File Auditing is a way of identifying and indexing the documents on your network. While you can do this manually, it can be a time-consuming process, especially if your data is stored in multiple locations. File auditing solutions not only index your files, but also log when and how the file is used, making note of which users have access to the file, and details of any changes made to the file.
Having an effective file auding solution as part of your organization’s security strategy is mandated by many regulatory bodies – depending on your sector, failure to effectively audit files can lead to penalties, fines, and even suspension of your right to operate.
Many cybersecurity insurance providers will also expect you to have an efficient file auditing solution in place before they agree to extend cover to you. Their expectations will often be in-line with the recommendations of relevant regulatory bodies.
In this article, we’ll look at some of the best file auditing solutions currently available. We’ll assess each product’s key features, and note the type of organization that would benefit from their use. Not all of the solutions in this list are dedicated file auditing solutions – instead, some are comprehensive data management suites that offer file auditing as one of their features.
AuditBoard is a California-based audit management and compliance company that is used by 35% of the Fortune 500. Their platform combines auditing, risk management, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), and compliance capabilities. This range of tools makes AuditBoard a comprehensive and complete solution that does more than just auditing.
Features
Pricing And Plans: For information on pricing and plans, contact AuditBoard directly.
Expert Insights’ Comments: AuditBoard’s platform offers effective tools to improve an organization’s visibility of their network and give greater control over auditing capabilities. The solution provides built-in workflows to centralize policy creation, review, approve access, and disseminate findings. This allows activities to be carried out across a network automatically, without needing granular oversight. We would recommend AuditBoard for organizations looking for a comprehensive auditing solution, that has the capacity for risk and ESG management.
Empowered Systems have been innovating audit software for almost 30 years and now produce leading and trusted GRC products. AutoAudit is their audit software solution that streamlines and automates the auditing process, thereby saving time and resources. This also ensures that audits are carried out consistently, enabling you to identify anomalies and inconsistencies easily. AutoAudit allows you to manage risk and control material weaknesses, ensuring that your organization has extensive visibility over its assets.
AutoAudit Features:
Pricing And Plans: AutoAudit can be deployed via the Cloud or via the Desktop version. The Cloud version is quick to implement, can be deployed flexibly, and will scale as your organization grows. Desktop provides a low cost of overall ownership, with an easy-to-understand interface, and virtual training sessions when needed. For information on the pricing of these two plans, contact AutoAudit directly.
Expert Insights’ Comments: AutoAudit is a powerful and efficient tool that gives you enhanced visibility over the data that your organization uses. The solution also provides virtual training to ensure that you get the most out of the tool; therefore, it is an ideal solution for SMBs that may not have experience using auditing software before. With AutoAudit, upgrades are complimentary, which means you are always able to use the most up-to-date technology.
ManageEngine offers a host of useful software solutions to help businesses manage and secure their virtual environments. ADAudit Plus is designed to monitor and ensure compliance in Windows servers and ecosystems utilizing UBA-driven risk management. This means that the solution will monitor user activity and behavior to assess risk and potential compliance infringements.
ManageEngine ADAudit Plus Features:
Plans And Pricing: Contact ManageEngine directly for more information on plans and pricing.
Expert Insights’ Comments: ManageEngine ADAudit Plus provides extensive visibility across your network – specifically Azure AD, file servers, workstations, and Windows servers. You can gain granular information on user activity, ensuring that nothing is unaccounted for. By taking a proactive approach, ADAudit Plus can identify issues before they develop into a problem. We would recommend this solution for organizations of all sizes, looking for a solution that will easily integrate with Microsoft infrastructure.
Aqubix focus on bringing modular and trusted solutions to the consumers who need them. As well as auditing software, the organization distributes effective client and GDPR management solutions. Cabinet EDMS (Electronic Document Management System) is Aqubix’s auditing and management solution that focuses on logging documents and files. The solution offers management of all records, version control, and an effective search function based on a range of criteria. Flexibility is at the heart of this solution, with the ability to manage audits from smart phones and tablets, as well as laptops and PCs.
Cabinet EDMS Features:
Plans And Pricing: Cabinet EDMS offers three pricing plans: Lite, Pro, and Enterprise. Lite provides 100 user licences, offsite backups, and is deployed via the cloud with 100GB of storage. This plan costs €3,600/year. The Pro plan sits at €9,500/year, is deployed locally, allows for 100 users, and offers custom integrations. The Enterprise plan builds on the Pro framework but allows for an unlimited number of concurrent user licences. This plan is €14,800/year.
Expert Insights’ Comments: Cabinet EDMS is an effective tool with a wide range of features. One of their newest features is an automated OCR tool. This allows content from scanned physical files to be assessed and added to the audit. Overall, Cabinet EDMS is a very usable and efficient solution for organizations who need a flexible and adaptable approach to auditing, and particularly those that need to audit both digital and physical files.
Diligent utilizes automated workflows to carry out effective, repeatable, and timely audits. The company serves 25,000 organizations, covering one million users worldwide. Diligent makes audit planning easy, with risk-based audit plans and the ability to prioritize tasks – this ensures that you have access to the most relevant data when you need it.
Diligent Features:
Pricing And Plans: For information on pricing or to request a demo of the solution, contact Diligent directly.
Expert Insights’ Comments: Diligent is an effective and flexible solution that will connect to sources across your network. This enables the solution to scale as your organization grows, without the risk of areas being overlooked. You can utilize ML capabilities to ensure that you are getting the most out of the solution. Overall, we would recommend Diligent for enterprise organizations who operate in a highly regulated sectors and need to evidence their compliance.
FileAudit by IsDecisions is designed to monitor file access on Windows devices. The French company has been recognized by Microsoft as a Gold Partner, which illustrates how closely their solution integrates with Microsoft platforms. Their auditing solution provides accurate and relevant information across a wide range of data points.
FileAudit Features:
Pricing And Plans: FileAudit offers several options depending on the size of your organization and your needs. Team costs €35/month which allows for 1 server for 100 users. For €60/month the Small plan offers 3 servers providing access for 500 users. Their Medium plan sits at €100/month, allows for 1,000 users and 5 servers. For organizations needing a larger plans, contact IsDecisions directly.
Expert Insights’ Comments: The dashboard mimics the style of Windows 8, making it feel like an extension of your OS so that admin don’t have to learn a new interface. Data is comprehensive, sortable, and relayed to you in real-time. FileAudit cuts the workload associated with managing and moderating file access, allowing that time to be better spent. We would recommend FileAudit for SMBs in need of a simple and effective solution for Microsoft work environments.
Hyperproof is an auditing solution that is focused on enforcing compliance across an organization’s network. The tool can be configured for a wide range of compliance frameworks, including SOC 2, NIST CSF, and HIPAA. You can schedule the solution to run automated compliance audits, ensuring that nothing is overlooked.
Hyperproof Features:
Pricing And Plans: To find out information on Hyperproof’s pricing structure or to book in a demo, contact Hyperproof directly.
Expert Insights’ Comments: Thanks to the wide number of preconfigured integrations, Hyperproof is an ideal solution for organizations who must ensure and prove compliance, but don’t necessarily have the time to dedicate to enforcing this manually. The solution is easy to deploy, giving you robust assurance quickly.
Ideagen is a British-based software provider that specializes in solutions for highly regulated industries. Pentana Audit allows you to assess your digital assets to ensure that you are operating within compliance rules. With Pentana, audit workflows can be standardized and automated, to give reliable and on-demand updates.
Pentana Audit Features:
Pricing And Plans: Contact Ideagen for more information on pricing and plans.
Expert Insights’ Comments: Ideagen Pentana is a robust and comprehensive solution that provides an in-depth level of data across your audited material. Some users comment that configuring the solution can be complex but praise it for its comprehensive workload management. We would recommend Pentana for SMBs and enterprise organizations who have the technical knowledge needed to configure the solution and need an auditing tool with a varied feature set.
Onspring is a Kansas-based GRC workflow automation platform. Their software solution streamlines the internal auditing process to provide real-time analytics, increasing transparency and organizational efficiency. The platform is no-code, meaning that even organizations without extensive technical knowledge can benefit from Onspring’s capabilities.
Onspring Features:
Pricing And Plans: Onspring licence their software based on users and solutions needed. The company offers three levels of service. Bronze covers the essential modules, with storage to back this up. In addition to these features, Silver offers a development environment to create custom workflows. Their top-end plan, Gold, offers all the features of Bronze and Silver, but adds more modules, more storage, custom support, and testing capabilities for the dev environment. Contact Onspring directly for information on the pricing of these plans.
Expert Insights’ Comments: Onspring is an intuitive and easy to use solution that allows teams of all sizes and experience levels to get the most of their auditing software. Beyond its effective auditing capabilities, the Onspring platform has tools for ESG management, risk management, and business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR).
SAP is a German software company that provides several enterprise solutions to improve your visibility and increase your management capabilities. SAP Audit Management allows you to automate and streamline your internal auditing procedures and ensure that they are as effective and comprehensive as possible. The solution integrates with other SAP software to enhance your capabilities – SAP Lumira, for example, is a tool for designing business information graphics and enhances reporting capabilities when used in conjunction with SAP Audit Management.
SAP Audit Management Features:
Pricing And Plans: For information on pricing or to begin a trial of SAP Audit Management, contact SAP directly.
Expert Insights’ Comments: SAP Audit Management helps reduce auditing costs by ensuring that the process is quick, effective, and actionable. This allows you improve workflow and productivity by making operational decisions promptly, and with confidence. This also saves time when you need to prove compliance to regulatory or insurance bodies. We would recommend SAP Audit Management for both SMBs and enterprise organizations, particularly those that are already using SAP infrastructure.
File auditing software documents and categorizes all the files on your network, then continuously logs how those files are used and which users interact with them. This helps ensure that your organization is compliant with federal and industry data protection regulation, as well as giving you oversight of your data to reduce the chance of vulnerabilities. File auditing solutions create an index of:
This information can be passed onto regulatory bodies to prove that you take data security seriously, and that only people who should have access to files do have access.
There are two main benefits to properly managing and auditing your files:
Security
In the unfortunate case that you do suffer a cyberattack, having an effective auditing solution in place will allow you to identify what files an attacker has gained access to. A file auditing solution can also help to identify what actions the attackers took whilst accessing your files – i.e., whether they were viewed, duplicated, or modified. If you don’t know what files you have – or the information contained in them – you have no way of appreciating the impact of a breach.
Compliance
The requirements set by regulatory bodies can be very complicated but result in severe consequences should you fail to comply with them. Auditing software can make one part of this process easier by logging and keeping track of files, whilst providing proof of compliance. Many solutions are designed to align with specific regulatory frameworks, allowing you to select the relevant frameworks for your business.
Proving compliance is particularly relevant in sectors that handle personally identifiable information (PII), as this data can be very valuable to malicious actors. PII, such as addresses and contact details, can be sold on the dark web and be used to access bank accounts, commit identity fraud, or even be sold to spam marketing organizations.
Regulatory frameworks are designed to standardize best practice and mitigate the impact that an attack can have. These frameworks can, however, be complicated to understand, and easy to fall foul of. Depending on which countries and industries you’re operating in, failure to properly comply with regulation can lead to fines and penalties. You may also lose accreditation, which can result in a loss of customer confidence and, by extension, a loss of profits.
Alex is an experienced journalist and content editor. He researches, writes, factchecks and edits articles relating to B2B cyber security and technology solutions, working alongside software experts. Alex was awarded a First Class MA (Hons) in English and Scottish Literature by the University of Edinburgh.
Craig MacAlpine is CEO and founder of Expert Insights. Before founding Expert Insights in August 2018, Craig spent 10 years as CEO of EPA cloud, an email security provider acquired by Ziff Davies, formerly J2Global (NASQAQ: ZD) in 2013, which has now been rebranded as VIPRE Email Security. Craig has extensive experience in the email security industry, with 20+ years of experience helping organizations to stay secure with innovative information security and cyber security solutions.