Change Auditor for Active Directory

Monitor AD for improved security and compliance

Download Free Trial

Contact Sales

Learn about Change Auditor for Active Directory

04:07

Active Directory (AD) issues can result in unplanned and costly service disruptions and business-crippling network downtime. Harmful data breaches and non-compliance with SOX, PCI, HIPAA, GDPR and more can cause you to incur hefty costs as well. You need to Active Directory auditing and security that ensures you’re notified in real time of critical changes to both AD and Azure AD.

Ensure the security, compliance and control of AD and Azure AD with Change Auditor for Active Directory. Track, audit, report and alert on all key configuration changes and consolidate them in a single console — without the overhead of turning on native auditing. Proactively protect objects and track all changes in real time with complete visibility using Change Auditor.

Hybrid AD auditing

Get a single, correlated view of all AD and Azure AD activity, with visibility of all changes whether on-prem or in the cloud.

At-a-glance display

Track user and administrator activity with detailed information for change events, plus original and current values for all changes.

Hosted dashboard

View hybrid AD and Office 365 activity together in On Demand Audit, a SaaS dashboard with flexible search and data visualization.

Object protection

Protect against changes to critical Active Directory objects, such as accidentally deleted OUs and modified GPO settings.

Account lockout

Capture the originating IP address/workstation name for account lockout events to simplify troubleshooting.

Real-time alerts on the move

Send critical change and pattern alerts to email and mobile devices to prompt immediate action, even while you're not on site.

SIEM integration

Integrate with SIEM solutions to forward Change Auditor events to Splunk, ArcSight or QRadar.

Auditor-ready reporting

Generate comprehensive reports to support regulatory compliance mandates for GDPR, SOX, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, FISMA, GLBA and more.

On Demand Audit Hybrid Suite for Office 365

With just a few clicks, you can pair Change Auditor for Active Directory and Change Auditor for Logon Activity with On Demand Audit to get a single, hosted view of all changes made across AD, Azure AD, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business and Teams. Simplify investigations with responsive search and interactive data visualization, and retain audit history for up to 10 years.

Learn How to Upgrade

Features

Superior auditing engine

Remove auditing limitations and captures change information without the need for native audit logs, resulting in faster results and significant savings of storage resources.

Security timelines

View, highlight and filter change events and discover their relation to other security events in chronological order across your AD and Azure AD environment for better forensic analysis and security incident response.

AD-change rollback

Restore previous values on unauthorized, mistaken or improper changes with the click of a button, directly in the Change Auditor console, honoring the rights and privileges of the user requesting the rollback.

Quest InTrust integration

Integrate with Quest InTrust for 20:1 compressed event storage and centralized native or third-party log collection, parsing and analysis with alerting and automated response actions to suspicious events such as known ransomware attacks or fishy PowerShell commands.

Improved security insights

Correlate disparate IT data from numerous systems and devices into IT Security Search, an interactive search engine for fast security incident response and forensic analysis. Include user entitlements and activity, event trends, suspicious patterns and more with rich visualizations and event timelines.

Change Auditor object protection is a lifesaver. I have it set up to prevent changes to the ACLs on certain directories on our file servers, as well as to protect all administrative accounts. We’ve had pen testers come in and be very surprised that they could not get past the Change Auditor object protection

Enterprise Administrator, Large Retail Chain

Read Case Study

With Change Auditor, we achieved our goal of gaining complete and centralized visibility of security audit operations across the entire Group — including not just our on-premises Windows file servers and domain controllers but also our Office 365 services, such as mail, SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business

Mirco Destro, CIO and IT Manager, AFV Beltrame Group

Read Case Study

Previously, investigating an issue could easily take an hour. Change Auditor cuts that time to just 5–10 minutes.

Dennis Persson, IT Systems Technician, Region Halland

Read Case Study

Alerts

Alerts

Alert on and monitor critical changes made to Active Directory.

Group Policy

Group Policy

Alert on and monitor critical changes made to Group Policy objects.

Account lockout

Account lockout

Receive alerts when accounts are locked.

Object protection

Object protection

Prevent changes to critical objects and settings.

Role-based access

Role-based access

Provide role-based access to control who can do or see what.

Hosted dashboard with On Demand Audit

Hosted dashboard with On Demand Audit

Pair Change Auditor with On Demand Audit to get a single, hosted view of all hybrid AD and Office 365 activity together.

Stevie Awards 2018 People’s Choice winner

In the 2018 Stevie Award’s People Choice awards, Change Auditor was voted best software and also won a Silver Stevie for best new product of 2018

Specifications

Change Auditor System Requirements

There are specific system requirements for the Change Auditor coordinator (server-side), Change Auditor client (client-side), Change Auditor agent (server-side), and the Change Auditor workstation and web client (optional components). For a full list of system requirements and required permissions for all components and target systems that can be audited by Change Auditor please refer to the Change Auditor Installation Guide.

Change Auditor Coordinator Requirements (Server-side component)

The Change Auditor coordinator is responsible for fulfilling client and agent requests and for generating alerts.

Processor: Quad core Intel® Core™ i7 equivalent or better

Memory: Minimum: 8 GB RAM or better
Recommended: 32 GB RAM or better

SQL Server

SQL databases supported up to the following versions:

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 SP4
Microsoft SQL Server 2014 SP3
Microsoft SQL Server 2016 SP2
Microsoft SQL Server 2017
Microsoft SQL Server 2019

NOTE: Change Auditor supports SQL AlwaysOn Availability Groups, SQL Clusters, and databases that have row and page compression applied.

Operating system

Installation platforms (x64) supported up to the following versions:

Windows Server 2012
Windows Server 2012 R2
Windows Server 2016
Windows Server 2019

NOTE: Microsoft Windows Data Access Components (MDAC) must be enabled. (MDAC is part of the operating system and enabled by default.)

Coordinator software and configuration

For the best performance, Quest strongly recommends:

Install the Change Auditor coordinator on a dedicated member server.

The Change Auditor database should be configured on a separate, dedicated SQL server instance.

NOTE: Do NOT pre-allocate a fixed size for the Change Auditor database.

In addition, the following software/configuration is required:

The coordinator must have LDAP and GC connectivity to all domain controllers in the local domain and the forest root domain.
x64 version of Microsoft’s .NET 4.7.1

x64 version of Microsoft XML Parser (MSXML) 6.0
x64 version of Microsoft SQLXML 4.0

Coordinator footprint

Estimated hard disk space used: 1 GB.
Coordinator RAM usage is highly dependent on the environment, number of agent connections, and event volume.
Estimated database size will vary depending on the number of agents deployed and audited events captured.

Additional Account Coordinator minimum permissions required, please see Change Auditor Installation Guide .

Resources

Change Auditor for Active Directory

Datasheet

Change Auditor for Active Directory

Ensure security, compliance and control of AD and Azure AD.

Read Datasheet

Overcoming Office 365 Security & Compliance Auditing Challenges

White Paper

Overcoming Office 365 Security & Compliance Auditing Challenges

Commercial use of Office 365 has skyrocketed in recent years — but most organizations admit they still lack the

Read White Paper

Integrated change auditing and event log management for strong security

White Paper

Integrated change auditing and event log management for strong security

This white paper explores how you can use Change Auditor and InTrust, either alone or in combination with your SIEM, to improve security and compliance while reducing costs.

Read White Paper

Retailer Ensures PCI DSS Compliance

Case Study

Retailer Ensures PCI DSS Compliance

Any retailer that wants to continue accepting credit cards needs to maintain compliance with PCI DSS standards — and prove it during annual audits. One of the PCI DSS requirements can be part

Read Case Study

Government agency improves security and productivity

Case Study

Government agency improves security and productivity

See how our Microsoft Platform Management solutions helped North Central Texas Council of Governments gain real-time control over changes in its hybrid IT

Read Case Study

Government healthcare agency ensures security and compliance

Case Study

Government healthcare agency ensures security and compliance

Learn how Quest Change Auditor helped Region Halland gain deep visibility into Active Directory and Azure AD.

Read Case Study

Nine Best Practices to Reduce Active Directory Security Breaches and Insider Threats

E-book

Nine Best Practices to Reduce Active Directory Security Breaches and Insider Threats

This ebook explores the anatomy of an AD insider threat and details the best defense strategies against it.

Read E-book

Hacking Active Directory - Security Lessons from a Penetration Tester

White Paper

Hacking Active Directory - Security Lessons from a Penetration Tester

Hacking Active Directory – Security Lessons from a Penetration Tester. Learn prevention strategies from this white paper to keep your environment secure. Download to glean simple changes that can significantly elevate your security posture.

Read White Paper

Videos

Blogs

Change Auditor 7.1: What’s New

The Change Auditor for Logon Activity 7.1 update allows for auditing of Kerberos and NTLM authentications to promote better security and compliance. Learn more.

Bryan.Patton 25 Jun 2020

Quest Security Assessments Reveal Top 4 Issues in Active Directory: Groups and OSs (Part 3 of 3)

In the third and final part of this Active Directory security issues series, we take a look at the problems with Groups and Operating Systems (OSs). Learn more.

Todd.Mera 15 Jun 2020

CISA Office 365 Alert and 10 Security Actions to Take Now by Sean Metcalf (from our latest TEC Talk)

This blog post will outline the CISA alert, prior CISA advice for securing Office 365 and point you to a TEC Talk by Microsoft Certified Master Sean Metcalf (@PyroTek3) that addresses the 10 (and more) Azure AD and Office 365 security tasks to do now!

Jennifer LuPiba 05 May 2020

Workforce and IT Refresher Tips to Avoid COVID-19 Phishing Attempts

View Blogs

Get started now

Improve AD security and compliance auditing.

Download Free Trial

Contact Sales

Change Auditor for Active Directory

Monitor AD for improved security and compliance

Hybrid AD auditing

At-a-glance display

Hosted dashboard

Object protection

Account lockout

Real-time alerts on the move

SIEM integration

Auditor-ready reporting

Features

Superior auditing engine

Security timelines

Related searches

AD-change rollback

Quest InTrust integration

Improved security insights

Tour

Alerts

Alerts

Group Policy

Group Policy

Account lockout

Account lockout

Object protection

Object protection

Role-based access

Role-based access

Hosted dashboard with On Demand Audit

Hosted dashboard with On Demand Audit

Specifications

Resources

Change Auditor for Active Directory

Datasheet

Change Auditor for Active Directory

Ensure security, compliance and control of AD and Azure AD.

Overcoming Office 365 Security & Compliance Auditing Challenges

White Paper

Overcoming Office 365 Security & Compliance Auditing Challenges

Commercial use of Office 365 has skyrocketed in recent years — but most organizations admit they still lack the

Integrated change auditing and event log management for strong security

White Paper

Integrated change auditing and event log management for strong security

This white paper explores how you can use Change Auditor and InTrust, either alone or in combination with your SIEM, to improve security and compliance while reducing costs.

Retailer Ensures PCI DSS Compliance

Case Study

Retailer Ensures PCI DSS Compliance

Any retailer that wants to continue accepting credit cards needs to maintain compliance with PCI DSS standards — and prove it during annual audits. One of the PCI DSS requirements can be part

Government agency improves security and productivity

Case Study

Government agency improves security and productivity

See how our Microsoft Platform Management solutions helped North Central Texas Council of Governments gain real-time control over changes in its hybrid IT

Government healthcare agency ensures security and compliance

Case Study

Government healthcare agency ensures security and compliance

Learn how Quest Change Auditor helped Region Halland gain deep visibility into Active Directory and Azure AD.

Nine Best Practices to Reduce Active Directory Security Breaches and Insider Threats

E-book

Nine Best Practices to Reduce Active Directory Security Breaches and Insider Threats

This ebook explores the anatomy of an AD insider threat and details the best defense strategies against it.

Hacking Active Directory - Security Lessons from a Penetration Tester

White Paper

Hacking Active Directory - Security Lessons from a Penetration Tester

Hacking Active Directory – Security Lessons from a Penetration Tester. Learn prevention strategies from this white paper to keep your environment secure. Download to glean simple changes that can significantly elevate your security posture.

Videos

Learn about Change Auditor for Active Directory

Video

Learn about Change Auditor for Active Directory

Learn how Change Auditor for Active Directory from Quest helps ensure the security, compliance and control of AD and Azure AD.

Change Auditor 7.1 – New Features

Video

Change Auditor 7.1 – New Features

Explore Change Auditor’s new features, such as Golden Ticket detection & auditing Kerberos and NTLM authentication.

What is Quest Change Auditor and how does it compare to and complement Microsoft ATP and third-party SIEM solutions?

Video

What is Quest Change Auditor and how does it compare to and complement Microsoft ATP and third-party SIEM solutions?

Hear Quest product experts, Ghazwan Khairi, Bryan Patton and Robert Tovar discuss the real-time security and IT auditing of Change Auditor and how it compares to and integrates with SIEM solutions and Microsoft Advanced Threat Protection.

How to integrate Change Auditor with On Demand Audit

Video

How to integrate Change Auditor with On Demand Audit