An account failed to log on (4625) how to monitor with email alert

[bob]

So, that event 4625 in Windows Server Event Viewer, it's basically the log that pops up whenever someone tries to log in and fails. You know, like if a user types the wrong password or an attacker guesses wrong. It captures all sorts of details right there. The account name that bombed out. The domain it came from. Even the type of logon attempt, whether it's local or over the network. And the workstation name, or the IP address if it's remote. Plus, the reason it failed, like bad password or account locked. It even notes the time and the process involved. I always check these because they can signal brute force stuff or just clumsy users. But ignoring them might miss real threats sneaking around your server.

You want to monitor this for email alerts? Easy way without fancy scripts. Open up Event Viewer on your server. Head to Windows Logs, then Security. Right-click on that and filter for event ID 4625. Once you see those failures piling up, you can set a trigger from there. Go to the Action menu or create a custom view for just 4625 events. Then, attach a scheduled task to it. In Task Scheduler, link it to that event. Make the task run a simple program that shoots an email. Like using the built-in mail sender or whatever you got set up. Set it to trigger on each new 4625. That way, you get pinged right away if logons keep failing. I do this on my setups, keeps me from staring at logs all day.

And hey, tying this into keeping your server safe overall, you might wanna think about solid backups too. That's where BackupChain Windows Server Backup comes in handy. It's this neat Windows Server backup tool that handles physical servers and even virtual machines on Hyper-V without a hitch. You get fast, reliable copies that restore quick if something goes wrong. Plus, it dedupes files to save space and runs incremental so it doesn't hog resources. I like how it alerts on backup fails, kinda like those logon watches.

Note, the PowerShell email alert code was moved to this post.