NetWrix Exchange Change Reporter

Auditing of changes in MS Exchange objects and permissions

Overview

Without argument, Microsoft Exchange is the most important IT infrastructure component in many organisations. Even one hour of e-mail downtime can cost millions of dollars of lost revenue and credibility. Auditing changes to configuration settings in an Exchange environment is critical to ensure reliable e-mail operation, security and compliance. Exchange servers, mailboxes, information stores, permissions and all other types of objects must be routinely monitored to detect any changes, both authorised and not, and the full audit trail must be maintained for compliance and security incident investigation purposes.

NetWrix Exchange Change Reporter is a Microsoft Exchange auditing solution that tracks and reports all changes made to all Exchange Server configurations and permissions. The product generates reports that show all created, deleted, and modified objects and settings. Four basic questions are answered: What changed? How was it changed? Who did it? When was it changed?

Powered by AuditAssurance™ technology, the Exchange Change Reporter tracks changes to configuration settings, creation and deletion of mailboxes, information stores, Exchange servers, connectors, protocol parameters, storage groups and many other types of objects and their permissions. The modification events indicate "before" and "after" values for all modified settings, for example, the previous name of a recently renamed mailbox or how the mailbox quotas looked like before they were changed.

Features and benefits:

Bird's eye view of day-to-day Exchange administrative activities to track security policy violations;
Auditing and reporting of all changes to Exchange objects and permissions for security and compliance.
Detection of unauthorised and unplanned changes caused by excessively delegated rights;
Integration with System Center Operations Manager via SCOM Management Pack for Exchange Change Reporter that feeds the audit data to SCOM for customised processing (rules, alerts, etc.).

The product can be installed separately, but also is available as a part of an integrated NetWrix Change Reporter Suite that automates auditing of the entire IT infrastructure.

NOTE: Some features are not available in the free version of this tool.