Change Auditor for Windows File Servers

Track, audit, alert and report on changes to Windows File Servers with Change Auditor

Windows File Server tool tracks, audits, reports and alerts on vital changes

Change Auditor for Windows File Servers helps you control and audit changes to Microsoft® Windows® file servers efficiently and cost-effectively. It proactively tracks, audits, reports and alerts on vital changes in real time and without the overhead of native auditing.

You will instantly know the “who, what, when, where and originating workstation” details, and get the original and current values for fast troubleshooting. You can then automatically generate intelligent, in-depth forensics for auditors and management, reducing the risks associated with day-to-day modifications and ensuring confidence at your next audit.

Features
Specifications
Resources
Support & Services

Features

Centralized auditing

Manage, monitor and audit all file server changes from a single location, which streamlines management of multiple servers and locations to a single, easy-to-use console.

At-a-glance display

Tracks user and administrator activity with detailed information including who, what, when, where, which workstation and why for change events, plus original and current values for all changes.

Share auditing

Tracks all events related to file shares, helping administrators ensure access to shared files is maintained by capturing all change events in real time.

Object protection

Provides protection against changes to the most critical files and folders from being modified or accidentally deleted.

Integrated event forwarding

Easily integrate with SIEM solutions to forward Change Auditor events to Splunk, HP Arcsight or IBM QRadar. Additionally, Change Auditor integrates with Quest InTrust for long-term 20:1 compressed event storage and aggregation of native or third-party logs to reduce storage costs on SIEM forwarding and create a highly-compressed log repository.

Improved insights with IT Security Search

Correlate disparate IT data from numerous systems and devices into 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.

Account lockout

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

High-performance auditing engine

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

Auditor-ready reporting

Generates comprehensive reports for best practices and regulatory compliance mandates for SOX, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, FISMA, GLBA and more.

Role-based access

Configures access so auditors can run searches and reports without making any configuration changes to the application, and without requiring the assistance and time of the administrator.

Event timeline

Enables the viewing, highlighting and filtering of change events and the relation of other events over the course of time in chronological order across your Windows environment for better understanding and forensic analysis of those events and trends.

Real-time alerts on the move

Sends critical change and pattern alerts to email and mobile devices to prompt immediate action, enabling you to respond faster to threats even while you're not on site.

Web-based access with dashboard reporting

Searches from anywhere using a web browser and creates targeted dashboard reports to provide upper management and auditors with access to the information they need without having to understand architecture or administration.

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 2008 R2 SP3
Microsoft SQL Server 2012 SP4
Microsoft SQL Server 2014 SP2

Microsoft SQL Server 2016 SP1
Microsoft SQL Server 2017

NOTE: Change Auditor does not support SQL high availability technology other than clusters.

Operating system

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

Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
Windows Server 2012

Windows Server 2012 R2
Windows Server 2016

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 4.6.1

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 .