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Google Workspace Admin Role Deletion

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IMPORTANT: This documentation is no longer updated. Refer to Elastic's version policy and the latest documentation.

Google Workspace Admin Role Deletion

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Detects when a custom administrative role is deleted in Google Workspace. Adversaries may delete a custom admin role to disrupt delegated administration, remove security team access, or hinder incident response. Deleting a role removes the privileges it granted from all assigned users and groups, which can cause operational impact or blind spots during an active investigation.

Rule type: query

Rule indices:

  • filebeat-*
  • logs-google_workspace.admin-*

Severity: medium

Risk score: 47

Runs every: 10m

Searches indices from: now-130m (Date Math format, see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

References:

Tags:

  • Domain: Cloud
  • Data Source: Google Workspace
  • Use Case: Identity and Access Audit
  • Tactic: Impact
  • Tactic: Defense Evasion
  • Resources: Investigation Guide

Version: 211

Rule authors:

  • Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Investigation guide

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Triage and analysis

Investigating Google Workspace Admin Role Deletion

Google Workspace allows administrators to create custom admin roles with granular privileges across services such as Users, Groups, Gmail, Drive, and Security. Deleting a custom role removes it from the tenant and revokes the associated privileges for all users and groups that held the role. Threat actors may delete roles to disrupt security operations, remove delegated admin access, or cover tracks after privilege escalation. Because the role no longer exists in the Admin console after deletion, determining who was assigned the role and what privileges it contained requires reviewing historical audit logs.

This rule identifies when a custom administrative role is deleted in the Google Admin console.

Possible investigation steps

  • Identify the initiating (actor) account that deleted the role by reviewing user.email or user.name, and note the source.ip and event.ingested timestamps.
  • Identify the role deleted by reviewing google_workspace.admin.role.name.
  • Determine whether the deletion is expected and authorized:
  • Validate there is an approved change request/ticket and that the actor account is authorized to delete custom admin roles.
  • If the actor account or source IP is unusual, treat the alert as higher priority until proven benign.
  • Confirm the role is deleted in the Google Admin console:
  • Navigate to Account > Admin roles.
  • Search for the role name from google_workspace.admin.role.name and confirm it no longer appears in the role list.
  • Search Kibana for principals previously assigned the role to determine blast radius:
  • In Discover (or the alert investigation workflow), search Google Workspace admin logs with a time range before the deletion timestamp.
  • Use the following KQL example, replacing <ROLE_NAME> with the value from google_workspace.admin.role.name: ``` data_stream.dataset: "google_workspace.admin" and event.action: "ASSIGN_ROLE" and google_workspace.admin.role.name: "<ROLE_NAME>" ```
  • Review user.target.email and user.target.name for user/group assignments.
  • Search for event.action: "UNASSIGN_ROLE" with the same role name to identify recent removals before deletion.
  • Search Kibana for privileges the deleted role contained:
  • Use the following KQL example to review any privileges that were granted to the role before deletion: ``` data_stream.dataset: "google_workspace.admin" and event.action: "ADD_PRIVILEGE" and google_workspace.admin.role.name: "<ROLE_NAME>" ```
  • Review google_workspace.admin.privilege.name values to understand what access was removed from assigned principals.
  • Scope for related role activity by searching for the same user.email (actor) performing other IAM actions such as DELETE_ROLE, ADD_PRIVILEGE, ASSIGN_ROLE, or security policy changes within the last 48 hours.
  • Evaluate whether the deletion coincides with other suspicious activity:
  • Review admin/audit events around the deletion time for security control changes, additional role deletions, or attempts to modify Super Admin assignments.

False positive analysis

  • Verify the role deletion aligns with approved administrative duties, an authorized change window, and the organization’s access governance process.
  • Confirm the initiating admin account is legitimate and not deleting roles from unusual IPs, devices, or locations.
  • Validate whether the role was deprecated or consolidated into another role as part of planned IAM cleanup.

Response and remediation

  • Initiate the incident response process based on triage findings.
  • If the deletion is not clearly authorized, recreate the role with equivalent privileges and reassign affected users or groups while the investigation proceeds.
  • Identify affected users and groups from historical ASSIGN_ROLE events and confirm they retain necessary administrative access through other roles.
  • For suspected compromise of the initiating admin account:
  • Reset credentials, revoke active sessions, enforce MFA re-enrollment, and review delegation/OAuth grants for persistence.
  • Validate recovery email/phone settings and account security posture.
  • Review whether the deleted role contained security-relevant privileges (for example, audit log access or security settings management) that could impair detection or response if removed.
  • Implement security best practices outlined by Google.
  • Determine the initial vector abused by the attacker and take action to prevent reinfection via the same vector.
  • Using the incident response data, update logging and audit policies to improve the mean time to detect (MTTD) and the mean time to respond (MTTR).

Important Information Regarding Google Workspace Event Lag Times

  • As per Google’s documentation, Google Workspace administrators may observe lag times ranging from minutes up to 3 days between the time of an event’s occurrence and the event being visible in the Google Workspace admin/audit logs.
  • This rule is configured to run every 10 minutes with a lookback time of 130 minutes.
  • To reduce the risk of false negatives, consider reducing the interval that the Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) Filebeat module polls Google’s reporting API for new events.
  • By default, var.interval is set to 2 hours (2h). Consider changing this interval to a lower value, such as 10 minutes (10m).
  • See the following references for further information:
  • https://support.google.com/a/answer/7061566
  • https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/beats/filebeat/current/filebeat-module-google_workspace.html

Setup

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The Google Workspace Fleet integration, Filebeat module, or similarly structured data is required to be compatible with this rule.

Rule query

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data_stream.dataset:google_workspace.admin and event.action:DELETE_ROLE

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

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