Create entities (mapping and modeling)

Supported in:

Google Security Operations uses an automated system (ontology) to extract the main objects of interest from the raw alerts to create entities. Each entity is represented by an object that can track its own history for future reference.

Entities Overview

Entities are objects that represent points of interest extracted from alerts, such as Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) and artifacts. They help security analysts by:

  • Automatically tracking history.
  • Grouping alerts without human intervention.
  • Hunting for malicious activity based on relationships between entities.
  • Making cases easier to read and enabling seamless playbook creation.

To configure the ontology, you'll need to map and model your data. This involves selecting a visual representation for alerts and defining which entities should be extracted. Google SecOps provides pre-configured ontology rules for most popular SIEM products.

The best time to customize the ontology is after you have a connector pulling data into Google SecOps. The process involves two main steps:

  1. Modeling: Choose the visual representation (model/visual family) for your data.
  2. Mapping: Map the fields to support the selected model and extract entities.

Supported entities

The following entities are supported:

  • Address
  • Application
  • Cluster
  • Container
  • Credit Card
  • CVE
  • Database
  • Deployment
  • Destination URL
  • Domain
  • Email Subject
  • File Hash
  • Filename
  • Generic Entity
  • Hostname
  • IP Set
  • MAC Address
  • Phone Number
  • POD
  • Process
  • Service
  • Threat Actor
  • Threat Campaign
  • Threat Signature
  • USB
  • User Name

Use case: Map and model new data of ingested email

This use case shows how to map and model new data of an ingested email:

  1. Go to Marketplace > Use Case.
  2. Run the Zero to Hero test case. Refer to Run Use Cases for full details on how to do this.
  3. In the Cases tab, select the Mail case from the Cases Queue and select the Events tab.
  4. To open the Event Configuration screen, click settings Event Configuration next to the alert.
  5. In the hierarchy, click Mail. This ensures that your configuration will automatically work for every piece of data coming from this product (Email box).
    6. createentities3
  6. Assign the Visual Family that most represents the data —  in our example we can skip this step as MailRelayOrTAP has already been selected following the deployment of the Zero to Hero use case.
  7. Switch to Mapping and map the following entity fields; double-click each entity and select the raw data field for that entity in the extracted field. You can provide alternative fields from which to extract the information:
    • SourceUserName
    • DestinationUserName
    • DestinationURL
    • EmailSubject
  8. To see what the original fields are in the email, click Raw Event Properties in the top right corner.

Extract regular expressions

Google SecOps doesn't support regular expression groups. To extract text from the event field using regular expression patterns, use lookahead and lookbehind in the extraction function logic.

In the following example, the event field displays a large chunk of text:
Suspicious activity on A16_WWJ - Potential Account Takeover (33120)

To extract only the text Suspicious activity on A16_WWJ, do the following:

  1. Enter the following regular expression in the Extraction function value field:
    Suspicious activity on A16_WWJ(?=.*)
  2. Select the To_String option in the Transformation function field.

To extract only the text after Suspicious activity on A16_WWJ, do the following:

  1. Enter the following regular expression in the Extraction function value field:
    (?<=Suspicious activity on A16_WWJ).*
  2. Select the To_String option in the Transformation function field.

Need more help? Get answers from Community members and Google SecOps professionals.