Rencore Governance alternative for Microsoft 365
Rencore knows what is in your tenant. Who knows what happened in it?
Rencore Governance keeps the widest inventory of the governance tools we compare: Microsoft 365, Power Platform, Azure, Copilot Studio and, in preview, Claude and ChatGPT Enterprise, with policies and automations on top. It is an inventory of settings, refreshed on a schedule. 1Security adds the time axis and the content: three years of who did what from where, sensitive data found inside files and mail rather than in labels, anomalies, locations, devices, email, and compliance evidence mapped to regulations. It secures the tenant and lets you respond to incidents, and it runs next to Rencore without touching a single setting.
- Verified 25 Oct 2026
- Keep both or switch
- Free side-by-side POC
- Every claim sourced below
Fair first
What Rencore Governance does well.
Written so a Rencore customer nods. These are real strengths, and a team that relies on them can keep them while 1Security takes the security side.
The widest inventory
Seventeen connectors with relationships between objects: Microsoft 365, Entra ID, Exchange, Planner and Viva Engage in every plan, Power Apps, Power Automate and Power BI as one module, Azure, Copilot, Copilot Studio, Foundry, Claude Enterprise and ChatGPT Enterprise as another. Nobody else in this family covers Power Platform and Azure resources this well.
Policies and automations with approvals
More than 250 policy and report templates, a Policy Builder with conditions on related objects, five severities, and automations that run on a schedule, on a violation or after a review, with email, Teams, HTTP, webhook and Azure Function steps and an approval step where you want one.
Reviews, provisioning and the Teams app
Owner reviews of teams, sites and groups with owner, member, site access and file access steps, started by hand, on a schedule or by a policy violation. Provisioning from templates with requests and approvals in a Teams app that reached general availability in June 2026; Power Apps became reviewable in October.
EU hosting and delegation
A German vendor with ISO 27001 and 27017 certificates and a SOC 2 Type 2 report, data in Frankfurt or Zurich if you choose, and Virtual Environments that hand a country or a subsidiary its own dashboards and roles. Licence and pay-as-you-go agent costs are tracked with the prices you enter.
What it does not touch
Four questions an inventory 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 Rencore Governance feature list, by design: it collects metadata about what exists, on a schedule, and polices that snapshot.
- 01
Who did what, and when
Three years of who touched which file, from where and on which device, as standard. "Is this an incident, and what is the blast radius?" is answered in minutes. Rencore keeps only the latest scan for most objects; its file report "shows the last change only" and "is not an activity history", and its own guide sends you to Microsoft Purview for opened, viewed and downloaded events.
- 02
Sensitive data in content, not only in labels
Rencore collects no content from files, emails, documents or messages, so a file is sensitive only if it carries a Purview label, and Rencore does not apply labels itself. 1Security scans the content of files and emails with its own engine, more than 300 detectors plus OCR for scans and photos: account numbers, contracts, identity numbers, passwords saved in files. Content is streamed through the scan and never stored.
- 03
Anomalies, locations, devices
1Security learns what is normal for each user, app and agent and flags what breaks the pattern: sign-ins from VPN, Tor and datacenter networks, from places nobody in your company works from, from devices you have never seen, and whether Conditional Access actually covers them. Rencore policies are filters on the inventory, recalculated when a scan lands on its daily-to-monthly target interval; an automation fires at most once a day per object, and there is no location or network layer.
- 04
Email
The Rencore Exchange connector inventories user, room and equipment mailboxes with their redirect rules, and ships one policy for external redirects. 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 Rencore Governance, row by row.
Three states, not two: where Rencore has a lighter version of something, the row says so, and where Rencore is ahead, the row says that too. Every Rencore cell carries a number that resolves to a public source below the table.
- 16Covered
- 1Partial or lighter
- 0Not covered
- 1Covered
- 14Partial or lighter
- 2Not covered
| Capability | 1Security | Rencore |
|---|---|---|
| Gaps and incidents | ||
| Activity history | 1SecurityCovered 3 years as standard, each event carrying the user, file, device, location, app and the sensitivity of what was touched | RencorePartial or lighter Latest scan for most objects; the file report "is not an activity history" and opened, viewed and downloaded events are not in the inventory6 |
| Sign-in logs | 1SecurityCovered Per-user sign-ins with network, device and Conditional Access coverage | RencorePartial or lighter Reports for Conditional Access, failed, MFA-registered and risky sign-ins; risky sign-ins as an inventory object8 |
| Anomaly detection | 1SecurityCovered Learns what is normal per user, app and agent; threshold you set and re-apply to history | RencoreNot covered Policies are filters on one object type with five severities, recalculated as scans update the inventory; no baselines or behaviour analysis7 |
| Locations and networks | 1SecurityCovered Country, city, VPN, Tor and datacenter classification, map, per-user travel | RencoreNot covered No location or network object in the connector references; sign-in reporting stops at the four Entra reports8 |
| Devices | 1SecurityCovered Every device touching data, unmanaged ones flagged, disable action | RencorePartial or lighter Entra directory devices with owners and users, one policy on devices of disabled accounts; no link from a device to the data it touched8 |
| Sensitive data detection | 1SecurityCovered Own engine with 300+ detectors and OCR, on any licence; Purview detections as a second opinion | RencorePartial or lighter Purview sensitivity labels on sites and groups; "does not collect content from data files, emails, documents, or messages"4 |
| Email and mailboxes | 1SecurityCovered Outbound sensitive content, delegated sending, shared mailboxes, actions on messages | RencorePartial or lighter User, room and equipment mailboxes with redirect rules; one policy on external redirects; no Exchange actions9 |
| Administration, compliance, AI | ||
| Inventory breadth | 1SecurityPartial or lighter Microsoft 365, Entra ID, Exchange, apps and agents; no Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI or Azure resource inventory | RencoreCovered 17 connectors incl. Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI, Azure, Copilot Studio, Foundry, Claude and ChatGPT Enterprise (preview); AI and Power Platform as paid modules2 |
| Permission graph | 1SecurityCovered Direct grants, links, groups, site roles, inheritance, apps, agents and guests resolved into one answer per file | RencorePartial or lighter Sharing links by kind, external access, broken inheritance; file and folder permissions need the Files & Folders add-on; "Everyone except external users" found at site level only10 |
| Remediation | 1SecurityCovered 40+ actions across users, sites, files, apps, licences, devices, agents and email; review queue, grace period, revert, read-back confirmation | RencorePartial or lighter 77 built-in actions listed across connectors plus automations with approval steps; no revert documented, one automation run per object per day14 |
| Compliance mapping | 1SecurityCovered 11 frameworks on shared requirements, weekly snapshots, dated evidence packs | RencorePartial or lighter Compliance score against your own policies, "evidence for your own compliance work, not a certification"; no mapping to regulations or standards in the docs13 |
| AI agents | 1SecurityCovered What each agent can reach across files, sites and email, who deployed it, its activity and anomalies, quarantine and identity actions | RencorePartial or lighter Copilot Studio agents with knowledge, conversations and costs, quarantine, delete and reassign; SharePoint agents; Agent Builder and Agent 365 agents not in the inventory12 |
| Copilot readiness | 1SecurityCovered Dedicated screen: what Copilot reaches today, fix list, per-site indexing block, progress since the first assessment | RencorePartial or lighter Four-step guide on oversharing, unlabelled sites, old files and retiring content, plus usage and cost reports; "cannot delete or move a single file"11 |
| Fit and deployment | ||
| Public API | 1SecurityCovered REST for logs, detections, alerts, users, compliance, readiness; MCP server with the same reads | RencorePartial or lighter Outbound only: HTTP request, webhook and Azure Function steps from automations, ServiceNow example; no public read API documented15 |
| SIEM feed | 1SecurityCovered Enriched events pulled by Sentinel, Splunk or any SOC over the API | RencorePartial or lighter Outbound HTTP and webhook steps can post a violation to a collector; a SIEM feed is not in the product documentation15 |
| Deployment and residency | 1SecurityCovered SaaS, your own Azure (BYOC) or on-premise at any size; a dedicated database per tenant | RencorePartial or lighter SaaS in a shared Azure subscription, region of choice: Frankfurt, Zurich, Iowa or New South Wales; isolated environment as an Enterprise-only add-on16 |
| Microsoft licence needed | 1SecurityCovered Nearly everything on Business Basic, E1 or E3; no E5 or Purview for content scanning | RencorePartial or lighter Required Microsoft plans are not stated; sensitivity depends on Purview labels being deployed; Copilot and agent data on the paid AI & Agents module1 |
- Covered
- Partial or lighter
- Not covered
Sources for every Rencore Governance claim
Verified 2026-10-25- 1.Rencore Governance pricing and plans (minimums, modules, 14-day trial) - rencore.com/en/pricing
- 2.Rencore Governance connectors reference (17 connectors, modules) - docs.rencore.com/governance/connectors/
- 3.Rencore Governance add-ons and modules (Files & Folders, AI & Agents) - docs.rencore.com/governance/getting-started/rencore-governance-add-ons
- 4.Rencore Governance customer data (no file or message content collected) - docs.rencore.com/governance/reference/security-and-privacy/data/customer-data
- 5.Rencore Governance data retention (latest scan for most objects) - docs.rencore.com/governance/reference/security-and-privacy/data/data-retention
- 6.Rencore guide: see who last changed a file ("not an activity history") - docs.rencore.com/governance/guides/reports/see-who-last-changed-a-file
- 7.Rencore Governance concept: policies and violations - docs.rencore.com/governance/concepts/policies-and-violations
- 8.Rencore Governance Entra ID connector (objects, policies, reports) - docs.rencore.com/governance/connectors/entra-id/
- 9.Rencore Governance Exchange connector (mailboxes and redirect rules) - docs.rencore.com/governance/connectors/exchange/
- 10.Rencore use case: find and fix oversharing - docs.rencore.com/governance/use-cases/find-and-fix-oversharing
- 11.Rencore use case: prepare your content for Copilot - docs.rencore.com/governance/use-cases/prepare-your-content-for-copilot
- 12.Rencore use case: govern AI agents - docs.rencore.com/governance/use-cases/govern-ai-agents
- 13.Rencore use case: report and prove compliance - docs.rencore.com/governance/use-cases/report-and-prove-compliance
- 14.Rencore Governance built-in actions reference - docs.rencore.com/governance/reference/actions/
- 15.Rencore use case: connect governance to your ticket system (HTTP, webhooks) - docs.rencore.com/governance/use-cases/connect-governance-to-your-ticket-system
- 16.Rencore Governance data residency (regions, shared Azure hosting) - docs.rencore.com/governance/reference/security-and-privacy/data/data-residency
- 17.Rencore Governance release notes 2026 - releases.rencore.com/
- 18.Rencore FAQ: limitations of automations (once a day per object) - docs.rencore.com/governance/faq/what-are-the-limitations-of-automations/
- 19.Rencore Governance concept: inventory and scanning (metadata only, intervals) - docs.rencore.com/governance/concepts/inventory-and-scanning
- 20.Rencore Governance certifications and compliance (ISO 27001, SOC 2) - docs.rencore.com/governance/reference/security-and-privacy/certifications-and-compliance
Rencore and Rencore Governance are trademarks of their owner, Rencore GmbH. This comparison was written by 1Security from public documentation and was not reviewed by Rencore. 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 tools have a feature, the difference is whether the answer reaches the file and the event, 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 and guests, down to the file without an add-on. 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, instead of waiting for the next scan to confirm it.
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, not a score against your own policies.
AI agents and Copilot
Not an inventory 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. 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 Rencore Governance 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.
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.
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. 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 Rencore Governance for provisioning, owner reviews, workspace lifecycle and the Power Platform, Power BI and Azure inventory, keep it. 1Security takes incidents, sensitive data in content, anomalies, locations, devices, email, compliance evidence and agent reach, and the two never fight over the same setting: 1Security is read-only until you enable actions, and every action waits in a review queue with a grace period and a revert.
The free proof of concept runs side by side on your own tenant, next to Rencore: 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 that carries no label and is reachable by guests or Anyone links
- Who opened, downloaded or shared those files in the last 90 days, and from where
- Unknown devices and locations in the last 90 days
- AI agents and apps, and what each can actually reach
- Anomalies on users, apps and agents over 90 days
- Mail leaving with sensitive content and who can send as whom
FAQ
Questions buyers ask when they already run Rencore Governance.
Do I have to remove Rencore Governance to use 1Security?
No. 1Security reads your tenant through its own Entra app with read-only consent and changes nothing until you enable actions. Rencore keeps working as before, and the POC runs next to it. Teams that keep both usually leave provisioning, owner reviews, lifecycle and the Power Platform and Azure inventory with Rencore and move incidents, sensitive data, compliance and AI access 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. 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 or plan tier for self-hosting.
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 Rencore Governance does and does not do?
From Rencore's public documentation, pricing page and weekly release notes, each linked under the table with the date we last checked. Where Rencore is ahead, such as Power Platform and Azure inventory, the table 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.
See both on your own tenant.
Book a demo, then a free side-by-side proof of concept next to Rencore Governance. Read-only consent, first findings the same day, nothing changed in your tenant.
Or keep a perfect inventory of what is there and no record of what happened to it.