Enterprise Plus, Education Plus
As an administrator, you can use the security investigation tool to view and investigate live-state data about Gmail messages in your organization. For example, using the Gmail messages data source, you can run searches in your organization on the names of attachments, email content, message IDs, senders, and recipients.
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. For more information, go to Improved audit and investigation experience.
Note: You can run a search in the investigation tool on all users, regardless of the Google edition they have.
Run a search for Gmail message data
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
- Click Data source and select Gmail messages.
- 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
For a complete list of attributes, go to the Attribute descriptions section below. - Click Contains
- 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
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 |
|---|---|
| All content | Content within an email message—including body content, content within text attachments, and content within common attachment types such as DOC, XLS, and PDF |
| Attachment name | Name of the attachment in a message |
| Bcc | Address of users who are Bcc'd in a message |
| Cc | Address of users who are Cc'd in a message |
| Date | Date and time of the event (displayed in your browser's default time zone) |
| Has attachment | Whether or not a message has an attachment |
| Label | Label for the message—for example, Deleted, Inbox, Sent, Spam, Starred, Trash, or Unread |
| Message ID | The unique message ID located in the message header |
| Message size | The size of the message |
| Recipient | The recipient's email address |
| Sender | The sender's email address |
| Subject | The email subject line |
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.
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