Sponsored: Choosing an Effective AD Auditing and Reporting Tool

Anyone who works with Microsoft Active Directory (AD) has experienced challenges around auditing and reporting. Successful, effective auditing is essential for the compliance and security of your network, but the complexity of AD can present a roadblock. Add in artifacts and human error, and you can end up in a mess that could consume a vast amount of time and resources to clean up.

Today’s networks must put a premium on security. Add in ever-expanding regulatory requirements, a largely mobile workforce, and constantly evolving technology and devices, and upping your audit game becomes a necessity. You need a method for creating an audit trail that can be searched, sorted, and filtered to track relevant actions. You need the means to automatically monitor AD for suspicious behavior. And you need a way to clean up the artifacts that can slow down performance.

When evaluating your AD monitoring options, ask whether the solution provides:

• Data visualization. Does the solution provide a full visual representation of your Directory Services, including domains, devices, users, groups, and organizational units (OUs)? Can you display, filter, and analyze your complete hierarchical directory structure, including AD domains and forests, as well as all LDAP-compatible directory services?
• Change tracking. Can you easily track changes to and permissions for AD objects? Does the solution let you automatically detect and fix changes that fall outside your organization’s change management policies? Do you have a way to detect actions that exceed baseline activity, to help you catch and prevent breach attempts? And can you configure real-time alerts for any unauthorized attempts to escalate privilege or access resources?
• Ability to meet regulatory requirements. Will the solution help you meet regulatory requirements laid out by SOX, HIPAA, PCI, GLB, FERC/NERC, and so on? You’ll need a solution that allows you to quickly get accurate answers to questions such as who added a user to a particular group, how a user gained access to a specific resource and what the user did as a result, whether a group policy was modified and who made the change, and who has which permissions.

A strong AD monitoring tool can help you effectively manage your AD environment while saving money and improving performance and security.

Further Reading: Active Directory Monitoring Resources from Varonis

4 Tips to Secure Active Directory: Insight from AD admins and other security professionals on how to take action now to protect your network.

Active Directory & DatAdvantage Overview: Learn how cleaning and keeping your Active Directory organized can save hours in your workweek and take the drudgery out of AD management.

Secure Active Directory in 4 Steps: In this webinar, you’ll learn a simple process for monitoring and securing your AD environment.

Active Directory Domain Best Naming Practices: Understand how your domain naming practices can aid—or hinder—AD management.

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