SaaS causality view

Learn more about the SaaS causality view used to identify and investigate SaaS-specific data associated with SaaS-related alerts and SaaS audit logs.

Notice

Requires a Cortex XDR Pro license.

The SaaS causality view provides a powerful way to analyze and investigate software-as-a-service (SaaS) related alerts for audit stories, such as Office 365 audit logs and normalized logs, by highlighting the most relevant events and alerts associated with a SaaS-related alert. To help you identify and investigate SaaS-specific data associated with SaaS-related alerts and SaaS audit logs, Cortex XDR displays a SaaS causality view, which enables you to swiftly investigate a SaaS alert by displaying the series of events and artifacts that are shared with the alert.

A SaaS causality view is only available when Cortex XDR is configured to collect SaaS audit logs and data. For example, this is possible by configuring an Office 365 data collector or Google Workspace data collector with the applicable SaaS audit logs. This enables you to investigate any Cortex XDR alerts generated from any IOC, BIOC, or correlation rules, including SaaS events. The SaaS causality view is available from the Alerts table, or from the Query Results after running a query on the SaaS related data. From both of these places, you can pivot (right-click) to the SaaS causality view from any row in the table and selecting Investigate Causality Chain → Open Card in new tab or Investigate Causality Chain → Open Card in same tab.

The scope of the SaaS causality view is the Causality Instance (CI) of an event to which this alert pertains. The SaaS causality view presents the event identity and /or IP address and the actions performed by the identity on the SaaS resource. On each node in the CI chain, Cortex XDR provides information to help you understand what happened around the event.

The SaaS causality view contains the following sections:

Information Overview

Summarizes information about the alert you are analyzing, including the type of SaaS provider, project, and region on which the event occurred. Select View Raw Log to view the raw log as provided by the SaaS provider in JSON format.

SaaS causality instance chain

Includes the graphical representation of the SaaS Causality Instance (CI) along with other information and capabilities to enable you to conduct your analysis.

The SaaS causality view presents a single event CI chain. The CI chain is built from Identity and Resource nodes. The Identity node represents for example keys, service accounts, and users, while the Resource node represents for example network interfaces, storage buckets, or disks. When available, the chain can also include an IP address and alerts that were triggered on the Identity and SaaS resource.

The SaaS causality view provides an interactive way to view the CI chain for an alert. You can move it, extend it, and modify it. To adjust the appearance of the CI chain, you can enlarge/shrink the chain for easy viewing using the size controls on the right. You can also move the chain around by selecting and dragging it. To return the chain to its original position and size, click in the lower-right of the CI graph.

• Identity node: Displays the name of the identity, generated alert information, and if available the associated IP address.

  To further investigate the user:

  1. Hover over an Identity node to display, if available, the identity Analytics Profiles.
  2. Select the Identity node to display in the Entity Data section additional information about the Identity entity.
  3. Select the Alert icon to display in the Entity Data section additional information about the alert.
• IP address node: Displays the IP address associated with the Identity.
• Resource node: Displays the referenced resource on which the operation was performed. Cortex XDR displays information on the following resources.

  To further investigate the resource:

  1. Hover over a Resource node to display, if available, the resource Analytics Profiles and Resource Editors statistics.
  2. Select the Resource node to display in the Entity Data section additional information about the Resource entity.

Types of resource

Icon	Type of resource
	Google Workspace Admin Console
	Google Workspace for Google Drive
	Microsoft Office 365 Exchange Online
	Microsoft 365 Office Groups
	Microsoft Office 365 OneDrive
	Microsoft Office 365 SharePoint Online
	Microsoft Office 365 Skype for Business
	Microsoft Office 365 Teams

All Events table

Displays up to 100,000 related events and up to 1,000 related alerts. In the All Events table, Cortex XDR displays detailed information about each of the related events. To simplify your investigation, Cortex XDR scans your Cortex XDR data aggregating the events that have the same Identity or Resource and displays the entry with an aggregated icon. Right-click and select Show Grouped Events to view the aggregated entries.

Entries highlighted in red indicate that the specific event triggered an alert. To continue the investigation, right-click to View in XQL.

To continue the investigation, in the Alerts table, right-click an alert to see the available actions.