Is there a way to log users upon accessing shared folders in Windows Server? My goal is to write a program that sort of runs in the background monitoring the shared folders and logs user information whenever someone accesses the folder. How do I go about implementing it? What tools I should use to achieve this? Thanks in advance
I'm aware of the file auditing functionality provided by Windows. As Kyle Smith suggested this probably would become a nightmare to dig through tons of log entries to find relevant ones.It is also inefficient. So my question is how do I do this other than enabling "object access auditing". I need to implement this for both Windows Server 2003 & 2008
This can be done using Windows logging by going to Administrative Tools > Local Security Policy > Security Settings > Local Policies > Audit Policy and setting "Audit object access" to some value other than "No auditing." (Default)
Digging through these logging entries, on the other hand, will be a nightmare.
You want to enable file auditing as per this article on 2003. You don't say what version of Windows, but it's similar in 2008.
I think I found an answer http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.io.filesystemwatcher.aspx