Improve your file access auditing performance through advanced settings

With FileAudit, your file access auditing performance and scalability can be improved further through the exclusion of irrelevant access events or files with specific extensions. With advanced settings you can also enable remote connection and delegate an audit to non-IT users.

Introduction

Hi everyone, welcome to the FileAudit Tutorial. We will see on this tutorial the different advanced settings available in FileAudit. Click on the “Settings” section from the FileAudit hub.

Scan and database sections

The first section named “Scan options” allows certain events to be excluded from the audited access events. The goal is to exclude user accounts, application or file type and obtain only the pertinent access audit that you need. Click on the “Add” button of the exclusion type to type the item you want to exclude. Note that there is a specific switch to ignore the “read access attempt” of any executable file. Most executable files load an associated icon image when the file name is listed in Windows Explorer. This option permits to exclude these read access events. The second section allows you to define the database settings. A wizard allows you to select your database provider and complete the different required fields. You can test the settings connection to validate the communication between FileAudit and the new database.

"Email" section

“Email settings”. Here you can automatically send reports and real-time alerts for specific access events. To do this FileAudit requires the configuration of an SMTP server. Type the server, the port and from which e-mail you want to send these notifications. You can switch on “Use SSL encryption” if you wish to use SSL.

"Accounts" section

The “Accounts” section allows the definition of impersonation accounts for the scan of access events. When the list is empty, FileAudit uses the account of the FileAudit service, which is the default local system. Click “Add an account” and provide an account which has at least local administrator privileges on the target audited machine. You can provide as many accounts as target machines that you want to audit.

"License" section

The “License” section allows you to register a FileAudit license. Copy and paste the FileAudit serial number found in the e-mail sent from our sales department into the License key field. Click “Apply”. The maintenance expiration date and the number of machines permitted to be audited will be displayed in the “Details” section. If wanted, you can revoke a licensed computer by clicking the “Revoke” button. But do take note that revoking an audited machine will clean all events of this machine on the database.

"Permissions" section

Permissions offer you the possibility to grant the access of the different FileAudit features to audit administrators. Click the “Add an account” button either user or group and enter the desired name through the Microsoft account selector. Check the entered name. Once the account name is detected and validated, click “OK”. You’ll next be able to choose what permissions you need to give to this specific user or group. You will get more details about this section on a specific tutorial about FileAudit delegation for non IT administrators.

"Service" section

The last section is the one which allows you to enable remote connection to the FileAudit service. This option if enabled also permits you to delegate the audit to non-IT users. By default the TCP port is set to 2000 but you can specify which port the FileAudit console must use to connect to the FileAudit service. Note that any port modification requires a FileAudit restart before it is fully activated.

Next video

On the next video we’ll see how to clean the events history saved in your database.