Active Directory Permissions Reporting Tool
Run Active Directory user permissions reports for compliance audits
When managers and auditors come knocking, IT teams must be prepared with lists of all group and user file share permissions. Without AD reporting tools, meeting these requests can be a time-consuming and stressful process. IT teams can use the ARM Active Directory security group permissions reporting tool to gather permissions data from across their systems with its integrated scripting features.
With audit-ready Active Directory access control permissions reports, IT teams can use SolarWinds ARM to easily show internal and external parties who has access to what and when they accessed it. With the ability to generate, customize, and automate reports as needed, you won’t have to waste time looking at old audit logs or try to make sense of outdated spreadsheets.
Improve AD permissions analysis
SolarWinds® Access Rights Manager (ARM) serves as a robust Active Directory group permissions reporting tool by giving IT teams a critical overview of user settings and activity. With both automated and on demand reporting, ARM is built to offer admins better visibility into what resources individual users and groups can access. Gone are the days of struggling to understand why a specific user or group is able to access to certain files or folders.
With Active Directory user permission reporting, IT teams can compare the rights of a given employee to the role they fill in the organization. With these improved insights, IT teams can more easily identify the logic behind user permissions to improve how they enforce their AD policy. This can also allow you to better identify cybersecurity risks and maintain control over network resources.
Detect credential misuse and help avoid potential threats
A common best practice for network security is to strictly enforce privileged accounts. To determine which users have privileged access, IT teams need to be able to run comprehensive Active Directory user permissions reports.
With SolarWinds Active Directory group permissions reports, you can identify who has access to which resources in the AD domain and use these insights to understand how and why user permissions were delegated. You can also view past user access activity, including what was modified and when. This can help prevent credential misuse and keep sensitive parts of a network isolated from users with limited access.
Get More on Active Directory Permissions
What are Active Directory permissions?
Active Directory is a Microsoft software that organizes and provides access to information in an operating system’s directory. It is used by many organizations to manage access to file directories and devices on a network. It is a central feature of the Windows operating system for both local and cloud-based servers.
Permissions in AD are privileges IT teams grant to users or groups in an organization, so they can perform specific operations on a given network object. Components like users, files, folders, computers, or devices are all represented as objects in Active Directory. However, some of these objects may encompass other objects—for example, a folder might contain a file, and both will be represented as independent objects. Objects that contain other objects are referred to as “container” objects in AD, while single items are called “leaf” objects. Users or groups are commonly assigned AD permissions over objects based on specific requirements. For example, a job role in an organization may entitle a group of users a level of access to a particular folder or device.
How do Active Directory permissions work?
A common method of assigning permissions to users in Active Directory is through Active Directory Administrative Center (ADAC) to manage Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS). From there, IT admins need to open a graphical user interface (GUI) tool, locate a user account, then right-click to open properties. Admins may choose to speed up this manual process by running PowerShell scripts to automate the process.
AD permissions on objects are traditionally assigned in two main ways:
- IT admins can either configure group policy objects in the AD management console
- Use the security tab in a given object’s properties dialog box to grant or deny Active Directory permissions
Active Directory permissions can also be inherited or passed down between users. IT admins can either transfer permissions by the parent object class within which the object was created or from the groups to which the object was added.
SolarWinds ARM Active Directory management software is built to complete user provisioning and deprovisioning in seconds. By using role-specific templates to delegate access privileges and enforce the principle of least privilege, ARM can help ensure security policy conformity across your IT infrastructure. ARM can also provide full audit trails of AD permissions and access level changes to help build out timelines and other artifacts needed for cybersecurity investigations.
Why is an Active Directory permissions report important?
For smaller companies, establishing user permissions for network objects can be a relatively simple task. However, for larger companies that have hundreds of servers and thousands of folders, assigning Active Directory user permissions can be more complicated.
Since Active Directory allows an IT administrator to manage everything from one dashboard, even when there are thousands of objects on a network, Active Directory group permission reports are important because they can offer a robust understanding of the permissions assigned to users and groups. Without knowing who has access to what, protecting against data breaches from security threats can be significantly more difficult. With detailed reports on the permissions of users and groups in your AD, IT admins can track activity occurring on objects on a network. Permissions reports are also helpful for managing IT compliance when facing audits for regulations like, SOX, HIPAA, GLBA, GDPR, and PCI DSS.
What does an Active Directory permissions reporting tool do?
An Active Directory permission reporting tool is designed to help IT teams manage and monitor permissions in AD by providing a comprehensive view of the objects and privileges on their networks, including users, groups, computers, and folders access rights. With these insights, IT teams can better manage permissions and grant, modify, and delete user or group access to specific objects as they see fit.
AD permissions reporting tools can be generated from the user or group perspective. An IT admin can select a specific user and identify the network objects that user can access. This is particularly helpful when security incidents occur or when you want to isolate access to specific objects to only employees with privileged accounts. AD reporting tools can also display the groups that individuals are members of and list details around those groups, like numbers of members or the domain in which those groups are located.
How to Create an Active Directory Permissions Report in the Access Rights Manager
SolarWinds Access Rights Manager is a robust software solution built to help IT teams manage and audit access rights across your IT infrastructure. With the Active Directory access control permissions reporting tool in ARM, IT teams can generate customizable reports to view user permissions and better identify security risks. This feature is designed to improve permission analysis of both groups and individual users.
Additionally, ARM can help admins detect credential misuse by offering relational connections between a user’s given role in the organization and granted permissions. This allows IT to isolate certain parts of the infrastructure from non-privileged accounts and improve protection against potential threats. ARM is also built to automatically generate compliance reports and has the ability to send them directly to internal stakeholders and external auditors on a schedule of your choice.
Related Features and Tools
- OneDrive Permissions Monitoring
- SharePoint Permissions Management
- SharePoint Audit Tool
- Simplify NTFS Permissions Management
- Exchange Auditing Software
- Exchange Management Tool
- Active Directory Reporting Tool
- Active Directory Auditing Tool
- Active Directory Management Tool
- Active Directory Groups Management
- File Server Auditing
What are Active Directory permissions?
Active Directory is a Microsoft software that organizes and provides access to information in an operating system’s directory. It is used by many organizations to manage access to file directories and devices on a network. It is a central feature of the Windows operating system for both local and cloud-based servers.
Permissions in AD are privileges IT teams grant to users or groups in an organization, so they can perform specific operations on a given network object. Components like users, files, folders, computers, or devices are all represented as objects in Active Directory. However, some of these objects may encompass other objects—for example, a folder might contain a file, and both will be represented as independent objects. Objects that contain other objects are referred to as “container” objects in AD, while single items are called “leaf” objects. Users or groups are commonly assigned AD permissions over objects based on specific requirements. For example, a job role in an organization may entitle a group of users a level of access to a particular folder or device.
Streamline Active Directory permissions reporting
Access Rights Manager
- Generate reports from Active Directory, Exchange, SharePoint, and file server permissions
- Improve permissions and user access analysis to fortify network security
- Prove compliance for internal and external auditors with auto-generated permission reports
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