Compare ManageEngine ADAudit Plus vs. ShareWatcher

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.

ShareWatcher is a Windows tool for anyone who needs to know what is happening on a file share: who is accessing it, and which files were added, changed or deleted, and when. Alerts arrive by email, as a sound, as a Windows event-log entry or by running a command you choose. Folders can be watched live, so a change is reported the instant it happens, or polled on a schedule, which also covers FTP servers and picks up files that arrived while the program was not running. Cadence Watcher raises the opposite alarm: a folder that should be receiving files has stopped. Actions handle new files as they land, including a QuickMove action that moves each one to the right folder by rule. The Server licence adds Auditing, recording who created, changed or deleted a file, and runs as a Windows service; Enterprise adds remote monitoring of other computers. Pro US$129, Server US$349, Enterprise US$749, paid once. Free 7-day trial. Windows 7 SP1 to 11 and Windows Server 2012 R2 and above.