Access Transparency
View documentation for this product.
Expand visibility and control over your cloud provider
Access Transparency gives you near real-time logs when
Google Cloud administrators access your content. Cloud Audit
Logs already provide visibility into the actions of your own
administrators. However, this audit trail typically stops
once your cloud provider’s support or engineering team is
engaged. For example, prior to Access Transparency logging,
if you opened a ticket with Google support that would
require data access, it would not have been reflected in a
Cloud Audit Log. Access Transparency closes that gap,
capturing near real-time* logs of manual, targeted accesses
by either support or engineering. At Google Cloud, we do not access customer data for any
reason other than those necessary to fulfill our contractual obligations to you.
Technical controls require valid business justifications for
any access by support or engineering personnel to your
content. Google also performs regular audits of accesses by
administrators as a check on the effectiveness of our
controls. *Note: Some storage level accesses will be delayed and not
appear in near real time.
Move to the cloud with confidence
Inability to audit cloud provider accesses can be a barrier to moving to the cloud. Without visibility into the actions of cloud provider administrators, traditional security processes cannot be replicated. Access Transparency enables that verification, bringing your audit controls closer to what you can expect on-premises. Using the Access Approval feature, you can increase your level of control by requiring explicit approvals before accessing your data or configurations on Google Cloud, unless those accesses are required by law or necessary to resolve a current outage or security incident.
Approve access by Google Cloud support engineers
Having dedicated experts to manage infrastructure is a key benefit of operating in the cloud, but it requires trust that cloud providers are living up to their commitments around data access. Access Approval lets you approve or dismiss requests for access by Google employees working to support your service. Access Approval controls govern access by all of our employees who might support your service, not just select groups.
Extend your security automation to a deeper layer
Your existing security automation pipeline may already utilize Cloud Logging to automate security checks and verify that your controls are working as intended. Access Transparency logs are also available through Cloud Logging, and can be integrated directly into any existing analysis pipelines or tool exports you have already set up.
Get the data you need
Whether for regulatory, audit, or archival purposes, there may be reasons why you need logs of accesses to your content. Access Transparency creates logs to help you meet those obligations, showing extensive information such as accessor location, access justification, and the action taken on a specific resource.
Features
Access approval
Explicitly approve access to your data or configurations on Google Cloud. Access Approval requests, when combined with Access Transparency logs, can be used to audit an end-to-end chain from support ticket to access request to approval, to eventual access.
Access justifications
View the reason for each access, including references to specific support tickets where relevant.
Resource and method identification
Identify the exact resources accessed by administrators and the methods run.
Cloud Logging integration
Integrate seamlessly into your existing Cloud Logging configuration.
Accessor location
View the country in which the administrator performing the action was based.
Data protection controls
Take advantage of Google’s data-protection controls designed to limit support and engineering’s ability to access your data unless necessary.
Near real-time publication
Retrieve logs in near real time.
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