Quest Change Auditor vs. BeyondTrust Pathfinder

Quest Change Auditor is an IT auditing, vulnerability monitoring, and security threat detection platform designed for Active Directory and hybrid Microsoft environments. It provides real-time visibility into important user, administrator, configuration, and authentication changes to help organizations identify potentially malicious activity and investigate security incidents. Change Auditor extends monitoring across Active Directory, Azure AD, Office 365, Windows Server, Exchange, SQL Server, network-attached storage, SharePoint, and OneDrive for Business. The platform detects indicators of compromise across AD and Azure AD while auditing suspicious activity across file servers, Office 365, and Exchange to identify attackers that may already be operating within the network. It can also monitor lateral movement and post-attack activity to provide security teams with additional context about the progression of an intrusion. Preventive controls can block unauthorized changes to critical groups, Group Policy settings and links, sensitive mailboxes, and the Active Directory database regardless of privileges an attacker has compromised. Built-in alerts identify indicators of compromise, while exposure assessments help organizations uncover vulnerabilities across Active Directory, Azure AD, and authentication activity. Change Auditor can detect common Kerberos authentication weaknesses associated with Golden Ticket and Pass-the-Ticket attacks and can send critical change and pattern alerts to email and mobile devices. Its auditing engine captures change information without depending solely on system-provided audit logs and converts events into normalized records showing who changed what, when, where, from which workstation, and the relevant before-and-after values. Threat timelines and related searches connect individual changes with surrounding events to support forensic analysis and security incident response.

BeyondTrust Pathfinder delivers a comprehensive security solution centered on identity protection, designed to shield organizations from threats that take advantage of privileged accounts by providing improved visibility, management, and governance for both human and non-human identities, alongside their credentials and access methods. At the heart of this solution lies the Pathfinder Platform, which skillfully maps privilege pathways across a multitude of environments, such as endpoints, servers, cloud services, identity providers, SaaS applications, and databases, uncovering hidden over-privileged accounts, orphaned identities, and potential vectors for attacks. Key components of the platform encompass Identity Security Insights, which facilitates the unified detection and prioritization of identity-related risks, and Password Safe, which empowers users to discover, store, manage, and audit privileged credentials and session activities effectively. In addition, the Privileged Remote Access feature guarantees secure, rules-based access that includes thorough session oversight, while the Entitle component optimizes the automation of cloud permissions and just-in-time access. Furthermore, Endpoint Privilege Management implements a least-privilege approach on endpoints through application control and file integrity monitoring, significantly bolstering the security posture of the organization. Collectively, these features synergize to elevate identity security and mitigate the risks associated with privilege exploitation, thereby fostering a safer digital environment for all users. Ultimately, the integration of these advanced tools reaffirms the importance of robust identity management in combating evolving security threats.