1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the invention generally relate to monitoring messaging systems and, in particular, to systems and methods for security, auditing and/or reporting of messaging system events.
2. Description of the Related Art
Electronic messaging, such as email and text messaging, is becoming increasingly popular in both the personal and business communities. For instance, email has become the predominant business tool for communication within and between organizations. With this predominance comes the usage of email as a repository of information, including sensitive or personal information. Such sensitive information has the potential for being misused and/or viewed and presents threats to corporate data security and compliance. For example, recent studies indicate that seventy-five percent of all corporate intellectual property is transmitted via email.
Unfortunately, many violations to corporate policies with respect to email go undetected since most security actions in such environments are not generally audited. For instance, Microsoft Exchange Server® is a commonly-used enterprise-class messaging platform that provides for collaboration and interaction by routing email between senders and recipients and storing the messages for later retrieval. Detailed security-based auditing, however, is not available through native Exchange mechanisms, leaving large security holes in the Exchange environment.
To address these and similar problems, certain software solutions provide for monitoring a directory service at an administrator level. Such solutions often include reporting changes to mailbox permissions at the domain or administrator level. A major drawback of these solutions is that such high-level monitoring and reporting does not present a user with a comprehensive picture of what is occurring in the messaging environment and does not provide detailed information necessary for prompt and particularized corrective action. For instance, such solutions do not monitor access performed by administrators or others with super or privileged access rights.