Supported editions for the Access Transparency log events data source in the investigation tool: Enterprise Plus, Education Standard, Education Plus, Enterprise Essentials Plus. Compare your edition
As your organization's administrator, you can use the security investigation tool to run searches related to Access Transparency log events. There you can view a record of actions that provide information about the actions of Google staff when they access your data.
Access Transparency log events data includes information about:
- The affected resource and action
- The time of the action
- The reason for the action (for example, the case number associated with a customer support request)
- A Google staff member acting on the data (for example, office location)
For more information, go to Access Transparency: View logs on Google access to user content.
Forward log data to Google Cloud
You can opt in to share log data with Google Cloud. If you turn on sharing, data is forwarded to Cloud Logging, where you can query and view your logs, and control how you route and store your logs.
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 generally use the audit and investigation page instead.
Run a search for Access Transparency 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.
Follow these steps:
-
Sign in to your Google Admin console.
Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).
-
In the Admin console, go to Menu
Security
Security center
Investigation tool.
- From the Data source drop-down list, choose Access Transparency log events.
- Click Add Condition.
You can include one or more conditions in your search. You also have the option to customize your search with nested queries—searches with 2 or 3 levels of conditions (for details, see Customize your search with nested queries). - From the Attribute drop-down list, choose one of the attributes—for example, Actor or Date. For a complete list of attributes that are available for Access Transparency log events, see the section below.
Note: If you narrow the date range for your search, your results will appear in the investigation tool sooner. For example, if you narrow the search to events that happened in the last week, the query will return faster than if you search without restricting the query to a shorter period of time.
- Choose an operator—for example, Is, Is not, Contains, or Does not contain.
- Choose or enter a value for the attribute. For some attributes, you can choose from a drop-down list. For other attributes, type in a value.
- (Optional) To include multiple search conditions, repeat the above steps.
- Click Search.
Search results in the investigation tool are displayed in a table at the bottom of the page. - (Optional) To save your search, click Save
, enter a Title and Description, and then click Save.
Note: Using 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.
Attribute descriptions
For this data source, you can use the following attributes when searching log event data:
Attribute | Description |
---|---|
Actor group name | Group name of the actor |
Actor home office |
Home office of the actor who performed the data access. Displays the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country/region code in which the accessor has a permanent desk. Values include:
|
Actor organizational unit | Organizational unit of the actor |
Date | Date and time of the event (displayed in your browser's default time zone) |
Event | The logged event action, such as Resource accessed |
Google Workspace product | Name of the product that was accessed |
Justifications | Access justifications, such as Customer Initiated Support - Case Number: 12345678 |
Log ID | Unique log ID |
On behalf of | Email address(es) of the users whose authority was used for Access Management controls |
Owner email | The email ID or team identifier of the customer who owns the resource |
Resource name | Resource name of the resource that was accessed |
Tickets | Tickets associated with the justification, if any |
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.
Understand the Access Transparency log data
Log field descriptions
Log field name | System field name | Description |
---|---|---|
Date | items:id:time | Time the log was written |
Google Workspace Product | items:events:parameters:GSUITE_PRODUCT_NAME | Customer’s product that was accessed. Upper case required. Can be:
|
Owner Email | items:events:parameters:OWNER_EMAIL | The email ID or team identifier of the customer who owns the resource |
Actor Home Office | items:events:parameters:ACTOR_HOME_OFFICE |
ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country/region code in which the accessor has a permanent desk:
|
Justifications |
items:events:parameters:JUSTIFICATIONS |
Access justifications, such as Customer Initiated Support - Case Number: 12345678 |
Tickets | tickets | Tickets associated with the justification, if any |
Log ID | items:events:parameters:LOG_ID | Unique log ID |
Resource Name | items:events:parameters:RESOURCE_NAME | Name of the resource that was accessed. Resource names can be used in the security investigation tool to further identify, triage, and take action on security and privacy issues in your domain. |
On Behalf Of | items:events:parameters:ON_BEHALF_OF | The target of the access. The sharee of a document could be the target of support rather than the owner. On Behalf Of provides extra information to understand the context of an access. |
Access Management Policy | items:events:parameters: ACCESS_MANAGEMENT_POLICY |
The Access Management policy that was validated before access. Only applies to customers with Access Management configured. |
Justification descriptions
Reason | Description |
---|---|
Customer Initiated Support | Customer-initiated support, such as a case number |
Externally Initiated Abuse Review
|
Externally initiated abuse reviews are invoked when content is reported to Google for review.
For more details and instructions, go to Customize searches within the investigation tool. Learn more about reporting abuse. |
Google Response to Production Alert | Google-initiated access to maintain system reliability around a suspected outage, including for example:
|
Google Initiated Review | Google-initiated access for security, fraud, abuse, or compliance purposes, including:
|
Google Initiated Service |
Google-initiated access for the ongoing maintenance and delivery of Google Cloud services, including for example:
|
Third Party Data Request | Google accesses customer data to respond to a legal request or legal process. This includes when we respond to legal process from the customer that requires that we access the customer's own data. In this case, Access Transparency logs might not be available if Google can’t legally inform you of such a request or process. |
Set up an Access Transparency alert
You can set up an email alert for one or more log filters, such as Owner Email and Actor Home Office. You can also enable an alert for all logs across all products that support Access Transparency.
-
Sign in to your Google Admin console.
Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).
-
In the Admin console, go to Menu
Security
Security center
Investigation tool.
- From the Data source drop-down list, choose Access Transparency log events.
- Click + Add a filter.
- Select one or more filters and click Apply.
- (Optional) To turn on an alert for all logs across all supported products, click Event Name
Access. This action creates a filter called Event Name: Access.
- Click Create reporting rule
, enter a rule name, and then enter the emails of any additional alert recipients.
- Click Create.
Integrate Access Transparency log data with third-party tools
You can use the Reports API to integrate Access Transparency logs with your existing security information and event management (SIEM) tools. For more information, go to Access Transparency Activity Events.
When and how long is data available?
Go to Data retention and lag times.