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The Network & Systems Software Product of the year category acknowledges outstanding administration and monitoring software. This year’s winner is Active Administrator (AA) from ScriptLogic Corp. with 56 percent of the votes.
Active Administrator is currently only for Windows 2000, setting up and managing policies across the network without the use of agents. Its real function is to replace the rather limited built-in utilities that come with the Windows 2000 operating system. Active Administrator enables the administrator to plan, deploy and troubleshoot group policy objects (GPOs) before full deployment.
In second place with 28 percent is SilverBack Technologies Inc.’s SilverBack 4.0 — an integrated IT monitoring and security monitoring application. Third place went to SyslogAnalyzer from eIQnetworks, Inc. SyslogAnalyzer is a Web-based analysis and reporting tool that can analyze event logs generated by Windows and UNIX networks. Finishing fourth was Domain Time II Audit Server from Symmetricom, Inc.
Active Administrator’s popularity appears to stem from the fact that it takes over where Active Directory left off. It is able to provide single-seat enterprise control over AD security and Group Policies and exclusively uses Active Templates. This tool makes assigning permissions easier by taking the guesswork out of what permissions need to go where.
Each template defines the permissions required to accomplish AD tasks.
AA also centrally audits the security event logs on your domain controllers. By auditing the changes made to AD permissions or group policies, you can find out what changes were made in AD and who made changes without having to filter through potentially thousands of event log entries.
“Before purchasing Active Administrator, delegating permissions and monitoring activity through Active Directory was very cumbersome and basically impossible,” said Brenda Bailey, network systems security analyst with Energizer Holdings Inc., the world’s largest manufacturer of dry-cell batteries and flashlights. “With Active Administrator permissions are easily delegated with pre-configured or custom made templates and GPO administration is now easily monitored through a number of very beneficial features.”
