Saturday, February 19, 2011

How do you monitor file access and changes on a file server by user name?

I was asked to find a way to monitor changes (modification, renaming, deletion, moving) of files in specific folders on the company's shared file server (simple windows shared directory). I wrote a simple app in C# that uses FileSystemWatcher to monitor these changes and notify a particular email address of them.

What I'd like to know now is how to find out the name/IP of the user/computer who made these changes. Any ideas?

As an alternative to writing my own software, are there any good (possibly free) software that supports this functionality?

From stackoverflow
  • Use auditing - it's on the security tab when you get the properties of file/folder. You specify which users you want audited for what kind of access. You also have to turn on auditing using the security policy mmc snap-in. The audits will end up in the security log.

    Detailed instructions from MS: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310399

    If you want, your C# app could then pick the events out of the security event log.

  • Hi Firas,

    I have a similar task...to monitor file access in a directory and notify some email user. Can you please let me know how you did it? The monitoring part.

    Thanks

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