Compare ManageEngine ADAudit Plus vs. Active Directory Explorer (AD Explorer)

ADAudit Plus enhances the security and compliance of your Windows Server environment by delivering comprehensive insights into all operational activities. It offers a detailed overview of modifications made to Active Directory (AD) resources, encompassing AD objects and their respective attributes, group policies, and more. By conducting thorough AD audits, organizations can identify and mitigate insider threats, misuse of privileges, and other signs of potential security breaches, thereby bolstering their overall security framework. The tool enables users to monitor intricate details within AD, including entities such as users, computers, groups, organizational units (OUs), group policy objects (GPOs), schemas, and sites, along with their associated attributes. Furthermore, it tracks user management activities like the creation, deletion, password resets, and alterations in permissions, providing insights into the actions taken, the responsible individuals, the timing, and the originating locations. Additionally, it allows organizations to monitor the addition or removal of users from security and distribution groups, ensuring that access privileges are kept to the necessary minimum, which is critical for maintaining a secure environment. This level of oversight is vital for proactive security management and compliance adherence.

Active Directory Explorer (AD Explorer) serves as a powerful tool for viewing and editing Active Directory (AD) databases. With AD Explorer, users can seamlessly traverse an AD database, mark favorite locations for quick access, inspect object properties and attributes without the need for dialog boxes, modify permissions, review an object's schema, and perform complex searches that can be saved for later use. Additionally, the software allows for the storage of snapshots of an AD database, enabling offline examination and comparison of the data. When a snapshot is loaded, it can be navigated and explored just like an active database. Furthermore, if two snapshots of an AD database are available, AD Explorer provides a comparison feature that highlights any alterations in objects, attributes, and security permissions between the two. This functionality is particularly useful for tracking changes over time and ensuring consistency within the directory. Overall, AD Explorer offers a comprehensive suite of tools designed to enhance the management of Active Directory environments.