Changes can introduce untested conditions, or produce unpredictable errors and problems. Change auditing is a means whereby both IT administrators and management can readily distribute, secure and manage resources to ensure accountability and operational stability. This white paper explains why change auditing is important and covers features required for Active Directory change auditing.
Systems Audit is another area of Assurance for an Assurance professional. Auditing a Computer Environment is just as important as auditing the books of accounts.
Hence it is important for a Chartered Accountant to provide sufficient assurance to the stakeholders having interest, that the internal controls deployed in the IT Environment as well as in the Non IT Environment operate effectively.
This article gives an approach for conducting an IS Audit.
Nowadays, IT operations are required to run on a tight budget and under constant watch. Compliance, security and mobile innovation are making proper auditing of IT systems absolutely necessary. Knowing the most fundamental facts, like who changed what, when, and where, will save hours of troubleshooting, satisfy compliance needs, and secure the environment. This white paper shows a methodical approach to IT infrastructure auditing. That includes proper planning, estimation of time needed to implement an effective IT auditing solution, and critical resources.
Sample IT Best Practices Audit report.
An objective, self service tool for CIO’s by CIOs.
Identify and prioritize issues.
Solve the root causes.
Justify Investments.
Improve user productivity.
Maximize existing assets.
Reduce IT costs.
Improve IT service.
Reallocate IT resources to drive the business.
IT Infrastructure Audit would help organization to understand its current IT environment, have an action plan to realize the optimal benefits from its IT infrastructure investment. IIA is about safeguard assets, maintain data integrity & operate effectively to achieve the organization goals. Documentation of policies, procedures, practices & org structures designed to provide reasonable assurance that business objectives would be achieved & undesired events will be prevented or detected and corrected.
Process Discovery and Process Mining has always been
the “1st Chess coin move” by most of the high-end IT
Automation Consulting and System Integrators like us.
Learn how to reduce financial fraud and improve risks management. What are the most common risks for activities and business processes? How a SoD repository is commonly set up? Learn the top 3 SoD conflict types and how to implement a methodology in order to leverage your SAP governance.
Main points covered:
• How to reduce financial fraud and improve risks management
• What are the most common risks for activities and business processes?
• How a SoD repository is commonly set up?
• Learn the top 3 SoD conflict types
Presenter:
The webinar was presented by M. Roseau, director of business development for In Fidem, a Canadian company based in Montreal, Quebec.
Link of the recorded session published on YouTube: https://youtu.be/bRsiWx2NodA
Systems Audit is another area of Assurance for an Assurance professional. Auditing a Computer Environment is just as important as auditing the books of accounts.
Hence it is important for a Chartered Accountant to provide sufficient assurance to the stakeholders having interest, that the internal controls deployed in the IT Environment as well as in the Non IT Environment operate effectively.
This article gives an approach for conducting an IS Audit.
Nowadays, IT operations are required to run on a tight budget and under constant watch. Compliance, security and mobile innovation are making proper auditing of IT systems absolutely necessary. Knowing the most fundamental facts, like who changed what, when, and where, will save hours of troubleshooting, satisfy compliance needs, and secure the environment. This white paper shows a methodical approach to IT infrastructure auditing. That includes proper planning, estimation of time needed to implement an effective IT auditing solution, and critical resources.
Sample IT Best Practices Audit report.
An objective, self service tool for CIO’s by CIOs.
Identify and prioritize issues.
Solve the root causes.
Justify Investments.
Improve user productivity.
Maximize existing assets.
Reduce IT costs.
Improve IT service.
Reallocate IT resources to drive the business.
IT Infrastructure Audit would help organization to understand its current IT environment, have an action plan to realize the optimal benefits from its IT infrastructure investment. IIA is about safeguard assets, maintain data integrity & operate effectively to achieve the organization goals. Documentation of policies, procedures, practices & org structures designed to provide reasonable assurance that business objectives would be achieved & undesired events will be prevented or detected and corrected.
Process Discovery and Process Mining has always been
the “1st Chess coin move” by most of the high-end IT
Automation Consulting and System Integrators like us.
Learn how to reduce financial fraud and improve risks management. What are the most common risks for activities and business processes? How a SoD repository is commonly set up? Learn the top 3 SoD conflict types and how to implement a methodology in order to leverage your SAP governance.
Main points covered:
• How to reduce financial fraud and improve risks management
• What are the most common risks for activities and business processes?
• How a SoD repository is commonly set up?
• Learn the top 3 SoD conflict types
Presenter:
The webinar was presented by M. Roseau, director of business development for In Fidem, a Canadian company based in Montreal, Quebec.
Link of the recorded session published on YouTube: https://youtu.be/bRsiWx2NodA
Protecting Agile Transformation through Secure DevOps (DevSecOps)Eryk Budi Pratama
Respresenting Cyber Defense Community (cdef.id) to present and share my view on Secure DevOps / DevSecOps. Through this presentation, I shared several insights about:
1. How to balance the risk and controls in the "great shift left" paradigm (agile)
2. DevOps activities
3. How to seamlessly integrate security into DevOps
4. How to "shift left" the security"
5. Get started with Secure DevOps / DevSecOps
6. Case Study about DevSecOps implementation
For further discussion, especially how to secure digital and agile transformation in your organization, don't hesitate to contact me :)
Segregation of duties in SAP @ ISACA Pune presentation on 18.4.2015 CA CISA Jayjit Biswas
SOD conflict mitigation is a complex subject considering present manpower constraints and lack of technical understanding of core SAP domain. It is a mix of BPR and Technology together where process as well as IT knowledge is must to encounter this specialized area.
While Healthcare organizations are focusing their attention on HIPAA and HITECH compliance, they may be missing an important data risk in their lower environments. Read our whitepaper.
How do you know that your ERP system is SOX compliant? How can you enforce Segregation of Duties (SoD) rules? Don't be another Enron. Use compliance software to give your ERP software a check up from the neck up.
To arrange for a demo of SOX and SoD compliance software for your ERP system, send an e-mail to info@i-app.com or call Performa Apps CEO Dan Aldridge at 703.251.4504.
For much more content on ERP systems and enterprise software, visit us at http://inforln.com.
Presentation from Alliance 11 conference from the University of Nebraska and Smart ERP Solutions. Covers Row Level Security and Segregation of Duties for PeopleSoft.
Protecting Agile Transformation through Secure DevOps (DevSecOps)Eryk Budi Pratama
Respresenting Cyber Defense Community (cdef.id) to present and share my view on Secure DevOps / DevSecOps. Through this presentation, I shared several insights about:
1. How to balance the risk and controls in the "great shift left" paradigm (agile)
2. DevOps activities
3. How to seamlessly integrate security into DevOps
4. How to "shift left" the security"
5. Get started with Secure DevOps / DevSecOps
6. Case Study about DevSecOps implementation
For further discussion, especially how to secure digital and agile transformation in your organization, don't hesitate to contact me :)
Segregation of duties in SAP @ ISACA Pune presentation on 18.4.2015 CA CISA Jayjit Biswas
SOD conflict mitigation is a complex subject considering present manpower constraints and lack of technical understanding of core SAP domain. It is a mix of BPR and Technology together where process as well as IT knowledge is must to encounter this specialized area.
While Healthcare organizations are focusing their attention on HIPAA and HITECH compliance, they may be missing an important data risk in their lower environments. Read our whitepaper.
How do you know that your ERP system is SOX compliant? How can you enforce Segregation of Duties (SoD) rules? Don't be another Enron. Use compliance software to give your ERP software a check up from the neck up.
To arrange for a demo of SOX and SoD compliance software for your ERP system, send an e-mail to info@i-app.com or call Performa Apps CEO Dan Aldridge at 703.251.4504.
For much more content on ERP systems and enterprise software, visit us at http://inforln.com.
Presentation from Alliance 11 conference from the University of Nebraska and Smart ERP Solutions. Covers Row Level Security and Segregation of Duties for PeopleSoft.
The Top 7 Active Directory Admin Challenges Overcome White PaperNetIQ
Overcome Top 7 Admin Challenges of Active Directory
As Active Directory's role in the enterprise has drastically increased, so has the need to secure the data. Gain insight on creating repeatable, enforceable processes that reduces administrative overhead and enables robust, customizable reporting and auditing capabilities.
Exchange is the primary data store and means of communication for all levels within the organization. The ability to audit and report in detail Exchange change events that take place on a daily basis helps maintain security and sustain compliance. Implementing an effective auditing strategy for MS Exchange is a necessity to secure and maintain this critical business asset. This whitepaper outlines not only the reasons for having an Exchange auditing procedure in place but also those must-have qualities of any successful MS Exchange auditing effort.
Running head AUDITING INFORMATION SYSTEMS PROCESS .docxjoellemurphey
Running head: AUDITING INFORMATION SYSTEMS PROCESS
1
AUDITING INFORMATION SYSTEMS PROCESS 2
Auditing information systems process
Student’s Name
University Affiliation
Process of Auditing information systems
Information system is the livelihood of every huge company. As it has been in the past years, computer systems don’t simply document transactions of business, rather essentially compel the main business procedures of the venture. In this kind of a situation, superior administration and company managers usually have worries concerning an information system. assessment is a methodical process in which a proficient, autonomous person impartially gets and assesses proof concerning affirmations about a financial unit or occasion with the intent to outline an outlook about and giving feedback on the extent in which the contention matches an acknowledged standards set. information systems auditing refers to the administration controls assessment inside the communications of Information Technology. The obtained proof valuation is used to decide if systems of information are defensive assets, maintenance reliability of data, and also if they are efficiently operating in order to attain organization’s goals or objectives (Hoelzer, 2009).
Auditing of Information Systems has become an essential part of business organization in both large and small business environments. This paper examines the preliminary points for carrying out and Information system audit and some of the, techniques, tools, guidelines and standards that can be employed to build, manage, and examine the review function. The Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) qualifications is recognized worldwide as a standard of accomplishment for those who assess, monitor, control and audit the information technology of an organization and business systems. Information Systems experts with a concern in information systems security, control and audit. At least five years of specialized information systems security, auditing and control work practice is necessary for certification. An audit contract should be present to evidently state the responsibility of the management, purpose for, in addition to designation of power to audit of Information System . The audit contract should also summarize the general right, responsibilities and scope of the purpose of audit. The uppermost level of management should endorse the contract and on one occasion it is set up, this contract is supposed to be distorted merely if the amendment is and might be meticulously defensible.
The process of auditing information systems involves;-
Audit Function Management; this process includes assessment which is systematic of policies and methods of management of the organization in managemen ...
· Processed on 09-Dec-2014 901 PM CST · ID 488406360 · Word .docxLynellBull52
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· ID: 488406360
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http://www.isaca.org/Content/ContentGroups/Journal1/20023/The_IS_Audit_Process.htm
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Athula Ginige. "Web site auditing", Proceedings of the 14th international conference on Software engineering and knowledge engineering - SEKE 02 SEKE 02, 2002
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http://www.dc.fi.udc.es/~parapar/files/ai/The_IS_Audit_Process_isaca_sayana.pdf
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http://www.idkk.gov.tr/web/guest/it_audit_manual_isaca
paper text:
Running head: AUDITING INFORMATION SYSTEMS PROCESS Auditing information systems process Student’s Name University Affiliation Auditing information systems 2process Information systems are the livelihood of any huge business. As in past years, computer systems do not simply record transactions of business, but essentially drive the main business procedures of the enterprise. In such a situation, superior management and business managers do have worries concerning information systems. Auditing is a methodical process by which a proficient, independent person impartially obtains and assesses evidence concerning assertions about a financial entity or occasion for the reason of outlining an outlook about and reporting on the extent to which the contention matches to an acknowledged set of standards. Auditing of information systems is the administration controls assessment inside the communications of Information Technology. The obtained proof valuation is used to decide if systems of information are defensive assets, maintenance reliability of data, and also if they are efficiently operating in order to attain organization’s goals or objectives (Hoelzer, 2009). Auditing of Information Systems has become an essential part of business organization in both large and small business environments. This paper examines the preliminary points for carrying out and Information system audit and some of the, techniques, tools, guidelines and standards that can be employed to build, manage, and examine the review function. The Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) qualifications is recognized worldwide as a standard of accomplishment for those who assess, monitor, control and audit the information technology of an organization and business systems. Information Systems experts with a concern in information systems security, control and audit. At least five years of specialized information systems security, auditing and control work practice is necessary for certification. An audit contract should be present to evidently state the responsibility of the management, 2objectives for, and designation of authority to Information .
Your Challenge
Infrastructure managers and change managers need to re-evaluate their change management process due to slow change turnaround time, too many unauthorized changes, too many incidents and outages because of poorly managed changes, or difficulty evaluating and prioritizing changes.
IT system owners often resist change management because they see it as slow and bureaucratic.
Infrastructure changes are often seen as “different” from application changes, and two (or more) processes may exist.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
ITIL provides a usable framework for change management, but full process rigor is not appropriate for every change request.
You need to design a process that is flexible enough to meet the demand for change, and strict enough to protect the live environment from change-related incidents.
A mature change management process will minimize review and approval activity. Counterintuitively, with experience in implementing changes, risk levels decline to a point where most changes are “preapproved.”
Impact and Result
Create a unified change management process that reduces risk and takes a balanced approach toward deploying changes, while also maintaining throughput of innovation and enhancements.
Categorize changes based on an industry-standard risk model with objective measures of impact and likelihood.
Establish and empower a change manager and change advisory board with the authority to manage, approve, and prioritize changes.
Establish easy-to-follow intake, assessment, and approval processes, and ensure that there is visibility into changes across the organization.
Challenges of Active Directory User ManagementNetIQ
Relying solely on Active Directory's native tools can make the business-critical tasks of user provisioning, change user and de-provisioning time consuming and error prone, negatively affecting productivity and security. Even if your organization has well defined processes for managing provisioning and de-provisioning, including authorized approvals, enforcing adherence to processes and providing reports on users access privileges can be challenging. This White Paper examines the key challenges that automating user provisioning can help you resolve.
Implementing IT changes is imperative to the infrastructure of a business, but it can also open the door to breaches, viruses and malware, such as ransomware. So, how can organizations manage change effectively, maintain compliance and still reduce security risk? One answer lies in change management across your IT systems.
Jeff Lawson, Sr. Director, Product Management at Tripwire, and Geoff Hancock, Principal at Advanced Cybersecurity Group, cover:
-How IT operations and security teams can cooperate to improve IT stability and reduce security risk.
-How to reduce risks associated with poor configuration management.
-How leveraging Tripwire Enterprise for change detection enhances your change control process and keeps your systems, and organization, operating effectively and securely.
Business-Driven Identity and Access Governance: Why This New Approach MattersEMC
This white paper explains why taking a business-driven approach to identity and access governance (IAG) can enable organizations to easily prove compliance, minimize risk, and enable the business to be productive.
Windows Group Policy controls essential security and operational aspects of most enterprises that rely on Microsoft-based infrastructure. Without fine-grained auditing of Group Policy, IT departments risk missing major changes that can adversely impact security and business continuity. This white paper describes the topic of auditing in detail and introduces several technologies that can help to overcome the challenge.
The 7 Steps to Prevent IT-Caused Outages- A Comprehensive ApproachProtected Harbor
Discover a comprehensive roadmap to fortify your IT operations against unexpected downtime through systematic risk assessment, strategic redundancy planning, and the implementation of cutting-edge monitoring and response protocols. Our whitepaper outlines seven crucial steps to safeguard your IT infrastructure, helping you proactively identify and address potential weak points, ensuring robust resilience and reducing the risk of disruptive outages. By adopting our proven methodology, organizations can enhance its ability to withstand IT-caused outages, ensuring uninterrupted services, improved customer satisfaction, and safeguarding your reputation in today's highly competitive digital landscape.
Data-Centric Security for the Extended EnterpriseNextLabs, Inc.
Yesterday’s security is no match for the challenge of protecting data across the extended enterprise, with sensitive data increasingly shared across organizations, over external systems, and with unknown users and devices.
A basic shift towards data-centric thinking must replace conventional device- and container-based models. But where do organizations start? What assumptions must change?
This white paper outlines FOUR changes organizations must make to achieve data-centric security, and explains why IT Leaders, Security Professionals, and Compliance Officers should care. This paper then provides a brief overview of the NextLabs approach to Information Risk Management.
Why Regular Audits are Necessary in IT Asset Management.pdfaotmp2600
Regular IT asset audits ensure your company has accurate records, maximizes security, and avoids costly mistakes. Know how frequent audits benefit your IT infrastructure.
Information systems and its components iiAshish Desai
This study note helps to identify the concept of Control, Policies, Procedure and Practise apply inside the InformationSystem. Also, explain the types of control with the detailed description.
This is specially design for the students of IPCC Group 2 (ICAI)
Top 10 critical changes to audit in your it infrastructureNetwrix Corporation
Change auditing is one of the most important aspects of maintaining a secure and compliant IT infrastructure.
This webinar will help you understand why auditing is important, identify 10 most critical changes to audit and see how you can streamline your auditing using NetWrix Change Reporter Suite.
Identity management can be error-prone, time and resource-consuming and can lead to security and compliance issues due to the lack of control in native tools.
This webinar will discuss 5 critical identity management challenges that include dealing with forgotten passwords, troubleshooting account lockouts, communicating password expirations, locating obsolete user account then de-provisioning them and logon auditing. You will also see how NetWrix Identity Management Suite can simplify meeting these challenges efficiently and affordably.
Change auditing is one of the most important aspects of maintaining a secure and compliant IT infrastructure.
This webinar will help you understand why auditing is important, identify 10 most critical changes to audit and see how you can streamline your auditing using NetWrix Change Reporter Suite.
Microsoft Exchange Server, being one of the most important production systems in many organizations is a system consisting of many moving parts that need thorough and secure maintenance. In most companies groups of two or significantly more IT professionals manage the Exchange organization configuration and without detailed auditing of who did what, where, and when it is impossible to detect inadvertent, unauthorized or sometimes accidental changes done by mistake. The white paper describes different approaches to regular and consistent auditing of changes to Exchange server configuration and permissions.
On the one hand, account lockouts provide a good base for implementing secure password policies. On the other hand, they cause a lot of burden to the IT help desk. The white paper covers the account lockout management process and introduces new cost-effective workflows of account lockout resolution, describing significant ROI enterprises can achieve through the use of the automated management solutions.
Data housed in an organization's servers and storage devices contain massive amounts of information. Much of this information is sensitive and is not intended for all eyes. It is absolutely critical that at any point in time, the organization can provide an audit trail of who accessed what, when, and where this activity took place. This white paper explains why file auditing is important and describes required file auditing features.
NetApp Filer auditing is indispensable to data protection, enforcement of internal controls and adherence to external regulations, for those organizations that use NetApp Filer appliances. NetApp monitoring and auditing changes in files, folders, and permissions help tighten security and ensure compliance. Learn how to best go about NetApp Filer auditing, what features are required and how the whole process can be approached.
A tale of scale & speed: How the US Navy is enabling software delivery from l...sonjaschweigert1
Rapid and secure feature delivery is a goal across every application team and every branch of the DoD. The Navy’s DevSecOps platform, Party Barge, has achieved:
- Reduction in onboarding time from 5 weeks to 1 day
- Improved developer experience and productivity through actionable findings and reduction of false positives
- Maintenance of superior security standards and inherent policy enforcement with Authorization to Operate (ATO)
Development teams can ship efficiently and ensure applications are cyber ready for Navy Authorizing Officials (AOs). In this webinar, Sigma Defense and Anchore will give attendees a look behind the scenes and demo secure pipeline automation and security artifacts that speed up application ATO and time to production.
We will cover:
- How to remove silos in DevSecOps
- How to build efficient development pipeline roles and component templates
- How to deliver security artifacts that matter for ATO’s (SBOMs, vulnerability reports, and policy evidence)
- How to streamline operations with automated policy checks on container images
GDG Cloud Southlake #33: Boule & Rebala: Effective AppSec in SDLC using Deplo...James Anderson
Effective Application Security in Software Delivery lifecycle using Deployment Firewall and DBOM
The modern software delivery process (or the CI/CD process) includes many tools, distributed teams, open-source code, and cloud platforms. Constant focus on speed to release software to market, along with the traditional slow and manual security checks has caused gaps in continuous security as an important piece in the software supply chain. Today organizations feel more susceptible to external and internal cyber threats due to the vast attack surface in their applications supply chain and the lack of end-to-end governance and risk management.
The software team must secure its software delivery process to avoid vulnerability and security breaches. This needs to be achieved with existing tool chains and without extensive rework of the delivery processes. This talk will present strategies and techniques for providing visibility into the true risk of the existing vulnerabilities, preventing the introduction of security issues in the software, resolving vulnerabilities in production environments quickly, and capturing the deployment bill of materials (DBOM).
Speakers:
Bob Boule
Robert Boule is a technology enthusiast with PASSION for technology and making things work along with a knack for helping others understand how things work. He comes with around 20 years of solution engineering experience in application security, software continuous delivery, and SaaS platforms. He is known for his dynamic presentations in CI/CD and application security integrated in software delivery lifecycle.
Gopinath Rebala
Gopinath Rebala is the CTO of OpsMx, where he has overall responsibility for the machine learning and data processing architectures for Secure Software Delivery. Gopi also has a strong connection with our customers, leading design and architecture for strategic implementations. Gopi is a frequent speaker and well-known leader in continuous delivery and integrating security into software delivery.
Observability Concepts EVERY Developer Should Know -- DeveloperWeek Europe.pdfPaige Cruz
Monitoring and observability aren’t traditionally found in software curriculums and many of us cobble this knowledge together from whatever vendor or ecosystem we were first introduced to and whatever is a part of your current company’s observability stack.
While the dev and ops silo continues to crumble….many organizations still relegate monitoring & observability as the purview of ops, infra and SRE teams. This is a mistake - achieving a highly observable system requires collaboration up and down the stack.
I, a former op, would like to extend an invitation to all application developers to join the observability party will share these foundational concepts to build on:
Generative AI Deep Dive: Advancing from Proof of Concept to ProductionAggregage
Join Maher Hanafi, VP of Engineering at Betterworks, in this new session where he'll share a practical framework to transform Gen AI prototypes into impactful products! He'll delve into the complexities of data collection and management, model selection and optimization, and ensuring security, scalability, and responsible use.
Welocme to ViralQR, your best QR code generator.ViralQR
Welcome to ViralQR, your best QR code generator available on the market!
At ViralQR, we design static and dynamic QR codes. Our mission is to make business operations easier and customer engagement more powerful through the use of QR technology. Be it a small-scale business or a huge enterprise, our easy-to-use platform provides multiple choices that can be tailored according to your company's branding and marketing strategies.
Our Vision
We are here to make the process of creating QR codes easy and smooth, thus enhancing customer interaction and making business more fluid. We very strongly believe in the ability of QR codes to change the world for businesses in their interaction with customers and are set on making that technology accessible and usable far and wide.
Our Achievements
Ever since its inception, we have successfully served many clients by offering QR codes in their marketing, service delivery, and collection of feedback across various industries. Our platform has been recognized for its ease of use and amazing features, which helped a business to make QR codes.
Our Services
At ViralQR, here is a comprehensive suite of services that caters to your very needs:
Static QR Codes: Create free static QR codes. These QR codes are able to store significant information such as URLs, vCards, plain text, emails and SMS, Wi-Fi credentials, and Bitcoin addresses.
Dynamic QR codes: These also have all the advanced features but are subscription-based. They can directly link to PDF files, images, micro-landing pages, social accounts, review forms, business pages, and applications. In addition, they can be branded with CTAs, frames, patterns, colors, and logos to enhance your branding.
Pricing and Packages
Additionally, there is a 14-day free offer to ViralQR, which is an exceptional opportunity for new users to take a feel of this platform. One can easily subscribe from there and experience the full dynamic of using QR codes. The subscription plans are not only meant for business; they are priced very flexibly so that literally every business could afford to benefit from our service.
Why choose us?
ViralQR will provide services for marketing, advertising, catering, retail, and the like. The QR codes can be posted on fliers, packaging, merchandise, and banners, as well as to substitute for cash and cards in a restaurant or coffee shop. With QR codes integrated into your business, improve customer engagement and streamline operations.
Comprehensive Analytics
Subscribers of ViralQR receive detailed analytics and tracking tools in light of having a view of the core values of QR code performance. Our analytics dashboard shows aggregate views and unique views, as well as detailed information about each impression, including time, device, browser, and estimated location by city and country.
So, thank you for choosing ViralQR; we have an offer of nothing but the best in terms of QR code services to meet business diversity!
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI supportAlan Dix
Paper presented at SYNERGY workshop at AVI 2024, Genoa, Italy. 3rd June 2024
https://alandix.com/academic/papers/synergy2024-epistemic/
As machine learning integrates deeper into human-computer interactions, the concept of epistemic interaction emerges, aiming to refine these interactions to enhance system adaptability. This approach encourages minor, intentional adjustments in user behaviour to enrich the data available for system learning. This paper introduces epistemic interaction within the context of human-system communication, illustrating how deliberate interaction design can improve system understanding and adaptation. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the potential of epistemic interaction to significantly advance human-computer interaction by leveraging intuitive human communication strategies to inform system design and functionality, offering a novel pathway for enriching user-system engagements.
Transcript: Selling digital books in 2024: Insights from industry leaders - T...BookNet Canada
The publishing industry has been selling digital audiobooks and ebooks for over a decade and has found its groove. What’s changed? What has stayed the same? Where do we go from here? Join a group of leading sales peers from across the industry for a conversation about the lessons learned since the popularization of digital books, best practices, digital book supply chain management, and more.
Link to video recording: https://bnctechforum.ca/sessions/selling-digital-books-in-2024-insights-from-industry-leaders/
Presented by BookNet Canada on May 28, 2024, with support from the Department of Canadian Heritage.
Builder.ai Founder Sachin Dev Duggal's Strategic Approach to Create an Innova...Ramesh Iyer
In today's fast-changing business world, Companies that adapt and embrace new ideas often need help to keep up with the competition. However, fostering a culture of innovation takes much work. It takes vision, leadership and willingness to take risks in the right proportion. Sachin Dev Duggal, co-founder of Builder.ai, has perfected the art of this balance, creating a company culture where creativity and growth are nurtured at each stage.
Essentials of Automations: Optimizing FME Workflows with ParametersSafe Software
Are you looking to streamline your workflows and boost your projects’ efficiency? Do you find yourself searching for ways to add flexibility and control over your FME workflows? If so, you’re in the right place.
Join us for an insightful dive into the world of FME parameters, a critical element in optimizing workflow efficiency. This webinar marks the beginning of our three-part “Essentials of Automation” series. This first webinar is designed to equip you with the knowledge and skills to utilize parameters effectively: enhancing the flexibility, maintainability, and user control of your FME projects.
Here’s what you’ll gain:
- Essentials of FME Parameters: Understand the pivotal role of parameters, including Reader/Writer, Transformer, User, and FME Flow categories. Discover how they are the key to unlocking automation and optimization within your workflows.
- Practical Applications in FME Form: Delve into key user parameter types including choice, connections, and file URLs. Allow users to control how a workflow runs, making your workflows more reusable. Learn to import values and deliver the best user experience for your workflows while enhancing accuracy.
- Optimization Strategies in FME Flow: Explore the creation and strategic deployment of parameters in FME Flow, including the use of deployment and geometry parameters, to maximize workflow efficiency.
- Pro Tips for Success: Gain insights on parameterizing connections and leveraging new features like Conditional Visibility for clarity and simplicity.
We’ll wrap up with a glimpse into future webinars, followed by a Q&A session to address your specific questions surrounding this topic.
Don’t miss this opportunity to elevate your FME expertise and drive your projects to new heights of efficiency.
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 3DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 3. In this session, we will cover desktop automation along with UI automation.
Topics covered:
UI automation Introduction,
UI automation Sample
Desktop automation flow
Pradeep Chinnala, Senior Consultant Automation Developer @WonderBotz and UiPath MVP
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
Le nuove frontiere dell'AI nell'RPA con UiPath Autopilot™UiPathCommunity
In questo evento online gratuito, organizzato dalla Community Italiana di UiPath, potrai esplorare le nuove funzionalità di Autopilot, il tool che integra l'Intelligenza Artificiale nei processi di sviluppo e utilizzo delle Automazioni.
📕 Vedremo insieme alcuni esempi dell'utilizzo di Autopilot in diversi tool della Suite UiPath:
Autopilot per Studio Web
Autopilot per Studio
Autopilot per Apps
Clipboard AI
GenAI applicata alla Document Understanding
👨🏫👨💻 Speakers:
Stefano Negro, UiPath MVPx3, RPA Tech Lead @ BSP Consultant
Flavio Martinelli, UiPath MVP 2023, Technical Account Manager @UiPath
Andrei Tasca, RPA Solutions Team Lead @NTT Data
How world-class product teams are winning in the AI era by CEO and Founder, P...
Active Directory Change Auditing in the Enterprise
1. Active Directory Change Auditing
in the Enterprise
White Paper
Written by Chris Rich, Senior Director of Product Management
2. Active Directory Change Auditing in the Enterprise Whitepaper
Table of contents
What is Change Auditing? ....................................................................................................................................... 3
Why is Change Auditing Important? ....................................................................................................................... 4
Change Auditing: A Real-World Example ............................................................................................................ 4
Change Auditing to Reduce Risk ......................................................................................................................... 4
Change Auditing to Improve Security ................................................................................................................. 5
Change Auditing to Sustain Compliance ............................................................................................................. 5
Change Auditing to Improve Manageability ....................................................................................................... 5
Required Features for Active Directory Change Auditing ...................................................................................... 7
Automatic Data Collection .................................................................................................................................. 7
Efficient and Centralized Data Storage ............................................................................................................... 7
Scalability............................................................................................................................................................. 8
Advanced Reporting Capabilities ........................................................................................................................ 8
Real-Time Alerts .................................................................................................................................................. 9
Robust Disaster Recovery Options ...................................................................................................................... 9
Additional Considerations ................................................................................................................................... 9
SIEM, IT Governance, Risk-Management and Active Directory Change Auditing ................................................ 10
NetWrix approach to Active Directory auditing ................................................................................................... 11
About NetWrix Corporation.................................................................................................................................. 11
About the Author .................................................................................................................................................. 12
Additional Resources ............................................................................................................................................ 12
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3. Active Directory Change Auditing in the Enterprise Whitepaper
What is Change Auditing?
Change Auditing is an auditing procedure for mitigating risks associated with the changes to IT systems,
services and applications. Limiting unauthorized or undesired changes and having appropriate segregation of
duties and management controls in place is essential to reduce the risks associated with implementing IT
changes in production environments. Changes can introduce untested conditions, or produce unpredictable
errors and problems. Proper change auditing can reduce the risk of security features being disabled or turned
off, harmful code distributed to end-users, sensitive data loss or compromise, and non-compliance with
internal and external regulatory requirements. Proper change auditing is determined by measuring the risks
associated with managing a production IT environment and addressing those risks in a secure and controlled
audit trail of all changes across the entire enterprise 24x7x365. Change auditing is a means whereby both IT
administrators and management can readily distribute, secure and manage resources to ensure accountability
and operational stability.
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4. Active Directory Change Auditing in the Enterprise Whitepaper
Why is Change Auditing Important?
Change Auditing: A Real-World Example
The importance of change auditing is best illustrated by a real-world example. Consider a company that
recently relocated an employee. This employee was provided with extensive access to important systems and
information as part of their past duties, however they are no longer appropriate in their new role. Upon
relocation, their access should have been modified to remove prior privileges and access, however, no formal
process existed to secure resources following an employee experiencing a relocation. Four months later, the
employee, still with extensive rights, gains unauthorized access to the environment remotely. Having prior
knowledge of the company’s systems and resources, they navigate to a server housing the company’s financial
data secured by Active Directory to resolve a technical issue they were experiencing, modifying a number of
important settings. As a result, the company’s financial data becomes unavailable causing anger, frustration,
panic, and finger-pointing. After many hours of investigation, the inappropriate modifications are discovered
and corrected in Active Directory. Unfortunately, the damage was done and now IT must spend more time
correcting the problem.
This type of situation is rare but does happen. Without change auditing, there was no way for the company
to protect itself. Even if there had been a procedure in place, a human had to follow that procedure. Human
error can occur and that is to be expected, however, without a proper change audit solution in place to
confirm access and permissions in Active Directory had been adjusted properly, the company suffered serious
harm. Change auditing is important primarily because without it, an organization is incapable of reducing the
risks of human behavior.
Change Auditing to Reduce Risk
Change auditing provides accountability thereby reducing risk through detailed collection and analysis of
event information. A setting made today may not be appropriate at some point in the future. Change auditing
is the vehicle by which changes made to the environment today can be measured against predetermined risk
factors and mitigated accordingly. Establishing risk factors is the single most important step in securing any IT
environment. Doing so will ensure that everyone involved from end-users to senior management understands
what is at risk. This creates a conscious awareness of all things critical to sustaining normal business
operations. Regularly revisiting these risk factors will serve to adjust them as needs and conditions change.
Once the risk factors have been identified, the next step is to secure them. For Active Directory, users are
provided with rights to access data and applications locally and remotely. Group memberships and policies are
setup to control specific behaviors when accessing data and applications. Effectively managing every aspect of
user interaction with the environment reduces risk while granting the appropriate access needed to perform
job responsibilities. Change may sometimes have unpredictable results, one of which is unintentionally
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5. Active Directory Change Auditing in the Enterprise Whitepaper
increasing risk to IT assets. Active Directory change auditing provides actionable and historical forensic
information to ensure risk factors are managed appropriately while delivering services to operationally diverse
end-user populations.
Change Auditing to Improve Security
Accountability will always keep the honest users and administrators honest, however, internal threats
pose a more immediate danger than those external to the organization because of trust. Change auditing
provides the ability to establish a robust check-and-balance record for all Active Directory changes. Security
improvements in Active Directory are most often reactionary. Flaws and holes are discovered after the fact
and the reason for this is that without auditing daily activity there is no way to predict how a change will
impact the environment. Environments that rely on tickets, or other change approval processes may still
experience security problems if the information submitted is later found to have been inaccurate or
intentionally misleading. The only way to know security has been compromised is to extract change and
setting information directly from Active Directory.
Change Auditing to Sustain Compliance
Regulations such as SOX, PCI, FISMA, HIPAA each have their own detailed explanations of what needs to be
tracked and recorded. They also will explicitly define how information is to be accessed and by whom. These
regulations exist to establish (IT) change auditing standards to protect both business and consumers. At the
end of the day, these regulations and their enforcement want to confirm the organization is recording and
monitoring events that control access to sensitive information such as banking information, social security
numbers, and health records. Demonstrating compliance is an exercise in presenting this information to
auditors upon request and to the level of details as is interpreted by the law or standard and subject to the
individual auditor’s discretion. Change auditing in Active Directory provides the Who, What, When, and Where
information most frequently requested by auditors and almost equally important is the need to store this
information for sometimes up to 7 years or more to be considered compliant. For Active Directory, this is
extremely difficult with native tools and thus gives rise to the demand for additional tools.
Change Auditing to Improve Manageability
Making changes to Active Directory is performed easily when provided sufficient access. The consequences
of changes however require thought and planning to avoid problems. Even if a lab environment is used to test
changes, unexpected results can still occur, making the need for change auditing essential to effectively
managing Active Directory. Change auditing offers the opportunity to see before and new values for modified
configuration settings and permissions that can greatly improve an administrator’s ability to recover from
changes that result in harm or that introduce unnecessary risks. Additionally, by maintaining an historical
record of changes over time, further analysis can be used to uncover hidden problems that may not be
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6. Active Directory Change Auditing in the Enterprise Whitepaper
obvious during normal Active Directory activities. Being able to make changes is necessary to adjust to meet
business and operational goals however, the ability to look back at the impact those changes had is the
difference between ensuring a consistent, stable and safe environment for users and loosing visibility and
control over mission critical resources and sensitive data. The ease with which changes are made can create a
false sense of security with regards to the impacts those changes may bring and thus reinforces the need to
have robust change auditing policies, procedures and tools to improve overall Active Directory manageability.
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7. Active Directory Change Auditing in the Enterprise Whitepaper
Required Features for Active Directory Change
Auditing
Change auditing for Active Directory is the process of gathering information, reporting the information,
analyzing the information, taking action and evaluation. Active Directory natively has the capability to output
audit information. This information however is stored local to each domain controller and is not centrally
stored. Reporting is also unavailable for audit data making the collection and reporting steps of change
auditing for Active Directory difficult and time consuming. There is also a risk of losing audit data if event log
settings are not set properly to handle the volume of information logged and running out of disk space on
domain controllers if too much information is being captured and not cleared after it’s been archived properly.
Once native information is analyzed by an administrator experienced with system events and messages, the
interpretation then would need to result in a decision to act or, accept the change and information as having
met the intended goal and did not result in a deficiency or unacceptable compromise. Evaluating using native
resources requires the same activity as collecting the information and thus requires similar investments in
time. Combine these factors and the result is native change auditing is not feasible except for very small
environments with a handful of servers and under 100 users. The following information is a collection of the
required features change auditing for Active Directory in the Enterprise must have. Additional deployment
considerations are provided as well.
Automatic Data Collection
In order to maximize the efficiency of collecting audit information, the process must be automated
through scripting or 3rd-party tools. Without it, collecting the information in a timely manner is not feasible.
This is especially true as the size of the organization will have a great impact on the raw volume of information
collected. Special steps must also be taken on servers and domain controllers throughout the environment to
facilitate auditing of the information which is by default not enabled. Additional scripting and 3 rd-party tools
may also be employed to pre-configure systems in preparation of collecting event data. Furthermore, if audit
data is not collected regularly, there is a risk of losing this information due to event log automatic overwrites
or disk space issues. This is an important required feature to change auditing because without it, timely
auditing is not feasible.
Efficient and Centralized Data Storage
Automation of any kind typically requires additional resources and may negatively impact system
performance which can lead to bigger problems. For this reason, it’s important that the impact of the method
employed to automatically collect data is minimal. Furthermore, storage of data must also be a consideration
during implementation. While it is possible to store event and audit data exclusively on the local system where
the events are taking place, the preferred method will be to centralize the information. This will lead to
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8. Active Directory Change Auditing in the Enterprise Whitepaper
numerous additional benefits over time as the need to analyze and report on this information becomes part of
daily routine for the IT administrator or group responsible.
Collection of information must also be reliable. Occasionally, each piece of the change auditing system
should have a periodic check to ensure information is consistent when collected. The most advanced methods
of reliably collecting this information will also have the ability to pre-screen data and filter for only essential
data and the ability to compress this information to further add to overall efficiency. During collection,
preference should be given to methods that leverage the existing Windows Event Log and audit information as
opposed to injected agents or modified core system code for event extraction. Doing so will eliminate any
potential system stability issues or future incompatibility problems. Relying solely on event log data introduces
problems because this information is frequently incomplete. To completely understand an event, information
from all sources involved must be aggregated and analyzed as a whole. Securing this information for short and
long-term storage is also an important consideration and thus best-practices for securing audit data should be
included pre-deployment such that no single power-user has access to or the ability to delete or tamper with
information. Access to this information should be heavily restricted and monitored.
Scalability
Change auditing for Active Directory must be scalable to adjust to changes without the need for dramatic
or drastic steps. Implementation and ongoing use of change auditing will be simplified when no additional
software or extensive reconfigurations are required to accommodate changes within the organization.
Auditing should keep pace with all granular changes as the overall topology of the network and Active
Directory changes it to ensure consistent optimal configuration to best serve end-users and be administered
by IT and Help Desk staff.
Advanced Reporting Capabilities
Once data collection is automated, reliable and stored securely, change auditing for Active Directory can
assume a proactive posture. Advanced reporting is necessary to provide IT administrators, management and
auditors with summarized information on any aspect of the Active Directory deployment and for any time
period. Without the ability to produce clear information on change history for day-to-day modifications to
Active Directory, sustaining compliance will be impossible and many opportunities will be lost to better secure
the environment. For Windows environments, using SQL to store data and leverage Advanced Reporting
Services are obvious choices for storing and reporting on data. SQL Server with Advanced Reporting can be
downloaded for free from Microsoft. The ability to customize ad-hoc and predefined 3rd-party reports will
accelerate an effective change auditing implementation by saving time and providing configuration options to
suit the majority of needs.
Using reports on a daily basis ensures complete visibility over the entire IT infrastructure providing
opportunities to improve security and sustain compliance. Additional reporting services including e-mail
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9. Active Directory Change Auditing in the Enterprise Whitepaper
subscription capabilities, and the ability to produce Active Directory snapshot reports will also add to the
impact advanced reporting will have on overall systems management effectiveness. Once established,
advanced reporting will be the main driver behind sustained Active Directory change auditing success and will
become an important part of day-to-day management of the IT environment.
Real-Time Alerts
Closely related to advanced reporting, Real-Time Alerts offer instant awareness to changes made on
critical objects or data. Having the ability to dispense real-time alerts empower administrators to proactively
respond to potentially harmful incidents that were previously unavailable. Before Active Directory change
auditing, knowledge of a harmful change would come in the form of an administrator or end user stumbling
upon it as part of their daily activities. In many cases, bad changes have led to unscheduled downtime,
financial losses, and legal liabilities. Having a real-time alert capability will further reduce the risk of bad
changes having costly consequences and may even prevent them entirely. Real-time alerting should be a
required feature for any Active Directory change auditing implementation.
Robust Disaster Recovery Options
Active Directory offers a number of restore functions though they require reboots and backup resources to
function properly and also carry the added requirement of testing these options in the event a restoration is
needed. Change auditing for Active Directory needs a more robust solution in order to recover from a
damaging change therefore is a required feature to any implementation. Furthermore, native restore features
are limited in the level of detail with which objects can be restored. For example, modified attributes are not
restorable unless a backup is available. Having a granular restore capability that can reverse unwanted
changes to include attribute-level detail is necessary to ensure systems stability and service availability. This
will enable the administrator to undo a change completely without the need for a backup or having to shut
down a domain controller to minimize impact. Having a robust and granular restore function is an invaluable
asset to have when managing Active Directory. An example of this would be when there is a need to restore
specific security group memberships recently modified to their original states while retaining other recent and
approved modifications.
Additional Considerations
Most Windows environments contain systems that are capable of utilizing Active Directory for a variety of
functions and these too must be considered as part of overall IT governance and risk-management directives.
For this reason, it is important to consider what options are available to integrate these systems into a larger
role of change auditing in the enterprise. Preferred solutions (and providers) should offer plug-in or add-on
modules and software to help form a cohesive and comprehensive management suite to make the most of
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10. Active Directory Change Auditing in the Enterprise Whitepaper
change auditing. Some additional types of systems may include firewalls, switches, database servers, SANs,
storage appliances and other Microsoft technologies such as Exchange and SharePoint.
SIEM, IT Governance, Risk-Management and
Active Directory Change Auditing
These common buzzwords appear frequently when discussing security and change auditing and represent
a broader view of IT management. SIEM, which stands for Security Information and Event Management is
related to change auditing, however, with some important differentiators. SIEM encompasses real-time
analysis of security alerts and events generated through the entire enterprise, extending to all applications
and devices at all corners of the organization. Change auditing is a critical information collection and reporting
layer to overall SIEM objectives and must have a high level of interoperability with SIEM systems and services
in order to achieve maximum effectiveness. SIEM implementations range from in-house, customized systems
to massive modular deployments providing management capabilities for nearly all IT resources in an
environment. IT Governance is a term often used to describe the overall mission of an IT organization within
the broader context of the organization as a whole. It’s meant to provide a means by which core activities and
services provided by IT align with overall organizational directives and goals. Risk-Management is a term found
more and more frequently in press and publications to challenge the status of security for appropriately
describing how organizations approach keeping their resources stable and secure. More recently, the
increased visibility of mobile devices and cloud computing as part of an organization’s IT strategy present new
challenges to traditional models of thought on security and how best to provide that in an increasingly mobile
world where borders to IT infrastructure have blurred greatly. Keeping these new terms in mind while
approaching Active Directory change auditing will help keep IT objectives in line with organizational objectives
and needs as requirements change.
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11. Active Directory Change Auditing in the Enterprise Whitepaper
NetWrix Approach to Active Directory Auditing
The NetWrix approach incorporates all the necessary features for achieving effective Active Directory
auditing in a software solution. NetWrix Active Directory Change Reporter is an Active Directory auditing tool
that tracks changes made to the Active Directory across the entire organization. It generates audit reports and
real-time e-mail alerts that include the four W’s: Who, What, When, and Where for every audited AD change
including users, OUs, groups, domain controller, configuration, schema partition, and all other change activity.
In addition, it automatically provides before and new setting values for each AD object change to improve
security and AD change control. The automatic collection and reporting on Active Directory changes not only
surpasses native capabilities in Windows but expands upon them eliminating the time and effort spent
collecting AD change audit information manually or through complex scripting thereby makes this information
actionable. Furthermore, it has the ability to sustain compliance through historical reporting for up to 7 years
and more and extent AD auditing into SIEM systems such as SCOM for improved IT control.
Download free 20 day trial of NetWrix Active Directory Change Reporter to see how NetWrix can help with
your auditing and compliance needs. Download link: http://www.netwrix.com/requeste.html?product=adcr
About NetWrix Corporation
NetWrix Corporation is a highly specialized provider of solutions for IT
infrastructure change auditing. Change auditing is the core competency of NetWrix
and no other vendor focuses on this more extensively. With the broadest platform
coverage available in the industry, innovative technology and strategic roadmap
aiming to support different types of IT systems, devices and applications, NetWrix
offers award-winning change auditing solutions at very competitive prices, matched with great customer
service. Founded in 2006, NetWrix has evolved as #1 for Change Auditing as evidenced by thousands of
satisfied customers worldwide. The company is headquartered in Paramus, NJ, and has regional offices in Los
Angeles and Boston.
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