Enterprise Plus, Education Plus
As your organization's administrator, you can use the security investigation tool to run searches related to Keep log events, and take action based on search results. From the investigation tool, you can monitor activity on notes owned by users in your organization.
Your access to the security investigation tool
- Supported editions for the security investigation tool include Enterprise Plus, Education Standard, Education Plus, and Enterprise Essentials Plus.
- Admins with Cloud Identity Premium, Frontline Standard, Enterprise Standard, and Education Standard can also use the investigation tool for a subset of data sources.
- Your ability to run a search in the investigation tool depends on your Google edition, your administrative privileges, and the data source. If you're unable to run a search in the investigation tool for a specific data source, you can use the audit and investigation page instead.
Note: You can run a search in the investigation tool on all users, regardless of the Google edition they have.
Run a search for Keep log events
To run a search in the investigation tool, first choose a data source. You then need to choose one or more conditions for your search. For each condition, choose an attribute, an operator, and a value.
-
Sign in to your Google Admin console.
Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).
- On the left of the Admin console Home page, click Security
Security center
Investigation tool.
- Click Data source and select Keep log events.
- Click Add Condition.
Tip: You can include one or more conditions in your search or customize your search with nested queries. For details, go to Customize your search with nested queries. - Click Attribute
select an option.
For a complete list of attributes, go to the Attribute descriptions section below. - Click Contains
select an operator.
- Enter a value, or select a value from the drop-down list.
- (Optional) To add more search conditions, repeat steps 4–7.
- Click Search.
Search results in the investigation tool are displayed in a table at the bottom of the page. - (Optional) To save your investigation, click Save
enter a title and description
click Save.
Notes
- In the Condition builder tab, filters are represented as conditions with AND/OR operators. You can also use the Filter tab to include simple parameter and value pairs to filter the search results.
- If you gave a user a new name, you will not see query results with the user's old name. For example, if you rename OldName@example.com to NewName@example.com, you will not see results for events related to OldName@example.com.
Attribute descriptions
For this data source, you can use the following attributes when searching log event data:
Attribute | Description |
---|---|
Actor | Email address of the user who performed the action |
Actor group name |
Group name of the actor. For more information, see Filtering results by Google Group. To add a group to your filtering groups allowlist:
|
Actor organizational unit | Organizational unit of the actor |
Attachment URI | The Keep API resource URI of the attachment that was added or removed, if any |
Date | Date and time the event occurred (displayed in your browser's default time zone) |
Event | The logged event action, such as Create note or Share a note |
Note URI | The Keep API resource URI of the note |
Owner | User who owns the note |
Note: Keep logs most events immediately, but it might take up to 10 seconds for data to appear in the log event.
Use the Reports API with Keep log event data
You can use the Reports API to automatically query log event data. For complex queries with additional details, you can use the resource URIs returned in the log entries to make requests against the Keep API. Learn more about Resource URIs.
Take action based on search results
After you run a search in the investigation tool, you can act on your search results. For example, you can run a search based on Gmail log events, and then use the investigation tool to delete specific messages, send messages to quarantine, or send messages to users' inboxes. For more details about actions in the investigation tool, go to Take action based on search results.
Create activity rules & set up alerts
To help prevent, detect, and remediate security issues efficiently, you can automate actions in the investigation tool and set up alerts by creating activity rules. To set up a rule, set up conditions for the rule, and then specify what actions to perform when the conditions are met. For details and instructions, go to Create and manage activity rules.
Manage your investigations
View your list of investigationsTo view a list of the investigations that you own and that were shared with you, click View investigations. The investigation list includes the names, descriptions, and owners of the investigations, and the date last modified.
From this list, you can take action on any investigations that you own—for example, to delete an investigation. Check the box for an investigation, and then click Actions.
Note: Directly above your list of investigations, under Quick access, you can view recently saved investigations.
As a super administrator, click Settings to :
- Change the time zone for your investigations. The time zone applies to search conditions and results.
- Turn on or off Require reviewer. For more details, go to Require reviewers for bulk actions.
- Turn on or off View content. This setting allows admins with the appropriate privileges to view content.
- Turn on or off Enable action justification.
For instructions and details, go to Configure settings for your investigations.
You can control which data columns appear in your search results.
- At the top-right of the search results table, click Manage columns
.
- (Optional) To remove current columns, click Remove item
.
- (Optional) To add columns, next to Add new column, click the Down arrow
and select the data column.
Repeat as needed. - (Optional) To change the order of the columns, drag the column name.
- Click Save.
You can export search results in the investigation tool to Google Sheets or to a CSV file. For instructions, see Export search results.
To save your search criteria or share it with others, you can create and save an investigation, and then share, duplicate, or delete it.
For details, go to Save, share, delete, and duplicate investigations.
For more information about data sources, go to Data retention and lag times.