AvePoint alternative for Microsoft 365
AvePoint enforces your rules. Who finds the sensitive files nobody labelled?
AvePoint Policies and Insights enforce sharing and permission rules across Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive and Groups, and AgentPulse lists your agents. 1Security closes the Microsoft 365 security gaps the suite leaves open: sensitive content that carries no label, sign-ins, locations and devices, mail, three years of forensics and compliance mapped to eleven frameworks. It runs next to AvePoint, read-only until you say otherwise, and saves more than it costs.
- Verified 25 Oct 2026
- Keep both or switch
- Free side-by-side POC
- Every claim sourced below
Fair first
What AvePoint does well.
Written so an AvePoint customer nods. These are real strengths of a large, mature suite, and a team that relies on them can keep them while 1Security takes the security side.
Rules that enforce themselves
More than 30 ready-made policies for sharing, permissions, naming, labels and guests. Policies watches the Microsoft activity feed, picks up changes as often as every 15 minutes, and either alerts or rolls the change back on its own.
Risk defined your way
Insights lets you say what risk means: which sensitive information types and labels count, how large a group is "large", which external users matter. A risk score and heat map track it over time, and permissions are fixed in bulk straight from the report.
Agent governance across clouds
AgentPulse inventories agents across Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, Amazon and Claude, assigns owners from real activity, runs renewals and re-certification, and can switch Microsoft agents off from the agent page. Policies adds labels to the content agents read.
One vendor, many regions
Backup, migration, adoption analytics, records, data rooms and governance from one platform, hosted in 17 Azure regions including six in Europe, with ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type 2 and CSA STAR behind it.
What it does not collect
Four questions a rules engine was never built to answer.
Each one is a gap a security team feels during an incident, an audit or a Copilot rollout. None of them is on the AvePoint Insights or Policies pages, by design: the suite enforces rules on the data Microsoft already classified, it does not look for what the rules missed.
- 01
Sensitive data the labels missed
AvePoint Insights defines risk through Microsoft and Google sensitive information types and sensitivity labels, configured in the Microsoft 365 compliance center; it describes no content scan of its own. 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: account numbers, contracts, identity numbers, passwords saved in files. Content is streamed through the scan and never stored.
- 02
Sign-ins, locations, devices
Insights works from the Microsoft activity feed. Entra sign-ins reach it only when synchronised from Cloud Backup for IaaS + PaaS, a separate subscription, and no public page mentions locations, VPN or Tor networks, or a device inventory. 1Security learns what is normal for each user, app and agent and flags sign-ins from places nobody works from, from datacenter networks, from devices you have never seen, and tells you whether Conditional Access actually covers them.
- 03
Forensics with a stated horizon
How long AvePoint keeps workspace and user activity in Insights is not stated on any public page; its own Agent 365 comparison quotes up to three years for agent activity only. 1Security keeps three years of who did what, from where and on which device as standard, so "is this an incident, and what is the blast radius?" is answered in minutes instead of a day of stitching logs together.
- 04
Email
Insights covers Teams, Groups, SharePoint, OneDrive, Power BI and Google Drive. Exchange appears in the suite as a backup and migration workload, not as something Insights or Policies watch. 1Security sees sensitive data leaving by email, impersonation through "send as" rights, shared mailboxes with no owner, and lets you act on the messages themselves.
Side by side
1Security vs AvePoint, row by row.
Three states, not two: where AvePoint has a lighter version of something, the row says so. Every AvePoint cell carries a number that resolves to a public source below the table. Where the AvePoint user guide is behind a login and no public page answers, the cell says "not documented" rather than "no".
- 16Covered
- 0Partial or lighter
- 0Not covered
- 2Covered
- 13Partial or lighter
- 1Not covered
| Capability | 1Security | AvePoint |
|---|---|---|
| Gaps and incidents | ||
| Activity history and sign-ins | 1SecurityCovered 3 years as standard, each event carrying the user, file, device, location, app and the sensitivity of what was touched; per-user sign-ins with Conditional Access coverage | AvePointPartial or lighter Activity Feed data cross-referenced for risk; Entra sign-ins arrive through Cloud Backup for IaaS + PaaS, a separate subscription; retention period not published3 |
| Anomaly detection | 1SecurityCovered Learns what is normal per user, app and agent; threshold you set and re-apply to history | AvePointPartial or lighter Risky-user findings from Insights exposure data trigger remediation in Policies; no behaviour baseline documented5 |
| Locations and networks | 1SecurityCovered Country, city, VPN, Tor and datacenter classification, map, per-user travel | AvePointPartial or lighter Not documented for Insights or Policies1 |
| Devices | 1SecurityCovered Every device touching data, unmanaged ones flagged, disable action | AvePointPartial or lighter Policies can enforce the unmanaged-device access setting on workspaces; no device inventory documented2 |
| Sensitive data detection | 1SecurityCovered Own engine with 300+ detectors and OCR, on any licence; Purview detections as a second opinion | AvePointPartial or lighter Microsoft and Google sensitive information types and sensitivity labels, defined in the Microsoft 365 compliance center; no own content scan described1 |
| Email and mailboxes | 1SecurityCovered Outbound sensitive content, delegated sending, shared mailboxes, actions on messages | AvePointNot covered Insights covers Teams, Groups, Sites, OneDrive, Power BI and Google Workspace; mailboxes and mail flow are out of scope10 |
| Administration, compliance, AI | ||
| Permission graph | 1SecurityCovered Direct grants, links, groups, site roles, inheritance, apps, agents and guests resolved into one answer per file | AvePointPartial or lighter Teams, Groups, SharePoint, OneDrive, Power BI and Google Drive with shadow users and sharing links; Entra apps and mailboxes not in scope10 |
| Remediation | 1SecurityCovered 40+ actions across users, sites, files, apps, licences, devices, agents and email; review queue, grace period, revert, read-back confirmation | AvePointCovered Bulk permission edits in Insights; 30+ policies with auto-fix and drift roll-back from the activity feed as often as every 15 minutes; adaptive remediation11 |
| Compliance mapping | 1SecurityCovered 11 frameworks on shared requirements, weekly snapshots, dated evidence packs | AvePointPartial or lighter Risk definitions "aligned to relevant regulations"; no framework mapping documented for Insights; Compliance Guardian is a separate product17 |
| AI agents | 1SecurityCovered What each agent can reach across files, sites and email, who deployed it, its activity and anomalies, quarantine and identity actions | AvePointCovered AgentPulse inventory across Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, Amazon and Claude; ownership, lifecycle, enable or disable Microsoft agents; agent content labeling in Policies5 |
| Copilot readiness | 1SecurityCovered Dedicated screen: what Copilot reaches today, fix list, per-site indexing block, progress since the first assessment | AvePointPartial or lighter Oversharing reports and risk score framed as Copilot preparation; no readiness screen with a fix list documented1 |
| Fit and deployment | ||
| Public API | 1SecurityCovered REST for logs, detections, alerts, users, compliance, readiness; MCP server with the same reads | AvePointPartial or lighter Insights Web API starts export jobs for activities, permissions and sharing links with CSV output; cannot change configuration10 |
| SIEM feed | 1SecurityCovered Enriched events pulled by Sentinel, Splunk or any SOC over the API | AvePointPartial or lighter No SIEM connector documented; the export API is the route10 |
| Deployment and residency | 1SecurityCovered SaaS, your own Azure (BYOC) or on-premise at any size; a dedicated database per tenant | AvePointPartial or lighter SaaS on Azure in 17 regions, six in Europe, chosen at registration; no self-hosted option documented for Insights or Policies7 |
| Microsoft licence needed | 1SecurityCovered Nearly everything on Business Basic, E1 or E3; no E5 or Purview for content scanning | AvePointPartial or lighter Sensitivity relies on Microsoft sensitive information types and labels; ownerless agent detection and label rules need E5, inactive guest detection needs Entra ID P1 or P2, agent content labeling needs a Copilot licence4 |
| Minimum size | 1SecurityCovered No minimum user count in any deployment model | AvePointPartial or lighter List price on request; a UK reseller price sheet sets a 500-user minimum and a 12-month term12 |
- Covered
- Partial or lighter
- Not covered
Sources for every AvePoint claim
Verified 2026-10-25- 1.AvePoint Insights for Microsoft 365 product page (sensitive information types, labels, Activity Feed, workloads) - www.avepoint.com/products/security-insights
- 2.AvePoint Policies for Microsoft 365 product page (drift revert, access controls) - www.avepoint.com/products/policies-microsoft-365
- 3.About AvePoint Insights (workloads, sign-ins synchronised from Cloud Backup, retention setting) - learn.avepoint.com/insights/about-avepoint-insights.html
- 4.About Policies for Microsoft 365 (Microsoft licence and AvePoint subscription prerequisites per rule) - learn.avepoint.com/policies-for-microsoft-365/about-policies-for-microsoft-365.html
- 5.AvePoint Confidence Platform October 2026 updates (AgentPulse, adaptive remediation, risky user remediation) - www.avepoint.com/blog/solutions-blog/avepoint-updates-october-2026
- 6.AvePoint Confidence Platform August 2026 updates (Microsoft 365 agent insights) - www.avepoint.com/blog/solutions-blog/avepoint-updates-august-2026
- 7.AvePoint data centers on Microsoft Azure (services per region) - learn.avepoint.com/platform-overview-and-key-features/data-centers-and-cloud-services/microsoft-azure-cloud-platform.html
- 8.Microsoft 365 App Certification record for Insights for Microsoft 365 (data stored, region, permissions) - learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-app-certification/saas/insights-for-microsoft-365
- 9.Microsoft 365 App Certification record for Policies for Microsoft 365 (Graph permissions) - learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-app-certification/saas/policies-for-microsoft-365
- 10.UK G-Cloud 15 listing for AvePoint Insights (workloads, Web API scope, audit retention answers) - www.applytosupply.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/g-cloud/services/439776825517314
- 11.G-Cloud 15 service definition, Policies and Insights for Microsoft 365 (activity feed, 15 minutes, 30+ policies, SaaS) - assets.applytosupply.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/g-cloud-15/documents/700239/439776825517314-service-definition-document-2026-01-27-1434.pdf
- 12.G-Cloud 15 pricing sheet for AvePoint Insights and Policies (500-user minimum, reseller price) - assets.applytosupply.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/g-cloud-15/documents/700239/439776825517314-pricing-document-2026-01-29-1918.pdf
- 13.AvePoint pricing page - www.avepoint.com/pricing
- 14.AvePoint and Microsoft Agent 365 comparison sheet (agent activity reporting, unpublished agents) - cdn.avepoint.com/pdfs/en/brochures/AvePoint-Agent-365-Together-For-Agentic-Governance.pdf
- 15.AvePoint agentic AI governance solution page (AgentPulse) - www.avepoint.com/solutions/agentic-ai-governance
- 16.AvePoint Confide product page (secure data rooms) - www.avepoint.com/products/avepoint-confide
- 17.AvePoint Compliance Guardian product page (separate scanning product) - www.avepoint.com/products/compliance-guardian
- 18.AvePoint Online Services licensing for Microsoft 365 subscriptions (Solution Units) - learn.avepoint.com/licensing/microsoft-365-subscriptions/avepoint-online-services-for-microsoft-365.html
- 19.AvePoint news, July 2026 (AgentPulse, Copilot Studio agent backup) - www.avepoint.com/news/avepoint-deepens-the-trust-layer-for-agentic-ai-enterprise-governance-and-multicloud-data-protection-260721
AvePoint, AvePoint Insights, Policies for Microsoft 365, AgentPulse and Confide are trademarks of AvePoint, Inc. This comparison was written by 1Security from public documentation and was not reviewed by AvePoint. If a row is out of date, write to us and we will fix it.
Richer administration
Beyond the gaps: the same questions, answered deeper.
Where both platforms have a feature, the difference is how far the answer goes, how many products you need to open to get it, and whether you can act on it from the same screen.
Who has access, and why
One graph across every path: direct permissions, sharing links, group membership, site roles, inheritance, apps, agents, guests and mailboxes. Every external organisation that touches your tenant resolved to a real company and reconciled with your trusted-domain settings, in one product rather than Insights plus AgentPulse plus Cense.
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. A policy that rolls back a change on its own is useful; a queue that shows what will change before it does is what an auditor asks for.
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.
AI agents and Copilot
Not a list of agents: what each one can actually read across files, sites, users and email, who deployed it, what it did, and when it broke its own pattern, on the licences you already have. 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 an AvePoint 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 and no mailbox to re-route, and an AvePoint policy keeps enforcing what it enforced yesterday.
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 job.
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 without premium sign-in logs, three years of history without a SIEM contract, agent reach without a Copilot licence per rule. 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 activity history without a SIEM contract
- 0E5 or Purview add-ons needed for content scanning
- 1 queueunused licences, dead apps, orphaned sites and mailboxes, reclaimed from one place
Keep both or switch
You do not have to choose on day one.
If your team relies on AvePoint for policy enforcement, provisioning, backup or migration, keep it. 1Security takes incidents, unlabelled sensitive data, sign-ins and devices, mail, compliance and AI access. 1Security is read-only until you enable actions, and every action is staged in a review queue, so an AvePoint policy and a 1Security action never race on the same setting unless you decide they should.
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 platform showed. Many customers run both for a year and then decide which one they still open.
What the side-by-side POC compares
- Sensitive data that carries no label and is reachable by guests or Anyone links
- Unknown devices and locations in the last 90 days, and whether Conditional Access covers them
- AI agents and apps, and what each can actually reach across files, sites and mail
- Anomalies on users, apps and agents over 90 days
- Mail leaving with sensitive content and who can send as whom
- Licences, apps, sites and mailboxes you pay for and nobody uses
FAQ
Questions buyers ask when they already run AvePoint.
Do I have to remove AvePoint to use 1Security?
No. 1Security reads your tenant through its own Entra app with read-only consent and changes nothing until you enable actions. AvePoint Policies keeps enforcing, Cloud Backup keeps backing up, AgentPulse keeps its inventory. Teams that keep both usually leave rule enforcement, provisioning and backup with AvePoint and move incidents, unlabelled sensitive data, sign-ins and devices, mail, compliance and AI reach to 1Security.
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 agent reach does not need a Copilot licence. 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.
Can the data stay in my own cloud?
Yes. Besides SaaS you can run 1Security in your own Azure subscription from our container images, or on-premise. Each tenant gets its own database in every model, and there is no minimum user count for self-hosting or for SaaS.
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.
How do you know what AvePoint does and does not do?
From AvePoint's public product pages, the public pages of its documentation site, its monthly update posts and brochures, Microsoft's app certification records and the service definitions AvePoint resellers file on the UK G-Cloud marketplace, each linked under the table with the date we last checked. Much of the AvePoint user guide is behind a login; where no public page answers, the row says "not documented" rather than "no". 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 next to the AvePoint reports you already have. 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.
See both on your own tenant.
Book a demo, then a free side-by-side proof of concept next to AvePoint. Read-only consent, first findings the same day, nothing changed in your tenant.
Or keep trusting that every sensitive file got its label.