Areebi vs 6clicks: Runtime AI Control Plane vs GRC Platform (Australia)

Choose 6clicks if your problem is governing, documenting and reporting on risk and compliance; choose Areebi if your problem is technically enforcing data and policy controls on live AI traffic - and recognise that many organisations will eventually want both, because they solve problems at different layers.

6clicks and Areebi are often discussed together because both speak the language of AI governance and both emphasise Australian data sovereignty and self-hostable deployment. But they are not substitutes. 6clicks positions itself as a governance, risk and compliance (GRC) platform: the place where you maintain your risk register, map evidence to controls across many frameworks, run audits, manage third-party risk and - increasingly - govern your AI programme as a documented practice. Areebi is a runtime secure AI control plane: an enforcement layer that sits in the path between your users and large language models (LLMs) and applies data-loss prevention (DLP), a policy engine, guardrails, access control and immutable audit logging to each request and response as it happens.

One way to frame it: 6clicks helps you prove and manage that you have AI controls; Areebi is one of the controls, operating at the moment a person pastes a customer record into a chatbot. A GRC platform can record a policy that says "do not send personal information to public AI tools"; a runtime control plane is what can actually inspect and block that paste in real time. Used together, the GRC platform sets and tracks the obligation and the control plane technically enforces it - which is why we describe them as complementary rather than competitive. For an Australian buyer the practical question is simply which problem is in front of you right now.

One more thing we will say plainly throughout this page: 6clicks is the more mature company. It is established, publicly states relevant certifications and has real, named customers. Areebi is early-stage and in stealth. We think an honest comparison that concedes that is more useful to you than one that pretends otherwise.

The clearest way to understand Areebi versus 6clicks is to picture where each sits relative to a live AI interaction.

6clicks operates at the governance and management layer. Its own positioning - "GRC that works where others can't" - is built around being sovereign GRC infrastructure for government, defence and critical infrastructure. The work it describes is the work of a GRC programme: maintaining control registers, mapping evidence to controls, running risk assessments, managing audits as a dashboard rather than a project, handling third-party and vendor risk, and supporting a large library of frameworks and standards (it publicly cites more than 1,000). Its Hailey AI engine is positioned to accelerate that work - automatically mapping evidence to controls, identifying gaps across frameworks and drafting assessment responses - and its Responsible AI capability is positioned to help organisations govern their AI use against standards such as ISO/IEC 42001. Crucially, this is governance about AI and risk; it is the documentation, assessment and reporting layer.

Areebi operates at the runtime enforcement layer. It sits inline between users (or applications) and the LLMs they call, and it acts on the traffic itself. Before a prompt reaches a model, Areebi's DLP can detect and redact sensitive data; its policy engine can allow, block or transform the request based on user, data class and destination; its guardrails can constrain inputs and outputs; and every event is written to an immutable audit log. It also performs shadow-AI discovery to surface unsanctioned AI tools in use, and enforces access control over who may use which models for what. This is not governance about AI on paper - it is the technical control point at the moment of use.

Because these are different layers, comparing them feature-for-feature is the wrong exercise. A control register is not a competitor to a DLP policy any more than a fire-safety audit competes with a sprinkler. The honest comparison is about fit: which layer of the problem you are solving for, and whether you need the management system, the enforcement point, or both.

We will not pretend otherwise: across several dimensions that matter to a serious buyer, 6clicks is ahead of Areebi today. An honest comparison has to say so.

• Company maturity and proof. 6clicks is an established business, Australian-founded in Melbourne, with a real, shipping product and publicly referenced enterprise customers including Thales and NTT. It publicly cites a user base in the thousands across many countries, and it has built out a partner ecosystem (for example, a publicly announced partnership with Tata Consultancy Services). Areebi, by contrast, is pre-named-customer and in stealth. If vendor track record and customer references are decision criteria, 6clicks wins clearly.
• Certifications. 6clicks publicly states it is ISO/IEC 27001 and ISO/IEC 42001 certified. Areebi's SOC 2 readiness is in progress and Areebi is not yet certified. That is a material difference today and we are not going to gloss over it.
• Breadth of GRC functionality. 6clicks positions a broad suite of integrated modules spanning cyber GRC, security compliance, IT risk, vendor and third-party risk, ISMS, operational resilience, enterprise risk management and Responsible AI, backed by a library it publicly cites as 1,000+ frameworks. Areebi is deliberately narrow: it does runtime AI control, not full-spectrum GRC. If you need a GRC system of record, Areebi is not it.
• Analyst and market recognition. 6clicks has earned external recognition, including being named a 2024 Gartner Cool Vendor for Third-Party Risk Management (for its Hailey Assist conversational AI) and being featured in Gartner's 2025 Market Guide for Third-Party Risk Management, alongside a presence on analyst and peer-review platforms. Areebi has no analyst ratings, awards or recognition - because it is too early to have earned them, and we are not going to imply otherwise.

These are not minor points. For a procurement team building an AI governance programme and looking for a mature, certified vendor of record, 6clicks is a strong and defensible choice on its own merits.

Areebi's reason to exist is the gap between a documented control and an enforced one. A GRC programme can state that staff must not paste regulated data into public AI tools, can assess the maturity of that control and can report on it to a board or regulator. What a GRC platform does not do - and is not designed to do - is sit in the network path and stop the paste. That runtime enforcement is Areebi's job.

Concretely, Areebi provides:

• Real-time DLP on AI traffic - inspecting prompts (and responses) for personal information, credentials, source code, financial data and other sensitive classes, and redacting or blocking before data leaves your boundary.
• A policy engine - allow, block or transform requests based on user identity, role, data classification and the destination model, so that different teams can have different, enforceable AI permissions.
• Guardrails - constraints on inputs and outputs to reduce unsafe, non-compliant or off-policy behaviour at the point of use.
• Immutable audit logging - a tamper-evident record of who sent what to which model and what came back, which is the evidence a runtime control can hand to a GRC programme.
• Shadow-AI discovery - surfacing unsanctioned AI tools already in use, so governance is based on reality, not assumptions.
• Access control - governing who may use which models, for which purposes.

Areebi is privately deployable - via Docker, Kubernetes, on-premises or in a private cloud - so that AI traffic and logs can stay within Australian boundaries. That deployment model is deliberate, because the value of inline enforcement depends on the data never having to leave your environment in the first place. The honest scope statement is that Areebi is one specialised control plane, not a governance suite - and that is the point.

Because they sit at different layers, the most realistic picture for many Australian enterprises is not "Areebi or 6clicks" but "6clicks for the programme, Areebi for enforcement".

Consider an APRA-regulated institution or a government agency standing up AI use responsibly. In 6clicks, the team defines the AI governance programme: it maps obligations from standards such as ISO/IEC 42001, the Australian Voluntary AI Safety Standard or internal policy to specific controls, assesses risk, manages third-party AI vendor risk, and maintains audit-ready evidence and reporting. That is the management system - the place leadership and auditors look to understand whether AI is being governed.

Areebi then operationalises the controls that are about live usage. Where the 6clicks programme records a control like "prevent disclosure of personal information to external LLMs", Areebi is the runtime point that actually inspects traffic, redacts or blocks the disclosure, and produces an immutable log of every decision. That log becomes evidence that can feed straight back into the GRC programme - closing the loop between a control as written and a control as enforced.

This is the same separation of duties seen elsewhere in security: a GRC platform documents that you have endpoint protection; the endpoint agent does the protecting. Neither replaces the other. So if you already run, or are evaluating, 6clicks, that is not a reason to dismiss Areebi - and vice versa. The question is whether your written controls about AI usage are currently being enforced anywhere in real time. If they are not, that is the gap a runtime control plane fills, sitting underneath whatever GRC system you choose.

Both vendors lean into Australian and broader regulated-market requirements, and both emphasise sovereignty - but in service of different layers.

6clicks frames sovereignty around where the GRC platform and its AI processing run: its public materials describe SaaS, sovereign cloud, self-hosted and an air-gapped GRC Appliance, and position Hailey as "your model, your language, inside your boundary". That is sovereignty for the management system and the AI that automates it.

Areebi frames sovereignty around where live AI traffic and its audit trail are inspected and stored: by deploying as a private control plane inside your own infrastructure, the prompts, responses and logs that flow through it can remain in Australia, under your control, never traversing a third-party SaaS. That matters for obligations under the Australian Privacy Act, for APRA CPS 230 operational-risk expectations, and for agencies aligning to the DTA's AI policy and sovereign AI goals.

The frameworks themselves reinforce that you generally need both layers. Standards like ISO/IEC 42001 and the Australian Voluntary AI Safety Standard call for governance, documentation and ongoing oversight - the work a GRC platform such as 6clicks does well - and for technical controls over data and model use, which is where a runtime AI control plane with AI DLP earns its place. Choosing one layer does not discharge the other.

A short decision guide, written to be fair to both products:

• Pick 6clicks if your immediate need is a GRC system of record: a place to maintain risk registers, control libraries, multi-framework compliance, audits, third-party risk and a documented AI governance programme - and you value a mature, certified, Australian-founded vendor with established customers and analyst recognition. On those criteria, 6clicks is the stronger, safer choice today.
• Pick Areebi if your immediate need is to technically enforce what can and cannot be sent to AI models in real time - DLP, policy, guardrails, shadow-AI discovery and immutable logging on live traffic, deployed privately so data stays in Australia. Just go in clear-eyed that Areebi is early-stage: pre-named-customer, in stealth, with SOC 2 readiness in progress rather than complete.
• Consider both if you are building AI governance seriously: use a GRC platform (6clicks or another) to govern and evidence the programme, and a runtime control plane (Areebi) to enforce the usage controls and feed audit evidence back up. They address different layers and reinforce each other.

If you want to pressure-test where Areebi specifically fits in your environment, an AI governance assessment or a technical demo is the fastest way to see the runtime layer in action, and our SOC 2 readiness status is published openly so you can judge our maturity for yourself. If your need is full GRC breadth, 6clicks' own materials are the right place to evaluate that.