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Use Microsoft Purview Audit to investigate SharePoint activity manually, or collect audit events through the Office 365 Management Activity API for ongoing monitoring. First verify that audit ingestion is enabled and that you have permission to search. Then focus on sharing, permission, site-administration and deletion events, and judge each against the user’s role, the site’s sensitivity and expected work. Audit records arrive with a delay, so this is not real-time detection.
Confirm that SharePoint audit events are being recorded
Do not assume auditing is enabled in your tenant. Microsoft says it is on by default for many Microsoft 365 organizations, but not for Business Basic, Business Standard or Business Premium, or for unmanaged tenants using free enterprise trials. Check the setting in Exchange Online PowerShell:
Get-AdminAuditLogConfig | Format-List UnifiedAuditLogIngestionEnabledRun this in Exchange Online PowerShell. Microsoft warns that querying the same property in Security & Compliance PowerShell can return False even when audit search is enabled. A result of True indicates that auditing is enabled.
If it is disabled, enable auditing in Purview or run this Exchange Online PowerShell command:
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Set-AdminAuditLogConfig -UnifiedAuditLogIngestionEnabled $trueEnabling auditing can take up to 60 minutes to take effect. If records are missing immediately after enabling it, allow that time before treating the gap as evidence of a configuration problem. See Microsoft’s instructions to turn auditing on or off.
Choose how to search or collect the records
For an incident or a focused review, use the Audit solution in the Microsoft Purview portal or the Search-UnifiedAuditLog cmdlet in Exchange Online PowerShell. Searching requires the Audit Logs or View-Only Audit Logs role. Microsoft’s audit search guidance covers both methods.
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For ongoing collection, Microsoft documents the Office 365 Management Activity API as a REST interface for downloading audit data into monitoring solutions. That approach supports a collection pipeline where events can be correlated with other security signals and alerts. It requires implementation and operational monitoring; it does not eliminate service delays. If auditing is disabled, the API and Microsoft Sentinel cannot access audit data.
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|---|---|---|
Purview Audit portal or Search-UnifiedAuditLog |
Investigating a specific user, site or incident; exporting results for review | Human-directed searches, role requirements and date-range limits; results are not guaranteed to be immediate. |
| Office 365 Management Activity API with a monitoring platform | Recurring collection, alerting and correlation in an organization’s monitoring pipeline | Requires implementation and ongoing operation; audit must stay enabled, and event arrival remains subject to service delay. |
Search a focused time range and exact activities
- Open the Audit solution in the Microsoft Purview portal.
- Set a UTC start and end time. A portal search supports a maximum date range of 180 days; a wider interval can produce an error.
- Narrow the search by user, operation or activity, record type, or administrative unit as applicable.
- Use exact operation names from Microsoft’s audit log activity catalog. Misspelled names return no results.
- Export the results when you need to sort records or compare details across events.
SharePoint and other core-service records are typically available 60–90 minutes after an event, but Microsoft does not guarantee a specific availability time. Broad searches in large tenants may take up to 48 hours to complete. A search that returns nothing immediately is therefore not proof that the action did not occur.
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Prioritize SharePoint activity that merits review
Microsoft’s activity catalog groups SharePoint records across sharing, access requests, permissions, site administration, lists and list items. These events are investigation leads, not findings of malicious activity.
- Sharing and access requests: Review external or guest sharing, invitations, link activity and access-request events. Sharing-result details can identify who received access and whether the recipient is an organizational member or a guest.
- Site permissions: Look for operations such as
SiteCollectionAdminAdded,SiteCollectionAdminRemoved,AddedToGroup,RemovedFromGroup, permission-inheritance changes, permission-level changes and group updates. - Site administration: Examine
SharingPolicyChanged, network-access policy changes, site creation, deletion or restoration, and other configuration changes. - Lists and list items: Check
ListItemCreated,ListItemUpdated,ListItemDeletedandListItemRecycled, as well as list configuration changes.
Review an event in context: identify the actor, time, target site or item, recipient, permissions granted and sensitivity of the resource. Compare that information with the person’s role and normal work. An administrator performing a planned task or a user sharing a document for legitimate collaboration may generate the same event types that deserve investigation.
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Some SharePoint records can show app@sharepoint as the actor on behalf of the initiating user or administrator. Check the record details before attributing the action to that account.
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Triage an unusual event without treating it as proof
Conditions worth reviewing include an unexpected guest share, an unplanned administrator or permission change, an unusual concentration of deletion or recycle events, or an unexpected change to the organization’s sharing policy. These are practical review conditions based on the event types Microsoft documents, not confirmed indicators of compromise.
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Correlate audit evidence with identity, endpoint, alerting and business context before concluding that an account or document was compromised. Preserve relevant exports according to your organization’s incident-response and legal processes.
Check retention before relying on a lookback period
Retention depends on the audit solution, user licensing and configured policies. Microsoft’s retention-policy guidance describes a general 180-day standard retention period. Records generated before October 17, 2023 may instead have the earlier 90-day period.
With Audit Premium, the default one-year SharePoint retention applies to activity by users with qualifying licenses. Non-E5 users and guests may remain at 180 days. Custom policies can change expiration, and ten-year retention requires an additional per-user add-on as well as qualifying licensing. Check the license and policy for the users whose activity you need to investigate; do not assume one retention window applies across the tenant. Microsoft’s overview of auditing solutions explains the Standard and Premium capabilities.
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Audit search is useful for investigation and monitoring pipelines, but it is not an immediate detector. Microsoft says core-service records such as SharePoint events are typically searchable 60–90 minutes after an action, without guaranteeing a specific time; broad searches in large tenants can take up to 48 hours. For time-sensitive detection, use an appropriately configured monitoring workflow and corroborate audit records with other security signals.
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