SmartProfiler for Active Directory provides Active Directory Real Time Monitoring component. The AD Real-Time can help you continuously monitor Active Directory for security risks and notify you via email. SmartProfiler alerts for Active Directory must be configured before the SmartProfiler AD Real-Time Agent can work. The alert configuration requires that you provide inputs to some of the alerts. Note that SmartProfiler Active Directory Real-Time Monitoring is a flexible component – it allows you to add custom alerts based on your requirements.
Active Directory Real Time Monitoring is required for maintaining the security, integrity, and availability of an organization’s network infrastructure. Here are a few important points as to why Active Directory Real-Time Monitoring is important. Active Directory Real-time monitoring allows you to detect and respond to security incidents as they occur, rather than after the fact. By continuously monitoring AD activities, such as user logins, privilege changes, or group membership modifications, organizations can identify suspicious behavior indicative of unauthorized access attempts, insider threats, or malware infections.
Someone is “securing” something, and someone else is “breaking” something. Attackers just need to employ the 30–35 approaches listed in order to get access to Active Directory, but security personnel must employ all available technological tools in order to defend the environment from attackers. When we say, “all technical means,” we mean looking at Active Directory from the standpoints of attackers and AD upkeep.
There are many components in an Active Directory System. It becomes difficult to monitor all components of Active Directory. However, there are some key components to monitor as part of Active Directory real-time monitoring. User Logon and Authentication Events, Privileged Account Activity, Changes to Group Memberships, Configuration Changes, Replication Status and Health, Directory Object Modifications and other aspects of Active Directory.
SmartProfiler for Active Directory can monitor above and be able to generate an email alert if the issues are found.
To configure Real Time Alerts for Active Directory, click on “Configure Alerts” button under Active Directory Security section in left pane. SmartProfiler for Active Directory is a robust tool for Active Directory Real-Time Monitoring ensure it captures all threats and notify immediately.
Note that there are 141 alerts that ship with SmartProfiler for Active Directory. The SmartProfiler Real-Time Agent is a service that is responsible for executing these alerts and sending notifications. There are three types of alerts available with SmartProfiler for Active Directory:
There are alerts in SmartProfiler that require initialization. For example, for alert “Notify if the FSMO Role Hoder Changes”, the SmartProfiler needs to know the current placement of FSMO in all AD Domains. Once it knows it checks the current FSMO role holders in database and compare every time it runs. If it finds any changes, then those changes will be notified via email. If you check the option “Filter Alerts that require Initialization” option then you will get the list of alerts that require initialization.
Note: If any alert requires initialization and has not been initialized then you will see “Not Initialized” in the red color in the grid.
There are a few alerts that require some inputs before SmartProfiler AD Real-Time Agent can process them. For example, the alert “Notify if an Active Directory account is used” requires that you provide the SamAccountName of the user whose account needs to be audited.
Alerts that can run as is do not require initialization and inputs. For example, “Notify if the AdminSDHolder Permissions Changes” alert checks to ensure the permissions are not modified on the AdminSDHolder Object. If they are modified, then you will get a notification.
The Active Directory Real-Time Monitoring requires configuring alerts. Each alert has parameters associated with it as explained below:
To ensure SmartProfiler Active Directory Real-Time Monitoring Agent can work as expected, please ensure to initialize alerts. You can initialize all alerts or single alert from the console.
To start initializing all alerts, click on “Initialize All Alerts” button on the action bar. Once you click on the option, the process will check all alerts and initialize them. If any of the alerts require input then those need to be rectified before the initialization can happen.
To initialize a single alert, click on “Initialize” button in the grid as shown below:
Note: Please ensure to configure the alert parameters before initializing.
To configure an alert, click on the alert in the Grid and then modify the options. As you can see, I clicked on the “Notify if an Active Directory Account is used” alert which shows the parameters configured for the alert.
The following parameters can be modified for the alert:
Once you have configured alert parameters, click on “Save Alert Settings” button to save the alert configuration.
In case you wish to apply same Email Template, same AD Domain, or same Email Notification status to all alerts then click on the respective icon marked in the red circle in below screenshot:
Once all alerts are configured and initialized, the SmartProfiler Real-Time AD Agent will process them.
The Real-Time Console for Active Directory has been designed to help you understand overall status of all alerts in one screen. The Real-Time Console provides following features:
To open the Real-Time Console, click on “Real-Time Console” button in the left pane under “Active Directory Security”.
When you first open the Real-Time Console it will refresh and show the alerts status from the agent. In case you need to refresh alerts status, you can do so by clicking on the Refresh icon.
The Real-Time Console is capable of showing modified data for an alert. For example, if the FSMO Role Holder changes, the alert will display what changed and when changed.
To see the alert data, click on any of the alerts, which, in turn, will show below window:
In the Log tab you can see alert activities and in the Data tab you can see alert data. Note that if an alert required initialization, then initialized data will appear in the “Initialized Data” pane and current data and modified data will appear in “Current Data” and “Modified Data” panes.
Note that each alert supports Right Click Context menu as shown below:
The right click context menu actions are quick actions that you can take for an alert as explained below:
If the email notification is enabled for an alert, then you will receive an email notification as shown below:
All alerts, as part of Active Directory Real-Time Monitoring, highlighted here as part of the Active Directory assessment are also recommended by ANSSI, MITRE and Microsoft.
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