Active Directory SOX Reports

Streamline SOX Compliance; Minimize Risk; Maximize Cost Effectiveness with ADManager Plus

• The SOX Act - What and Why?
• Why Should you comply with SOX
• SOX and IT
• Role of Active Directory in setting up SOX standards
• Achieving SOX Compliance using ADManager Plus
  • Security Policies and Procedures
  • Risk Analysis and Management
  • Disaster Recovery
  • Auditing
• Active Directory Reports for SOX Compliance

The SOX Act - What and Why?

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was enacted by the US Congress in the year 2002. The act was an immediate outcome of a series of scandals involving financial accounting improprieties, prevalent in the new millennium. Corporate governance, incorporation of strong internal controls, competent policies/procedures by enterprises with transparency and accuracy of their financial disclosures are the key compliance requisites that are detailed in the act.

Why should you comply with SOX?

Binding to the SOX regulations is not an option. It is rather a mandatory process that imposes all publicly-traded companies to submit an annual report containing details of their internal accounting structure to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Non Compliance with SOX guidelines could lead to penalties including multi-million dollar fines, dismissal of exchange listings and in worst cases, even imprisonment of those officials involved in the misappropriation of financial data.

SOX and IT

Enterprises today, depend on IT to manage the internal controls by providing a secure Identity and Access Management(IAM) solution so as to comply with the SOX guidelines. It has become the primary function of IT to ensure that all financial transactions and data entry are carried out only by authorized personnel.

SOX comprises multiple titles/sections, each corresponding to specific guidelines. However, Section 404 and (to a certain extent) Section 302 relate how IT can help achieve the SOX compliance. Section 409 is also considered important by some IT executives.

Role of Active Directory in setting up SOX standards

Active Directory is a secure, distributed, partitioned and replicated directory service that runs on Microsoft Windows based machines. Active Directory offers enterprises, significant assistance in the implementation of SOX standards, provided all financial data are stored in a Windows machine. The Active Directory provides:

• Adequate control over network identities and access permissions within the organization(IAM).
• Regular and central authentication of users by Administrators.
• Delegation and provision of access to the resources each user needs.
• A central repository of audit logs for tracking all access attempts.

In addition to the above features, Active Directory when governed by an auditing, logging and reporting tool can make remarkable contributions to meet SOX compliant audits needs.

Achieving SOX Compliance using ADManager Plus

ManageEngine ADManager Plus is a web-based application that facilitates a centralized Windows Active Directory governance and reporting. With its ease-of-use and an intuitive UI, ADManager Plus enhances the administrative capabilities of the native Active Directory. Its integrated management and reporting module saves considerable time for administrators and helps meet compliance requirements with ease.

ADManager Plus features over 100+ effective active directory reports. Many of these reports contain critical data relevant to SOX Compliance. The ADManager Plus reports which are a must to meet SOX Compliance Audits are categorized under various sections:

Security Policies and Procedures While trying to comply with the SOX guidelines, it becomes mandatory to implement competent security policies and procedures. A secure environment can be established with the help of ADManager plus, which focuses on the key concepts of security groups and permissions of the Active Directory. Specialized ADManager Plus reports on security groups and members, and the group/user permissions on objects, files and folders foster security by aiding to:

• Eliminate User permission contradictions,that may arise due to Multiple Group Membership.
• Isolate and remove Groups without members.
• Verify user permissions to objects/ files and folders restricting access to crucial information like financial data.

Illicit software installation/upgrades can also be detected with the help of reports that furnish details about the Operating System(OS). Reports on Password Policy and Account Lockout Policy contain information that are quite essential for SOX Audits.

The innate list of quality reports from ADManager Plus makes it a default requirement to qualify the security section of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOA).

Risk Analysis and Management Despite the implementation of standard security policies, multiple risks may exist in an organization and this could impose potential threat to security of financial data. SOX Compliance lays stress on data protection. It is therefore essential to adopt proper risk analysis and management methods. ADManager Plus with its up to date set of reports can give substantial inputs for Risk Analysis. A periodic review of reports relating to inactive/disabled/never logged on accounts of users and other Active Directory objects, can help to eradicate the risk posed by these accounts.

These reports facilitate risk management activities like:

• Restrict malpractices through Inactive Users/Computers accounts.
• Identify hacker attempts to enter the system, by tracking the bad logon attempts on user accounts.
• Detect user logons on an hourly basis, to identify any by-passing of logon permissions.
• Isolate and eliminate disabled/unused, Computer/GPO/User accounts(clean up process)

Disaster Recovery

SOX guidelines require enterprises to adopt adequate disaster recovery standards. ADManager Plus hosts a list of reports that when generated provide details about all the members under a given object category i.e. User/ Computer/ Group Policy Object (GPO) / Organizational Unit(OU). Data that are lost during unpredictable occasions can be recovered and restored with the help of these reports. Details of the list of members under each object category can be extracted from appropriate reports that were generated before encountering such an occasion.

Auditing

Tracking changes that happen in an organization is a mandatory audit requirement. Specific ADManager Plus reports expose details about the Active Directory objects(Users/Computers/GPOs/Groups) that were created, modified or deleted in recent past. This information is highly essential for detecting and managing the changes that occur in an organization. Security officers may find these reports quite handy for internal audits.

With the above discussed ADManager Plus reports, enterprises can now meet the SOX/SARBOX Compliance requirements of Enterprise Wide Security Policy, Risk Analysis, Disaster Recovery, Separation of duties and so on, and walk through the SOX audits with ease and comfort.

Much more from ADManager Plus

In addition to the reports, ADManager Plus also offers:

• 100% web-based UI.
• Easy web-based delegation.
• Exhaustive reports list
• Auto-generation of Reports
• Template based User creation.
• Audit Logs.
• Low cost margin.

ManageEngine® ADManager Plus therefore provides a complete web-based solution to meet all your Active Directory management requirements with a specialized set of reports useful for SOX Compliance audits.

Other features

Bulk User Management Fire a shotgun-shell of AD User Management Tasks in a Single Shot. Also use csv files to manage users. Effect bulk changes in the Active Directory, including configuring Exchange attributes.	Active Directory Password Management Reset password and set password propertied from a single web-based console, without compromising on the security of your AD! Delegate your password-reset powers to the helpdesk technicians too!
Active Directory User Reports Exhaustive reporting on Active Directory Users and user-attributes. Generate reports in user-activity in your Active Directory. Perform user-management actions right from the report interface!	Active Directory Compliance Reports Active Directory reports to assist you for compliance to Government Regulatory Acts like SOX, HIPAA, GLBA, PCI, USA PATRIOT...and much more! Make your organization compliance-perfect!
Active Directory Workflow A mini Active Directory ticket-management and compliance toolkit right within ADManager Plus! Define a rigid yet flexible constitution for every task in your AD. Tighten the reins of your AD Security.	Active Directory Automation A complete automation of AD critical tasks such as user provisioning, inactive-user clean up etc. Also lets you sequence and execute follow-up tasks and blends with workflow to offer a brilliant controlled-automation.