered 11 frameworks on shared requirements, weekly snapshots, dated evidence packs | QuestNot covered No mapping to regulations or standards in the On Demand Audit or Enterprise Reporter documentation6 |
| AI agents and Copilot | 1SecurityCovered What each agent can reach across files, sites and email, who deployed it, its activity and anomalies, quarantine; Copilot readiness with a fix list and per-site indexing block | QuestNot covered Not in the documentation; Enterprise Reporter lists Entra applications, their permissions and service principals6 |
| Fit and deployment | ||
| Public API | 1SecurityCovered REST for logs, detections, alerts, users, compliance, readiness; MCP server with the same reads | QuestPartial or lighter No customer API documented for On Demand Audit; CSV export up to 50,000 rows per search1 |
| SIEM feed | 1SecurityCovered Enriched events pulled by Sentinel, Splunk or any SOC over the API | QuestPartial or lighter Forwarding to Sentinel, Splunk, QRadar and Syslog is a Change Auditor (on-premises) feature; none documented for On Demand Audit13 |
| Deployment and residency | 1SecurityCovered SaaS, your own Azure (BYOC) or on-premise at any size; a dedicated database per tenant | QuestPartial or lighter On Demand Audit is SaaS only, one Azure datacenter per region (US, EU, UK, Canada, Australia); Enterprise Reporter is a Windows and SQL Server install; no customer-cloud option for the audit service2 |
| Microsoft licence needed | 1SecurityCovered Nearly everything on Business Basic, E1 or E3; no E5 or Purview for content scanning, no P1 for locations | QuestPartial or lighter Entra ID P1 to audit sign-ins, P2 for risk events; Microsoft 365 audit logging must be on; prices by quote1 |
- Covered
- Partial or lighter
- Not covered
Sources for every Quest claim
Verified 2026-10-25- 1.Quest On Demand Audit User Guide, November 2025 (audited services, licences, anomalies, alerts, export) - support-public.cfm.quest.com/54014_On_Demand_Audit_UserGuide_ENG.pdf
- 2.Quest On Demand Audit Security Guide, October 2025 (data handled, retention up to 10 years, regions) - support-public.cfm.quest.com/65452_OnDemand_Audit_SecurityGuide.pdf
- 3.Quest On Demand Audit Release Notes, November 2025 - support-public.cfm.quest.com/54015_On_Demand_Audit_ReleaseNotes_ENG.pdf
- 4.Quest On Demand Audit Hybrid Suite for Office 365 datasheet (G-Cloud service definition copy) - assets.applytosupply.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/g-cloud-14/documents/92750/610999190611961-service-definition-document-2024-04-15-1634.pdf
- 5.Quest price list reproduced by a UK reseller, G-Cloud 14, April 2024 (retention add-on SKUs) - assets.applytosupply.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/g-cloud-14/documents/92750/610999190611961-pricing-document-2024-04-15-1639.pdf
- 6.Quest Enterprise Reporter 3.6 Report Manager User Guide (Microsoft 365, Entra, SharePoint Online, OneDrive, Teams reports) - support-public.cfm.quest.com/80555_EnterpriseReporter_3.6_ReportManagerUserGuide_EN.pdf
- 7.Quest Enterprise Reporter 3.6 Cloud Discoveries, permissions and requirements, November 2025 - support-public.cfm.quest.com/69437_Enterprise_Reporter_Cloud_Discovery.pdf
- 8.Microsoft 365 App Certification record for On Demand Migration (Publisher Attestation) - learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-app-certification/saas/on-demand-migration
- 9.Microsoft 365 App Certification, all SaaS apps (no entry for On Demand Audit, Nova or Enterprise Reporter) - learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-app-certification/saas/saas-apps
- 10.Quest On Demand status page (modules and regions) - status.quest-on-demand.com/
- 11.Quest Nova product description (SoftwareOne reseller listing) - platform.softwareone.com/product/quest-nova/PCP-4633-9319
- 12.Quest Nova User Guide (Delegation and Policy Control) - support.quest.com/technical-documents/nova/current/user-guide
- 13.Quest Change Auditor for Logon Activity (on-premises SIEM forwarding) - www.quest.com/products/change-auditor-for-logon-activity/
- 14.Quest On Demand listing on the UK G-Cloud 14 marketplace (modules, trial, data residency) - www.applytosupply.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/g-cloud-14/services/704243495761388
Quest, On Demand Audit, Enterprise Reporter, Nova and Change Auditor are trademarks of Quest Software Inc. This comparison was written by 1Security from public documentation and was not reviewed by Quest. If a row is out of date, write to us and we will fix it.
Richer administration
Beyond the gaps: the same questions, answered from one place.
Quest spreads the answer across On Demand Audit, Enterprise Reporter and Nova, each with its own install, consent and console. Where both sides have a feature, the difference is whether the answer is one screen you can act from.
Who has access, and why
One graph across every path: direct permissions, sharing links, group membership, site roles, inheritance, apps, agents and guests, kept live rather than rebuilt on a discovery schedule. Every external organisation that touches your tenant resolved to a real company and reconciled with your trusted-domain settings.
Remediation under control
More than 40 actions on users, sites, files, apps, licences, devices, agents and messages. Each one is staged in a review queue with a grace period, can be reverted, and is read back from Microsoft to prove the change landed, so the audit trail and the fix live in the same place.
Compliance without manual mapping
Eleven frameworks today, more arriving: GDPR, NIS2, DORA, the EU AI Act, ISO 27001 and 42001, SOC 2, NIST CSF, HIPAA and the Polish KSC and KRiBSI acts. One requirement counted everywhere it applies, weekly snapshots, a dated evidence pack for the auditor or the investor instead of a saved search.
AI agents and Copilot
Not a list of applications: what each agent can actually read across files, sites, users and email, who deployed it, what it did, and when it broke its own pattern. Copilot readiness with a fix list and a per-site indexing block, so the rollout starts from a clean reach.
The rest of the tenant
Beyond the comparison: the whole Microsoft 365 stack, from one read-only connection.
The table covers what a Quest buyer asks about. The same connection opens every screen below on day one, each answering a question your tenant cannot answer about itself today.
- Microsoft 365 Alerts ToolOne alert model across policies, activity and anomalies - with the evidence attached and the alert threshold in your hands.
- Microsoft 365 Monitoring ToolReal-time monitoring that catches a mass download while it is unfolding - across users, files, apps, AI agents and devices.
- Copilot Security ToolEvery AI agent's real blast radius - quantified before rollout, watched and constrained after.
- Shadow Device DetectionEvery device touching your data, reconstructed from real activity - including the machines that never enrolled anywhere.
- Impossible Travel DetectionLocations as identities, not IPs: country, city and network for every action, first-seen origins, travel timelines with verdicts - no E5, no P2.
- Conditional Access MonitoringDeclared Conditional Access compared against observed sign-ins: coverage verdicts, ungoverned traffic share, and the ranges your offices outgrew.
- Office 365 Access ManagementEffective access, resolved - who can reach what, through which grant, and one place to take it away.
- SharePoint Governance ToolEvery site ranked by exposure and abandonment - links, guests and Copilot access under control.
- Office 365 User ProvisioningLifecycle access from day one to offboarding - reach, dormant accounts and license reclaim in one flow.
- Microsoft 365 Audit ToolUp to three years of searchable activity history - every action tied to an actor, device and location.
- Microsoft 365 Inventory ToolEight live inventories on one permission graph - including the sites, devices and AI agents that were never registered anywhere.
- Office 365 ReportingAnswers, not exports - regulator-grade numbers, saved views and a read-only API for your SOC.
- Microsoft 365 File PermissionsWho has access to any file, and why - people, links, apps and AI agents on one map, with the fix in the same place.
- Sensitive Data DiscoveryWhere regulated data lives and everything that can reach it - two detection engines, no premium licence required.
- Office 365 Email MonitoringOutbound sensitive content, delegated-send abuse and whole-thread evidence that survives deletion.
- Purview Label CoverageWhat your sensitivity labels actually cover, and which of them protect anything at all.
- AI Agent InventoryEvery agent in the tenant with its real reach counted, its blueprint reviewed, and guardrails you can verify.
- AI Data RestrictionDeclare a data type off-limits to AI and every agent, app and user still reaching it becomes a live violation - recorded for the auditor.
- AI Spend TrackingInteractions, Copilot credits and Azure tokens in one ledger per agent - with the spend column next to what each agent can reach.
- Microsoft 365 User Access ReviewEvery identity with what it can reach, what it did, and whether it should still exist - including SharePoint-only guests that live outside the directory.
- Group Access AnalysisWhat membership in a group actually unlocks - nesting resolved, external members surfaced, blast radius counted.
- App and OAuth Consent GovernanceEvery app with a foothold in the tenant: how it got in, who let it in, and what it can actually read.
- Remediation AutomationFindings become fixes at tenant scale, counted before you enable them and staged behind a review window.
- Microsoft 365 Licence OptimizationThe seats you pay for and nobody uses - unassigned units, licences on guests, and dormant accounts still billing.
- Microsoft 365 Anomaly DetectionEvery policy, user, app and agent measured against its own baseline - with an alert line you move and see the answer to at once.
- Office 365 Sign-in LocationsEvery place your tenant is reached from, with your Conditional Access configuration laid over observed reality.
- Microsoft 365 Unified Audit LogWho did what, when, from where and on which device - retained up to three years on a standard licence.
- SharePoint Site InventoryEvery site, channel site and OneDrive in one list, ranked by external reach, abandonment and what Copilot can read.
- Microsoft 365 Activity AnalyticsThe extremes rather than the averages - a mass download inside the hour, and everything nobody has touched in a year.
- Microsoft 365 Trend TrackingAny number in the tenant followed over time, with the change and the deviation attached - and alerting on the same object.
- Microsoft 365 Compliance MonitoringReadiness for eleven regulations measured from live tenant data - with weekly snapshots and a dated evidence pack per framework.
- Microsoft 365 Security ScoreMicrosoft Secure Score beside the score measured from what actually happens - one worklist ranked by points still on the table.
- External Domain MonitoringEvery organisation your tenant exchanges data with, resolved to a real company - with drift flags and an enforceable verdict per domain.
- All featuresEvery screen in one list
Fits what you run
Native to Microsoft 365, open to the rest of your stack.
Every action runs through Microsoft Graph, roles sync from Entra, setup takes minutes, and the platform stays read-only until you decide to enable writes. There is no agent to install, no SQL Server to host and no discovery schedule to tune.
A public REST API and an MCP server expose logs, detections, alerts, users and compliance status, so your SIEM, SOC or MSSP receives events that already carry the user, the file, the device, the location and who could reach what, instead of raw audit rows or a CSV export.
Run it as SaaS, in your own Azure subscription with our container images, or on-premise, air-gapped if needed. Each tenant gets its own database, and disconnecting removes the data within seven days.
Savings, last and measured
It runs on the licences you already have, and finds the ones you do not use.
Most of what 1Security does needs no premium Microsoft plan: content scanning without E5 or Purview, locations and sign-in context without Entra ID P1, three years of history without a retention add-on or a SIEM contract. On top of that it ranks what you pay for and nobody uses, each item with its idle time and a reclaim action waiting in the review queue.
- Business Basicthe plan most features run on
- 3 yearsof enriched history without a retention add-on
- 0E5, Purview or P1 add-ons needed for content scanning and locations
- 1 queueunused licences, dead apps, orphaned sites and mailboxes, reclaimed from one place
Keep both or switch
Most Quest customers keep Quest. They add 1Security.
If you run On Demand Migration for a tenant merge, On Demand Recovery for identity backup, Change Auditor for your domain controllers or Nova for help-desk delegation, keep them: 1Security does none of those jobs. It takes sensitive data, who and which agent can reach what, anomalies, devices and locations, remediation and compliance evidence. The two never fight over the same setting: On Demand Audit never writes to your tenant, and 1Security stays read-only until you enable actions.
If On Demand Audit is your only Quest product, the question is simpler: a ten-year raw archive you search by hand, or three years of events that already carry the sensitivity of the file, the device, the location and who could reach it, with the fix one click away. The free proof of concept runs side by side on your own tenant: read-only consent in the morning, first findings the same day on a small tenant, and one meeting to compare what each tool showed.
What the side-by-side POC compares
- Sensitive data in file and email content that no audit event or permission report mentions
- Who can reach the ten most sensitive files, as one answer, next to the permission reports you have today
- Unknown devices and locations in the last 90 days, without premium sign-in logs
- Anomalies on users, apps and agents over 90 days, next to the spike alerts you receive today
- AI agents and apps, and what each can reach
- Licences, apps, sites and mailboxes you pay for and nobody uses
FAQ
Questions buyers ask when they already run Quest.
Do I have to remove Quest to use 1Security?
No. 1Security reads your tenant through its own Entra app with read-only consent and changes nothing until you enable actions. Every Quest product keeps working as before. Teams that keep both leave migration, identity recovery, on-premises AD auditing and delegation with Quest and move sensitive data, reach, incidents, compliance and AI access to 1Security.
Quest keeps audit history for ten years and 1Security for three. Is that not a step back?
If a regulator requires more than three years of raw audit rows, keep On Demand Audit for that archive; it does the job well. The three years in 1Security are a different thing: each event already carries the sensitivity of the file, the device, the location, the app and who could reach the resource, which is what you need when the question is "is this an incident, and what is the blast radius". Events also flow to your SIEM over the API for as long as you want to keep them there.
Which Microsoft licence do I need?
Nearly everything works on Business Basic, Office 365 E1 or Microsoft 365 E3. Content scanning, locations and three-year history need no premium plan, and location intelligence does not depend on Entra ID P1 sign-in logs. The few features that read premium Microsoft data, such as Purview detections or per-sign-in detail, are listed on the requirements page with what you get without them, and the free licence checker tells you before you connect.
Does 1Security store my file or email content?
No. Content is streamed into the sensitivity scan and discarded when it finishes. What persists is the detection type, the match count and a confidence bucket linked to the file, never the matched values. The data handling page lists exactly what is read and what is stored, and the same platform can run in your own Azure subscription or on-premise if the data must not leave your cloud.
How does it feed our SIEM or SOC?
Through the public REST API: logs, detections, alerts, security alerts, users, compliance status and Copilot readiness, with scoped API keys per tenant or organisation-wide for MSSPs. The same reads are available as MCP tools. Sentinel and Splunk pairings are described on their own pages, and the events arrive already enriched, so the SOC does not rebuild the context from raw rows.
How do you know what Quest does and does not do?
From Quest's own technical documents, the On Demand Audit user guide, security guide and release notes and the Enterprise Reporter guides, from reseller listings that reproduce Quest's price list, and from Microsoft's app certification records, each linked under the table with the date we last checked. Quest's web pages themselves block automated reading, so where a fact rests on a search snippet the fact sheet says so. If something has changed or we got a row wrong, tell us and we will correct it.
What does the free POC include, and how long does it take?
A read-only connection to your tenant, a full scan, and a comparison meeting. A small tenant shows first results within one to two hours; a tenant with around a million files takes six to twelve hours for the first full map. Nothing is changed in your tenant during the POC, and nothing in your Quest setup needs to change.
See both on your own tenant.
Book a demo, then a free side-by-side proof of concept next to Quest. Read-only consent, first findings the same day, nothing changed in your tenant or in your Quest setup.
Or keep ten years of audit rows and search them by hand when the auditor calls.