Account Management Event: 4738

Active Directory Auditing Tool

The Who, Where and When information is very important for an administrator to have complete knowledge of all activities that occur on their Active Directory. This helps them identify any desired / undesired activity happening. ADAudit Plus assists an administrator with this information in the form of reports. In real-time, ensure critical resources in the network like the Domain Controllers are audited, monitored and reported with the entire information on AD objects - Users, Groups, GPO, Computer, OU, DNS, AD Schema and Configuration changes with 200+ detailed event specific GUI reports and email alerts.

Account Management » Event ID 4738 - A user account was changed

Event ID 4738 - A user account was changed

Event ID 4738
Category Account management
Sub category User Account Management
Description A user account was changed

When a user account is changed in Active Directory, event ID 4738 gets logged.

This log data gives the following information:

Subject: User who performed the action Security ID
Account Name
Account Domain
Logon ID
New Account: Changed user account Security ID
Account Name
Account Domain
Attributes (of the changed account):  SAM Account Name
Display Name
User Principal Name
Home Directory
Home Drive
Script Path
Profile Path
User Workstations
Password Last Set
Account Expires
Primary Group ID
Allowed To Delegate To
Old UAC Value
New UAC Value
User Account Control:
  • Account Disabled
  • 'Password Not Required' 
  • 'Normal Account' 
User Parameters
SID History
Logon Hours
Additional Information Privileges

Why event ID 4738 needs to be monitored?

  • Prevention of privilege abuse
  • Detection of potential malicious activity
  • Operational purposes like getting information on user activity like user attendance, peak logon times, etc.
  • Compliance mandates

Pro tip:

ADAudit Plus makes Active Directory auditing very easy by tracking User Status Changes like user enabled or disabled in a selected period of time in real-time with the help of pre-defined reports and instant alerts

Event 4738 applies to the following operating systems: 

  • Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7
  • Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1
  • Windows Server 2016 and Windows 10

Corresponding event ID for 4738 in Windows Server 2003 and older is 642

 

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