Change Auditor for Active Directory
Monitor and secure AD with Active Directory auditing tools. Active Directory continues to be the cornerstone for securing access to business-critical applications. Yet change reporting and vulnerability monitoring for AD is cumbersome, time-consuming, and often impossible using system-provided IT auditing tools. Adopting Azure AD only increases your reliance on Active Directory, while doubling the attack surface and introducing additional opportunities for ransomware and other exploits. This often results in data breaches and insider threats that can go undetected without protections in place. Fortunately, Change Auditor provides real-time threat monitoring and security tracking of all key user activity and administrator changes.
With Change Auditor, you get complete, real-time IT auditing, in-depth forensics and security threat monitoring on all key configuration, user and administrator changes in your AD environment. Change Auditor tracks Active Directory changes and detects indicators of compromise (IOCs) across AD and Azure AD to thwart attackers and their attempts to deploy ransomware. Additionally, Change Auditor tracks lateral movement of adversaries across the network and audits suspicious user activity.
Hybrid security monitoring
Audit all security changes across your AD and Azure AD environments, including user and group changes, as well as exploits such as DCSync and DCShadow attacks, AD database exfiltration, and SIDHistory use.
Threat detection
Detect threats early – including unauthorized domain replication, offline extraction of your AD database, and domain-level GPO linking – to mitigate and avoid costly ransomware attacks.
Threat prevention
Block attackers from making changes to critical groups, GPO settings and linking or exfiltrating your AD database to steal credentials – regardless of the privileges they’ve hijacked.
Forensic reporting
Track Active Directory changes with a detailed audit trail of every change made to AD and Azure AD, including who made them, without the blind spots of built-in auditing functions.
360° security protection
From upfront vulnerability assessment, to intrusion detection and monitoring of compromised accounts, Change Auditor has you covered at every step.
Normalized 5W audit details
Translate cryptic system-provided logs into a simple, normalized format highlighting the who, what, when, where and workstation details, and before and after values.
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.
Account lockout
Capture the originating IP address/workstation name for account lockout events to simplify troubleshooting.
On Demand Audit Hybrid Suite for Office 365
Pair Change Auditor with On Demand Audit to get a single, hosted security dashboard of all vulnerabilities and suspicious activity across AD, Azure AD, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business and Teams. On Demand Audit proactively highlights security threats and anomalous activity and accelerates incident investigations through contextual and interactive data visualizations.
Features
Security threat monitoring
Detect attack attempts, lateral movement through your network, and post-attack damage done to your critical workloads like Exchange and file systems.
Threat timelines
View, highlight and filter change events and discover their relation to other threat events in chronological order across your AD and Azure AD environment for better forensic analysis and security incident response.
Related searches
Provide instant, one-click access to all information on the change you're viewing and all related events, such as what other changes came from specific users and workstations, eliminating guesswork and unknown security concerns.
Superior auditing engine
Track Active Directory changes without the need for system-provided audit logs, eliminating blind spots, and resulting in increased visibility of suspicious user activity.
AD-change rollback
Restore previous values on unauthorized, mistaken or improper changes with the click of a button, directly from the Change Auditor console.
Secure AD attack paths
Identify Tier Zero assets and the attack paths to them using BloodHound Enterprise and monitor and secure those attack paths to avoid exploits with Change Auditor.
SIEM integration
Enrich SIEM solutions including Sentinel, Splunk, ArcSight, QRadar or any platform supporting Syslog by integrating Change Auditor’s detailed activity logs.
Auditor-ready reporting
Generate comprehensive reports to support regulatory compliance mandates for GDPR, PCI DSS, HIPAA, SOX, FISMA / NIST, GLBA and more.
Tour
Real-time alerts
Alert on and monitor critical changes made to any Active Directory object in real-time.
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
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.
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 2014 SP3
- Microsoft SQL Server 2016 SP3
- Microsoft SQL Server 2017
- Microsoft SQL Server 2019
- Azure SQL Managed Instance (PaaS) with SQL authentication or Azure Active Directory authentication
NOTE: Performance may vary depending on network configuration, topology, and Azure SQL Managed Instance configuration.
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
- Windows Server 2022
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: Microsoft ODBC Driver 17 for SQL Server is required when the Change Auditor database resides on Azure SQL Managed Instance and Azure Active Directory authentication is selected.
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
Ensure security, compliance and control of AD and Azure AD.
Top 10 Active Directory Security Reports and Alerts You Need
Check out this white paper to discover the top 10 reports and alerts you need to ensure the stability and security of your on-p...
Five Ways to Improve Auditing of Your Hybrid Active Directory
Discover just five of the ways On Demand Audit Hybrid Suite for Office 365 helps you secure your hybrid AD environment.
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...
Retailer Ensures PCI DSS Compliance
Any retailer that wants to continue accepting credit cards needs to maintain compliance with PCI DSS standards — and prov...
Government agency improves security and productivity
See how our Microsoft Platform Management solutions helped North Central Texas Council of Governments gain real-time control ov...
Government healthcare agency ensures security and compliance
Learn how Quest Change Auditor helped Region Halland gain deep visibility into Active Directory and Azure AD.
Active Directory Security Assessment
Identify, quantify and prioritize attack paths so you can secure Active Directory from every angle.
Videos
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
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-p...
Hear Quest product experts, Ghazwan Khairi, Bryan Patton and Robert Tovar discuss the real-time security and IT auditing of Cha...
How to integrate Change Auditor with On Demand Audit
Learn how to integrate Change Auditor with On Demand Audit from Quest.
Change Auditor integration with SIEM solutions and Quest InTrust
See what's new in Change Auditor 7.0 including integration with SIEM solutions and Quest InTrust.
How to alert when a group membership changes in Change Auditor for Active Directory
This video demonstrates how to alert when a group membership changes within Change Auditor for Active Directory.
How to create a protection template for an Organizational Unit with Change Auditor for Active Di...
This video demonstrates how to create a protection template for an Organizational Unit with Change Auditor for Active Directory...
Blogs
View BlogsChange 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. ...
Bryan Patton, CISSP
Understanding the cyber kill chain and how it impacts Microsoft 365
The cyber kill chain is a cybersecurity model that details the stages of a cyberattack. Learn all about it and how it impacts Microsoft 365 environme...
Bryan Patton
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). ...
Todd.Mera
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 ...
Jennifer LuPiba
How Active Directory configurations can reduce the likelihood of intrusions
Learn real-world insights into how Active Directory configurations can help to harden your cybersecurity defenses and reduce unwanted intrusions.
Bryan Patton
Top 10 Security Events to Monitor in Azure AD and Office 365
Learn about 10 places in your cloud environment that log important audit events. See how native tools fall short of ensuring your auditing compliance...
Ian S. Lindsay