Device log events

Review activities on your organization’s devices

Depending on your Google Workspace edition, you might have access to the security investigation tool, which has more advanced features. For example, super admins can identify, triage, and take action on security and privacy issues. Learn more

As your organization's administrator, you can run searches and take action on security issues related to Device log events. You can view a record of actions on computers, mobile devices, and smart home devices that are used to access your organization's data. For example, you can see when a user added their account to a device or if a device’s password doesn’t follow your password policy. You can also set an alert to be notified when an activity occurs.

Before you begin

To see all audit events for mobile devices, the devices need to be managed using advanced device management.
To see changes to applications on Android devices, you must turn on application auditing.
You can’t see activities for devices that sync corporate data using Google Sync.
If you downgrade to an edition that doesn't support the audit log, the audit log stops collecting data for new events. However, old data is still available to admins.

Run a search for log events

Your ability to run a search depends on your Google edition, your administrative privileges, and the data source. You can run a search on all users, regardless of their Google Workspace edition.

Audit and investigation tool

Security investigation tool

Supported editions for this feature: Frontline Standard and Frontline Plus; Enterprise Standard and Enterprise Plus; Education Standard and Education Plus; Enterprise Essentials Plus; Cloud Identity Premium. Compare your edition

To run a search in the security investigation tool, first choose a data source. Then, choose one or more conditions for your search. For each condition, choose an attribute, an operator, and a value.

Sign in with an administrator account to the Google Admin console.
If you aren’t using an administrator account, you can’t access the Admin console.
Go to Menu Security > Security center > Investigation tool.
Requires having the Security center administrator privilege.
Click Data source and select Device 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 Attributeselect an option.
For a complete list of attributes, go to the Attribute descriptions section.
Select an operator.
Enter a value or select a value from the list.
(Optional) To add more search conditions, repeat steps 4–7.
Click Search.
You can review the search results from the investigation tool in a table at the bottom of the page.
(Optional) To save your investigation, click Save enter a title and descriptionclick 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 give 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
Account state	Whether the account is registered or unregistered
Actor group name	The group name of the actor. For more information, go to Filtering results by Google Group. To add a group to your filtering groups allowlist: Select Actor group name. Click Filtering groups. The Filtering groups page appears. Click Add Groups. Search for a group by entering the first few characters of its name or email address. When you see the group you want, select it. (Optional) To add another group, search for and select the group. When you finish selecting groups, click Add. (Optional) To remove a group, click Remove group . Click Save.
Actor organizational unit	Organizational unit of the actor
Application ID	Identifier for the application
Application SHA-256 hash	For app-related events, the SHA-256 hash of the application package (Android only)
Application state	Whether the application is installed, uninstalled, or updated
Date	Date and time of the event (displayed in your browser's default time zone)
Device compliance state	Whether the device complies with your organization’s policies A device is marked not compliant if it: Violates an applied password setting or encryption policy Doesn’t have the latest Device Policy app installed Doesn't comply with security settings Doesn’t have a work profile when a work profile is expected Isn’t in device owner mode when device owner mode is expected Is blocked by an administrator Is no longer syncing because an administrator disabled synchronization Example: User's Nexus 6P is not compliant with set policies because device is not adhering to password policy.
Device compromised state	Whether the device is compromised. Devices can become compromised if they’re rooted or jailbroken—processes that remove restrictions on a device. Compromised devices can be a potential security threat. The system records an entry each time a user’s device is compromised or no longer compromised. Example: User's Nexus 5 is compromised.
Device ID	Identifier for the device that the event happened on
Device model	The model of the device
Device owner	The owner of the device
Device ownership	Whether the ownership of the device changed For example, a personal device was changed to company owned after its details were imported into the Admin console. This audit occurs immediately after a company owned device is added to the Admin console. If a company-owned device is deleted from the Admin console, the audit occurs at the next sync (after it’s reenrolled for management). Example: Ownership of user’s Nexus 5 has changed to company owned, with new device ID abcd1234.
Device property	Information about the device, such as Device model, Serial number, or WiFi MAC address
Device setting	The device user changed the developer options, unknown sources, USB debugging, or verify apps setting on their device. This event is recorded the next time the device syncs. Example: Verify Apps changed from off to on by user on Nexus 6P.
Device type	Type of device that the event happened on, for example, Android or Apple iOS
Domain*	The domain where the action occurred
Event	The logged event action, such as Device OS update or Device sync event
Failed password attempts*	The number of failed attempts by a user to unlock a device An event is generated only if there are more than 5 failed attempts to unlock a user's device. Example: Five failed attempts to unlock user's Nexus 7
iOS vendor ID	Identifier for the iOS vendor
New device ID	Identifier for the new device
OS property	Information about the OS, such as Build number, OS version, or Security patch
Register privilege	The role of the user for a device, such as Device owner or Device administrator
Resource ID	Unique identifier for the device
Serial number	The serial number of the device To display the serial number for computers: Install the endpoint verification extension. For details, go to Step 2: Install the endpoint verification extension. Enroll ChromeOS devices in your organization. For details, go to Enroll ChromeOS devices.
User email	Email address of the device user

* You cannot create reporting rules with these filters. Learn more about reporting rules versus activity rules.

Note: 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.