Active Directory (AD) Auditing

Active Directory auditing tools help you monitor, analyze, and report on your Active Directory permissions to help ensure they are configured according to internal security policies and industry regulations to better prevent a security breach or data loss.

An Active Directory auditing tool like SolarWinds Access Rights Manager can help you:

• Increase administrative control over user permissions with a single interface that helps admins gain deep insights into activities across the network.
• Modify permissions with automated audits and role-specific templates that help you create, modify, and delete accounts as needed.
• Simplify credential management so you can set and change passwords quickly and easily.
• Simplify the process of demonstrating regulatory compliance by automatically generating management and compliance reports.
• Improve both external and internal security by helping you detect unauthorized user access and attempted credential theft.
  
  
  
  Reduce costs by consolidating multiple disparate tools into a single Active Directory management tool.

The Active Directory audit process can ensure that only authorized personnel have access to critical data on your network. It can also help you prevent inactive users from having access, which could inadvertently allow bad actors to access the network.

There are four key steps in a manual AD security audit checklist:

• Map Your Environment: First, scan and map your entire AD environment to determine the details of existing accounts and permissions. Then, you can begin triage.
• Focus on What Matters: Without an Active Directory permissions audit tool, monitoring and keeping track of all the Active Directory changes is practically impossible. Instead, you should prioritize the areas that could pose the most danger. Organizations often focus on Privileged AD Access, Privileged User Access, and Large Group Remediation.
• Review Memberships and Remediate Problems: Now, you can begin reviewing group memberships and remediating problematic Active Directory folder permissions and conditions you uncovered. Review members to ensure that only the appropriate individuals and groups can access sensitive data. Following the principle of least privilege helps ensure security.
• Create a Continuous Cycle: The AD auditing process should occur regularly, which is why it’s important to make this process repeatable. After you have reviewed your top priorities, repeat the third step with the next highest priority, and so on.
  
  
  
  The AD auditing process can be long and complex, especially without the right tools, but it is critical to maintaining the security of sensitive data. By using an Active Directory auditing tool, you can better streamline this process and more easily incorporate it as part of your regular security efforts.

Active Directory audits should report on the following:

• User access rights: Documenting which users have access to specific resources.
• Granting, modification, or elevation of privileges: Monitoring changes in user privileges.
• Creation, modification, and deletion of user accounts: Tracking account management activities.
• Logon and logoff events: Recording user login and logout activities.
• Inactive accounts: Identifying unused accounts that could pose security risks.
• Default Active Directory settings: Reporting changes to default configurations.
• Replicated Active Directory data: Checking for inconsistencies in replicated data.
• Password changes: Monitoring updates to user passwords.
• Activities of administrators and other privileged users: Tracking actions by high-privilege accounts.
• Object access attempts: Logging attempts to access sensitive or critical objects.

Active Directory audits are critical for maintaining security and validating IT compliance. Audits give you greater visibility across Active Directory access levels, user accounts, and activities. They can also help you identify security gaps you may have so you can remediate them before issues escalate.

One of the most important benefits of performing an Active Directory audit is detecting possible vulnerabilities and security threats before cybercriminals, hackers, and other bad actors can exploit them. These threats might present themselves as multiple unauthorized access attempts or in the form of user accounts with insecure configurations on an AD audit report.

AD audits can help you detect internal security threats as well. Unfortunately, employees can accidentally delete or modify data—or purposefully steal and share sensitive data. If users have access to more information than necessary for their jobs, the potential risk to the company is higher than it needs to be. Active Directory audits can help ensure that data access settings are appropriately restrictive.Active Directory tools can also help with compliance, as their reporting capabilities make it easier to demonstrate compliance with various regulations, including GDPR, PCI DSS, SOX, GLBA, and HIPAA.

To conduct a thorough Active Directory audit, it's important to follow key best practices that improve security and simplify management. Start by using the Advanced Audit Policy configuration instead of the basic setup to enable more detailed logging.

• Configure audit policies: Implement these on all servers and workstations.
• Set event log size and retention: Adjust settings to ensure logs are stored adequately and are not overwritten prematurely.
• Centralize event logs: Store all logs in one location for easier management and review.
• Pre-configure password and lockout policies: Establish these settings to enforce strong security measures from the start.
  
  
  
  Regular and thorough audits using a specialized Active Directory audit tool are also critical. These tools provide enhanced visibility, automate account management tasks, and often come with pre-built templates to facilitate the quick creation, modification, and deletion of accounts. Solutions like SolarWinds® Access Rights Manager can simplify these processes for a more secure and efficient AD environment.

SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM) is a flexible and affordable Active Directory permissions auditing tool built to help system admins with crucial aspects of AD management: provisioning and deprovisioning accounts, managing group access, automating reporting, and helping you more easily demonstrate regulatory compliance.

Like every SolarWinds product, Access Rights Manager is designed with a user-friendly, intuitive interface to help you understand Active Directory permissions and policies and make more informed security decisions. With ARM, admins can easily review group and individual user access across files, systems, and data. Changing access rights typically only takes a few clicks.

ARM’s snapshot view can also help you stop potential insider security threats more quickly. Use this feature to see the current user access to file servers and services and whether anyone is accessing sensitive information who shouldn’t.The tool goes beyond just helping you remediate insider threats. ARM’s risk assessment dashboard makes it easier to monitor risks by ranking them by severity level and providing information about potentially insecure configurations right in the dashboard. With ARM, you can even get notified when credentials are at risk, so you are quickly aware of potential threats.

Other SolarWinds Tools to help administer and monitor Active Directory:

• SolarWinds Security Event Manager
• SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
• Dameware Remote Support

Other ARM features:

• OneDrive Permissions Monitoring
• SharePoint Permissions Management
• SharePoint Audit Tool
• Simplify NTFS Permissions Management
• Exchange Auditing Software
• Exchange Management Tool
• File Server Auditing