File alteration monitor windows

The Windows API provides a collection of mostly filesystem-agnostic functions for polling for events on a registered directory:. FindFirstChangeNotification does not monitor the specified directory itself, only its entries. This, in turn, requires additional filtering if the only entry of interest in the parent is the directory itself.

These routines provide the filtering and synchronization for retrieving filesystem events, but do not expose the events themselves or their associated metadata. The actual events must be retrieved through ReadDirectoryChangesW , which takes an open handle to the watched directory and many of the same parameters as the polling functions since it can be used entirely independently of them.

Last but not least, ReadDirectoryChangesW uses a fixed-size buffer for each directory handle internally and will flush all change records before they get handled if it cannot keep up with the number of events.

An older solution also exists: SHChangeNotifyRegister can be used to register a window as the recipient of file notifications from the shell i.

All told, the performance and accuracy issues of these APIs make them poor candidates for osquery. Like so many other engineering challenges in Windows environments, file monitoring has a nuclear option in the form of a kernel-mode APIs. Windows is kind enough to provide two general categories for this purpose: the legacy file system filter API and the more recent minifilter framework.

Because they operate at the common filesystem interface layer, minifilters are mostly agnostic towards their underlying storage — they can in theory interpose any of the filesystem operations known by the NT kernel regardless of filesystem kind or underlying implementation. Minifilters are also composable, meaning that multiple filters can be registered against and interact with a filesystem without conflict.

You don't need any special bindings, inotifywait can be customized to print output lines on standard output in any way you want. Look and this question for a good example. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Collectives on Stack Overflow. Learn more. Asked 12 years, 10 months ago. Active 4 years, 9 months ago.

Viewed 85k times. Improve this question. Tim Golden has a very simple cross-platform method of polling a directory with os. What does "monitor" mean? Please provide some hint as to what you are trying to do. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Hope it helps. You can use the built-in reporting templates or the web-based interface to create custom file activity monitoring reports to support your business needs.

Avoid alert fatigue that can occur with a flood of file activity monitoring alerts. SolarWinds SAM helps you solve this challenge by allowing you to set your own custom alert thresholds.

Instead of guesstimating the norm, you can use the dynamic baselines feature in SAM to create thresholds matching the needs of your network. With nested trigger conditions included with parent-child dependencies, you can also help ensure your alerts remain completely relevant to the needs of your team. SAM file activity monitoring software is designed to offer a high level of simplicity and automation for file monitoring.

A file monitoring system is a piece of technology or system of processes used to monitor and detect modifications made to important server files. A file monitoring system is designed to inspect system files to see if and when they were modified, how they were modified, and which users made the changes.

It can also help you decide if altered files need to be restored to their original format, since you can see if the edits made to them were unauthorized. Sometimes, file monitoring will be referred to as file integrity monitoring or change monitoring since it involves validating the integrity of an operating system by checking to see if files were changed for an improper reason, unintentionally or otherwise, or led to performance problems.

A file monitor works by tracking important file attributes, including, but not limited to, the following:. By tracking these critical attributes, a Windows file activity monitor can better detect any changes made to important files or system configurations.

With an established baseline, the file monitor can better track any file changes deviating from the norm. After the baseline is recorded, the file monitor will begin monitoring file attributes by comparing the current file status against the baseline file data. If any noteworthy differences are spotted between the current and baseline data, alerts can notify users of potential file integrity issues.

File monitoring helps users maintain and validate the integrity of operating systems and application files. In a large environment, it can be difficult to track changes in file characteristics like their size, count, and extension in real time. File activity monitoring can help organizations remain in the loop when modifications or unauthorized access occurs to a critical system file, regardless of whether the change was successful, the attempt was malicious, or changes led to system performance issues.

By monitoring the changes made to files on a network, users can gain helpful insights to help keep large networks both organized and better demonstrate compliant since changes and modifications can be extracted to provide actionable intelligence and used in creating auditable reports.

File monitoring software allows admins to track changes to files within servers and distributed environments using several automated, streamlined features. A file monitor is designed to create a baseline for comparing file characteristics against future changes.

File monitoring software can also send alerts on file changes that can be set up to notify on specific file conditions, so you only receive critical alerts for issues you care more about. File server performance monitoring tools can also provide contextual insights into file changes. Tracking file activity can be a complex task with huge security implications. However, monitoring tools can help users turn raw file monitoring data into actionable intelligence. The free version of Watch 4 Folder allows the monitoring of a single folder at a time.

Download Watch 4 Folder. There are five editions of Disk Pulse; four paid and a restricted freeware version. Annoyingly, there is no official information about what those restrictions are. We know from testing, there is a limit of three profiles while email notifications, database logging, and custom actions are disabled.

However, file type monitoring, filters, categories, and rules are no longer disabled like they were in older versions. Disk Pulse will watch file and folder create, modify, rename, and delete changes. Finer controls like name, size, time, and attribute changes are in the profile options. Double click a profile to enter its options. The Charts option displays a nice bar or pie chart of the changes which can be printed, saved or copied to the clipboard.

Save will create a report with several different output formats available. The Wizard button offers some profile presets that are pre-configured for certain scenarios, such as monitoring for image files, newly created files, or Windows system files. Note: A possible bug we encountered is Disk Pulse will just quit without warning if it has to deal with several thousand events in quick succession, such as when unarchiving or copying.

Download Disk Pulse. This program is able to handle the real time monitoring of multiple folders at once and is a very small portable executable of just over KB. TheFolderSpy can watch for creation, deletion, attribute changes, access date, and file size changes. NET Framework 3. TheFolderSpy has a wildcard option to include certain types of a file although only one can be applied at once.

Something that users may find quite useful is a built in email option that can mail you every time an event is triggered. Obviously, this is only suitable for rare events. Any triggered events will show in the main window, optionally a log file, a system tray balloon popup, and a file can be executed including an audio file. Download TheFolderSpy. Although the free version of Directory Monitor is still very capable, it has a huge amount of disabled functions reserved for the paid version.

However, unlike Disk Pulse the restrictions are listed on the website. The restrictions include emailing, database options, sound events, printing, inactivity events, snapshots, user event monitoring, running as a service, executing programs in the background, and Growl notifications. You can quickly add a folder for monitoring by using the text box or the browse button. The disadvantage is only new file events are monitored. To monitor more, either edit the folder or use the Add button which gives the available options when setting up a folder to watch.