The business problem

System security is a critical problem for most companies. Windows NT offers ways to restrict access to your files from some users. For example, you can choose to allow access to your company salary Excel file only to the CEO and the financial service. However, how will you be informed that a user has tried to access this file and failed. How will you know that someone is tracking it ? How will you know who tried to access it and from which location ? Once you will have installed FileAudit™, you will be able to get all this information simply by doing a right-button mouse click.

Technology architecture

Windows NT can monitor logs of your file as well as logon/logoff activity in the event log. However, this information is difficult to analyze because there is no efficient way to search in these logs. FileAudit™ searches in the logs the information for you so you don't have to read thousands records of activity mixed with other type of other information. FileAudit™ enhances through COM the standard Microsoft Windows NT Explorer to add a context menu named "FileAudit…" to every file and folder. Once you have selected FileAudit™ in the menu, a list of audit logs is displayed showing graphically the different types of accesses which occurred on the specific file. A button also allows you to know from which machine the file has been accessed. FileAudit™ uses its IA agent to analyze the file audit and logon/logoff audit to consolidate data and find the computer where the user was logged on.

Supported platforms

FileAudit™ works on all Windows NT 3.51 and Windows NT 4.0 platforms (including Workstation, Server, Small Business Server…).

You do not have to install any components on the servers. You just need to install the Windows Explorer extension on every computer where you want to use FileAudit™.