NetProfiler Users Are More Than A Number With AD Connector 3.0
- By Heidi Gabrielson
- 01-Jun-2020
Imagine you’re at an elaborate costume party. You talk to people but you don’t really know who they are because they’re behind masks. You just refer to them as “superhero girl” or “rabbit guy.”
Most NPM tools treat end users just like masked guests, or even worse, numbers! IP addresses are known, but the actual user names are not.
AD Connector helps make the personal connection
Riverbed’s AD Connector extracts user identity information from an Active Directory source, pulls it into NetProfiler (Riverbed’s enterprise flow monitoring and reporting solution), and makes it available for use within reports. Being able to resolve to the user name is useful from multiple perspectives including security, performance, and troubleshooting.
Case in point: troubleshooting
When viewing a traffic report, you notice a spike in utilization that is attributable to BitTorrent traffic coming from a specific IP address. You’ll want to know which users are logged in at this particular time as well as which computer originated the traffic. With data and name in hand, you can talk with the individual user, stop the offensive action, and take immediate corrective action. The integration with Active Directory makes this quick and easy.
Here are a couple of other reports in NetProfiler that help you understand your user data:
- The Users List shares users by log-in time, log-out time, or log-in failures. You can also filter by host, time duration, and other criteria to help you quickly understand the impact of specific individuals on the network.
- Host information reports with added user information shows which host is talking to another and provides a clearer picture by knowing which user was logged in at that time.
Additional information
AD Connector 3.0 is now available on Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019, and Windows Server 2012. It supports IPv6 and encrypted communication support between AD Connector and NetProfiler.
You can download a copy of the Riverbed AD Connector 3.0 for use with your NetProfiler at no charge from the Riverbed Support site.