File and folder change monitoring

File and folder change monitoring with ADAudit Plus

Get real-time visibility into every file change and know the who, what, when, and where of every file and folder event across your environment.

The need for file and folder change monitoring

Every file server accumulates hundreds of changes each day. Most are routine, but a small number need immediate attention: a permission change on a high-value share, a bulk deletion of finance records, a renamed executable dropped into a system folder.

Without a structured audit trail, there is no reliable way to separate the two.

File and folder change monitoring captures every create, modify, delete, move, rename, copy, and permission-change event across file storage, recording the user identity, the source machine, and the exact time of each action. When a file goes missing or a folder permission is silently widened, that audit trail lets you reconstruct what happened and who was responsible.

ADAudit Plus monitors file and folder activity across Windows file servers and multiple NAS device types from a single console. Every event is captured in real time, tied to a user identity and machine, and available through pre-configured reports that require no custom scripting.

Track every file and folder change in real time

ADAudit Plus' file change monitoring reports capture every file system operation in your environment as it happens. Each record identifies the user, machine, IP address, file path, and operation type without requiring you to log into individual servers or parse raw event logs. This allows you to:

• Aggregate file operations by process, user, and server to make investigations and analysis easier.
  • Use advanced report filters to drill down data to a specific share, so you can investigate activity on a sensitive folder without sorting through unrelated events.
  • When a backup agent, sync tool, or unknown executable is responsible for unusual file writes or deletions, you can identify it quickly and proceed with remediation steps.
  • You can also detect files that have not been accessed or modified for extended periods using the builtin file metadata analysis capabilty.

 

 

Enable real-time tracking of file creations, modifications, deletions, and permission changes across Windows and NAS file servers.

 

 

Identify the specific user, source machine, and timestamp for every file action to maintain a secure audit trail.

Audit folder permission changes

A permission change that widens access to a risky share can expose data to users who should never have had access, and often goes unnoticed for weeks. ADAudit Plus captures every DACL and SACL change on monitored folders, recording old and new permission values so you can see exactly what access was granted or removed. The permission change reports inform you of:

• Every discretionary ACL modification with the previous and updated permission values
• Modifications to audit policies applied to folders, so you know if someone has disabled auditing on a sensitive path
• Ownership transfers, identifying the previous owner and the new one

 

 

Track users modifying permissions to be aware of who is performing risky actions such as providing elevated access to business-critical folders.

Monitor file access and denied attempts

Patterns in access activity, such as a user reading hundreds of files in a short window or the same account repeatedly failing to reach a restricted folder, often precede a data breach or insider threat incident. ADAudit Plus captures both successful read access and denied access attempts in the same reporting interface. ADAudit Plus monitors:

• Attempts to read, write, or delete files that result in a "permission denied" error, which could indicate unauthorized access attempts.
• Unauthorized attempts to delete high-risk files or folders.
• Attempts to modify or append data (e.g., create files/write data, create folders/append data) without proper permissions.
• Monitor failed changes or access attempts to critical system files.
• Files that have excessive permissions such as Full Control access to users.

 

 

Repeated failed attempts to read files can indicate malicious intent. To aid in detecting these actions quickly, ADAudit Plus provides dedicated reports for failed attempts to read files.

 

 

You can also create a custom report to track failed read, write, or delete attempts on high-value folders.

Detect anomalous file activity

A user deleting 800 files in 30 minutes might be a routine archive cleanup, or it might be ransomware. Without a per-user baseline, there is no reliable way to tell. ADAudit Plus applies machine learning to establish what normal file activity looks like for each individual user and flags deviations automatically.

The following detections are available:

• File deletion spikes above the per-user baseline, a reliable early indicator of deliberate data destruction.
• Modification spikes that deviate from the user's learned pattern, indicating ransomware-related write activity before encryption completes.
• Users or accounts generating abnormal numbers of access failures, a strong signal of unauthorized access attempts.
• File operations outside the hours that user normally works, surfacing after-hours access to sensitive data.

These detections are powered by the user behavior analytics engine, which builds individual baselines per user rather than applying static thresholds.

Apart from UBA, ADAudit Plus also has builtin detection logic for over twenty five well-known Active Directory attacks through its Attack Surface Analyzer capability.

 

 

ADAudit Plus sets dynamic behavioral baselines for users and flags deviations from this baseline in terms of time and volume.

Get real-time alerts on critical file events

Audit reports tell you what happened. Alerts let you act before the damage compounds. ADAudit Plus ships with pre-configured alert profiles for the file events that matter most.

The following alert configurations are available by default for file changes:

• When a folder permission change occurs on a risky share, the responsible team is notified immediately, so widened access is caught and reviewed before unauthorized users can exploit it.
• When a file deletion spike exceeds the configured threshold, you get an alert with the user, machine, and file count, giving you what you need to determine whether it is ransomware or a routine cleanup before acting.
• When a denied access pattern crosses the alert threshold, your security team is notified with the full context of the failure events, so unauthorized probing is caught before it becomes a successful breach.

When an alert fires, ADAudit Plus can automatically create a ticket in ServiceNow, Jira, Freshservice, or ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus, routing the incident to the right team without manual intervention.

 

 

Investigate alerts based on severity to ensure that the most critical events are prioritized.

 

 

You can customize alerts for events that are important to your organization.

Extend monitoring to NAS devices and cloud file storage

ADAudit Plus monitors several NAS device types alongside Windows file servers from the same console. Every file operation is captured using the same report structure regardless of the underlying storage platform, and Azure File Share activity appears alongside on-premises events without switching consoles or correlating separate log sources.

Supported storage platforms: Windows file servers and failover clusters, NetApp (7-Mode and C-Mode), EMC Isilon, Hitachi NAS, Huawei OceanStor, EMC VNX, Synology NAS, QNAP NAS, CTERA Edge Filers, Nutanix Files, Qumulo NAS, Amazon FSx, and Azure File Share

Meet compliance requirements with file audit reports

SOX, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, GDPR, FISMA, GLBA, and ISO 27001 all require demonstrable controls over who accessed and modified sensitive data and how long those records are retained. ADAudit Plus ships with pre-configured compliance reports for all seven standards, each mapping file activity events to the relevant regulatory requirements.

• Reports export to CSV, PDF, HTML, and XLSX for auditors and can be scheduled for automatic delivery to external recipients without requiring them to log into the product
• Customizable report profiles combine a specific user, file path, and operation type into a saved view that runs on demand or on a schedule.

Why native tools fall short for file and folder monitoring

Windows Security Event Log auditing can capture file events, but only on servers where the correct audit policies have been manually configured, and only as long as the security log has not been overwritten. In environments with more than a handful of servers, this creates gaps.

• Security event logs are stored locally on each server. Correlating file activity across multiple file servers requires collecting and parsing logs from every machine individually, with no consolidated view.
• Native auditing does not surface before-and-after values for permission changes. You can see that a folder permission changed, but not what it changed from or to.
• There is no built-in alerting mechanism for file events. Detecting a bulk deletion or a permission change requires either a manual log review or a custom PowerShell script that runs periodically, not in real time.
• Audit policy configuration is error-prone. A single misconfigured policy on one server creates a blind spot that is invisible until you need the data for an incident investigation.

ADAudit Plus addresses each of these gaps with centralized collection, real-time alerting, and pre-configured reports that work without manual audit policy management on individual servers.