Monitor Azure Active Directory (AD)

Azure Active Directory, from Microsoft, is a multi-tenant, cloud-based identity and access management service that allows you to manage user identities and access privileges from one location. You can choose what information will stay in the cloud, which end users and applications can have access to it, and more.

Azure Active Directory plays an important role in many enterprises, but with increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks on the rise and the need to comply with regulations, making sure Active Directory is running smoothly can be critical. It’s also important to monitor Azure AD to ensure you can access business-critical files and servers using Active Directory Azure.

Other benefits of Active Directory Azure monitoring include:

• Increased visibility: Azure AD monitoring makes it easier to see how certain users are interacting with the network.


• Easier user access management: Monitoring users in Azure AD can make it easier to manage, provision, and deprovision them. Also, Azure AD monitoring tools can help you more easily enforce the principle of least privilege.
• Better troubleshooting: Active Directory monitoring can allow you to investigate specific indicators of performance issues before they start affecting end users by revealing problems related to slower response times.


• Improved user experience: Optimizing logon times and providing fast access to resources can improve employee satisfaction. 

Azure Active Directory monitoring is the process of tracking metrics in an Active Directory environment to find and solve problems that could affect the entire directory and prevent users from accessing business-critical credentials, files, servers, or access privileges.

For these reasons, many use third-party Azure Active Directory monitoring tools. Azure AD monitoring tools can assist in various aspects of identity and access management. While the exact processes of each tool may differ based on the developer, Azure AD monitoring software typically starts by collecting performance counters and using them to monitor the health and performance of Azure AD. The Azure Active Directory monitoring tool can then provide statistics related to the AD environment via central dashboards, graphs, visualizations, and reports. When AD monitoring reveals abnormal user behavior, unauthorized access, or performance issues, the AD monitoring tool can send alerts.

Common Azure AD monitoring best practices include:

• Monitoring for changes to Azure AD or group policies
• Monitoring directory replication updates across servers
• Identifying and eliminating deactivated, logged out, or locked accounts that could pose security threats
• Managing Azure Active Directory user audits to help determine who is making which changes and why
• Monitoring domain controller performance

SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM) is a powerful and versatile identity and access management tool designed to give you everything you need to more effectively manage access rights across your IT infrastructure with features specially designed for Azure Active Directory. ARM can also extend to Azure-based Active Directory deployments, meaning organizations using Azure AD or adopting hybrid environments can use ARM to help increase their visibility and control over both.

ARM helps you monitor Azure AD by providing user permissions analysis, monitoring, and logging for Azure AD and other Microsoft applications and services. This offers increased visibility into how users are interacting with your environment, who’s making which changes and when, and whose accounts are inactive. The information gained from Azure AD monitoring in ARM can be used to improve user experience, streamline user access management, and aid troubleshooting. ARM can also alert on credential misconfigurations and other indicators of unauthorized access, so you can quickly reduce risk and delete compromised accounts before they affect the entire network.

ARM also helps you more easily distill your findings from Azure Active Directory monitoring into customizable reports. These reports are designed to be compliant with many security policies and industry-specific regulations like GDPR, PCI DSS, and HIPAA. Plus, ARM is designed to allow you to create reports in just a few clicks.

Other SolarWinds tools to help you administer and monitor Active Directory:

• Security Event Manager
• Server & Application Monitor
• Dameware^® Remote Support

Other features:

• Active Directory Management
• Active Directory Auditing
• Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
• NTFS Permissions Management
• NTFS Permissions Report
• Cybersecurity Risk Management