Find unused service accounts

This page shows how to manage service account insights, which are findings about which service accounts in your project have not been used in the past 90 days.

Before you begin

Enable the Recommender API.
Enable the API
Optional: Read about Recommender insights.

Required roles

To get the permissions that you need to manage service account insights, ask your administrator to grant you the following IAM roles on the project that you want to manage insights for:

To view service account insights: IAM Recommender Viewer (roles/recommender.iamViewer)
To modify service account insights: IAM Recommender Admin (roles/recommender.iamAdmin)

For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.

These predefined roles contain the permissions required to manage service account insights. To see the exact permissions that are required, expand the Required permissions section:

Required permissions

The following permissions are required to manage service account insights:

To view service account insights:
- recommender.iamServiceAccountinsights.get
- recommender.iamServiceAccountinsights.list
To modify service account insights: recommender.iamServiceAccountinsights.update

You might also be able to get these permissions with custom roles or other predefined roles.

List service account insights

To list all service account insights for your project, use one of the following methods:

gcloud

Use the gcloud recommender insights list command to view all service account insights for your project.

Before you run the command, replace the following values:

PROJECT_ID: The ID of the project that you want to list insights for.

gcloud recommender insights list --insight-type=google.iam.serviceAccount.Insight \
    --project=PROJECT_ID \
    --location=global

The output lists all of the service account insights for your project. For example:

INSIGHT_ID                            CATEGORY  INSIGHT_STATE  LAST_REFRESH_TIME     SEVERITY  INSIGHT_SUBTYPE        DESCRIPTION
446303ba-2a14-49cc-b9fa-e2d2499d4f82  SECURITY  ACTIVE         2022-05-24T07:00:00Z  LOW       SERVICE_ACCOUNT_USAGE  Service account sa-1@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com was inactive.
4cfd82c3-7320-4dc6-9b67-ca0756bbd54c  SECURITY  ACTIVE         2022-05-24T07:00:00Z  LOW       SERVICE_ACCOUNT_USAGE  Service account sa-2@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com was inactive.
a627bed7-c8f4-4611-89c9-2a9a8618ca1b  SECURITY  ACTIVE         2022-05-24T07:00:00Z  LOW       SERVICE_ACCOUNT_USAGE  Service account sa-3@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com was inactive.
a922dd59-df0a-422d-a2a4-096195e1dae5  SECURITY  ACTIVE         2022-05-24T07:00:00Z  LOW       SERVICE_ACCOUNT_USAGE  Service account sa-4@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com was inactive.

REST

The Recommender API's insights.list method lists all service account insights for your project.

Before using any of the request data, make the following replacements:

PROJECT_ID: The ID of the project that you want to list insights for.

HTTP method and URL:

GET https://recommender.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/global/insightTypes/google.iam.serviceAccount.Insight/insights

To send your request, expand one of these options:

curl (Linux, macOS, or Cloud Shell)

Note: The following command assumes that you have logged in to the gcloud CLI with your user account by running gcloud init or gcloud auth login , or by using Cloud Shell, which automatically logs you into the gcloud CLI . You can check the currently active account by running gcloud auth list.

Execute the following command:

curl -X GET \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-access-token)" \
     -H "x-goog-user-project: PROJECT_ID" \
     "https://recommender.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/global/insightTypes/google.iam.serviceAccount.Insight/insights"

PowerShell (Windows)

Note: The following command assumes that you have logged in to the gcloud CLI with your user account by running gcloud init or gcloud auth login . You can check the currently active account by running gcloud auth list.

Execute the following command:

$cred = gcloud auth print-access-token
$headers = @{ "Authorization" = "Bearer $cred"; "x-goog-user-project" = "PROJECT_ID" }

Invoke-WebRequest `
    -Method GET `
    -Headers $headers `
    -Uri "https://recommender.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/global/insightTypes/google.iam.serviceAccount.Insight/insights" | Select-Object -Expand Content

The response lists all of the service account insights for your project. For example:

{
  "insights": [
    {
      "name": "projects/123456789012/locations/global/insightTypes/google.iam.serviceAccount.Insight/insights/446303ba-2a14-49cc-b9fa-e2d2499d4f82",
      "description": "Service account sa-1@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com was inactive.",
      "content": {
        "serviceAccountId": "103185812403937829397",
        "email": "sa-1@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com",
        "lastAuthenticatedTime": "2020-09-11T07:00:00Z"
      },
      "lastRefreshTime": "2022-05-24T07:00:00Z",
      "observationPeriod": "19008000s",
      "stateInfo": {
        "state": "ACTIVE"
      },
      "category": "SECURITY",
      "targetResources": [
        "//cloudresourcemanager.googleapis.com/projects/123456789012"
      ],
      "insightSubtype": "SERVICE_ACCOUNT_USAGE",
      "etag": "\"9d797dd04263c855\"",
      "severity": "LOW"
    },
    {
      "name": "projects/123456789012/locations/global/insightTypes/google.iam.serviceAccount.Insight/insights/4cfd82c3-7320-4dc6-9b67-ca0756bbd54c",
      "description": "Service account sa-2@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com was inactive.",
      "content": {
        "serviceAccountId": "105496400997178042131",
        "email": "sa-2@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com"
      },
      "lastRefreshTime": "2022-05-24T07:00:00Z",
      "observationPeriod": "16070400s",
      "stateInfo": {
        "state": "ACTIVE"
      },
      "category": "SECURITY",
      "targetResources": [
        "//cloudresourcemanager.googleapis.com/projects/123456789012"
      ],
      "insightSubtype": "SERVICE_ACCOUNT_USAGE",
      "etag": "\"783a32b635d79a4e\"",
      "severity": "LOW"
    }
  ]
}

To learn more about the components of an insight, see Review service account insights on this page.

Get a single service account insight

To get more information about a single insight, including the insight's description, status, and any recommendations it's associated with, use one of the following methods:

gcloud

Use the gcloud recommender insights describe command with your insight ID to view information about a single insight.

INSIGHT_ID: The ID of the insight that you want to view. To find the ID, list the insights for your project.
PROJECT_ID: The ID of the project that you want to manage insights for.

gcloud recommender insights describe INSIGHT_ID \
    --insight-type=google.iam.serviceAccount.Insight \
    --project=PROJECT_ID \
    --location=global

The output shows the insight in detail. For example,the following insight indicates that the service account sa-1@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com has not authenticated since October 11, 2020.

category: SECURITY
content:
  email: sa-1@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com
  lastAuthenticatedTime: '2020-10-11T07:00:00Z'
  serviceAccountId: '103185812403937829397'
description: Service account sa-1@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com
  was inactive.
etag: '"9d797dd04263c855"'
insightSubtype: SERVICE_ACCOUNT_USAGE
lastRefreshTime: '2022-05-24T07:00:00Z'
name: projects/123456789012/locations/global/insightTypes/google.iam.serviceAccount.Insight/insights/446303ba-2a14-49cc-b9fa-e2d2499d4f82
observationPeriod: 19008000s
severity: LOW
stateInfo:
  state: ACTIVE
targetResources:
- //cloudresourcemanager.googleapis.com/projects/123456789012

To learn more about the components of an insight, see Review service account insights on this page.

REST

The Recommender API's insights.get method gets a single insight.

Before using any of the request data, make the following replacements:

PROJECT_ID: The ID of the project that you want to manage insights for.
INSIGHT_ID: The ID of the insight that you want to view. If you don't know the insight ID, you can find it by listing the insights in your project. The ID of an insight is everything after insights/ in the name field for the insight.

HTTP method and URL:

GET https://recommender.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/global/insightTypes/google.iam.serviceAccount.Insight/insights/INSIGHT_ID

To send your request, expand one of these options:

curl (Linux, macOS, or Cloud Shell)

Execute the following command:

curl -X GET \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-access-token)" \
     -H "x-goog-user-project: PROJECT_ID" \
     "https://recommender.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/global/insightTypes/google.iam.serviceAccount.Insight/insights/INSIGHT_ID"

PowerShell (Windows)

Execute the following command:

$cred = gcloud auth print-access-token
$headers = @{ "Authorization" = "Bearer $cred"; "x-goog-user-project" = "PROJECT_ID" }

Invoke-WebRequest `
    -Method GET `
    -Headers $headers `
    -Uri "https://recommender.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/global/insightTypes/google.iam.serviceAccount.Insight/insights/INSIGHT_ID" | Select-Object -Expand Content

The response contains the insight. For example,the following insight indicates that the service account sa-1@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com has not authenticated since October 11, 2020.

{
  "name": "projects/123456789012/locations/global/insightTypes/google.iam.serviceAccount.Insight/insights/446303ba-2a14-49cc-b9fa-e2d2499d4f82",
  "description": "Service account sa-1@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com was inactive.",
  "content": {
    "serviceAccountId": "103185812403937829397",
    "email": "sa-1@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com",
    "lastAuthenticatedTime": "2020-09-11T07:00:00Z"
  },
  "lastRefreshTime": "2022-05-24T07:00:00Z",
  "observationPeriod": "19008000s",
  "stateInfo": {
    "state": "ACTIVE"
  },
  "category": "SECURITY",
  "targetResources": [
    "//cloudresourcemanager.googleapis.com/projects/123456789012"
  ],
  "insightSubtype": "SERVICE_ACCOUNT_USAGE",
  "etag": "\"9d797dd04263c855\"",
  "severity": "LOW"
}

To learn more about the components of an insight, see Review service account insights on this page.

Review service account insights

After you get a single insight, you can review its contents to understand the pattern of resource usage that it highlights.

An insight's content is determined by its subtypes. Service account insights (google.iam.serviceAccount.Insight) insights have the SERVICE_ACCOUNT_USAGE subtype.

SERVICE_ACCOUNT_USAGE insights have the following components, not necessarily in this order:

associatedRecommendations: The identifiers for any recommendations associated with the insight. If there are no recommendations associated with the insight, this field is empty.
category: The category for IAM insights is always SECURITY.
content: Reports the last time the service account was authenticated. This field contains the following components:
- email: The email address of the service account.
- lastAuthenticatedTime: The most recent time that the service account was authenticated. If the service account does not have any recorded authentications, this field is not included.
- serviceAccountId: The unique numeric ID of the service account.
description: A human-readable summary of the insight.
etag: A unique identifier for the current state of an insight. Each time the insight changes, a new etag value is assigned.

To change the state of an insight, you must provide the etag of the existing insight. Using the etag helps ensure that any operations are performed only if the insight has not changed since you last retrieved it.
insightSubtype: The insight subtype.
lastRefreshTime: The date when the insight was last refreshed, which indicates the freshness of the data used to generate the insight.
name: The name of the insight, in the following format:
```
projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/global/insightTypes/google.iam.serviceAccount.Insight/insights/INSIGHT_ID
```
The placeholders have the following values:
- PROJECT_ID: The ID of the project where the insight was generated.
- INSIGHT_ID: A unique ID for the insight.
observationPeriod: The time period leading up to the insight. The source data used to generate the insight ends at lastRefreshTime and begins at lastRefreshTime minus observationPeriod.
stateInfo: Insights go through multiple state transitions after they are proposed:
- ACTIVE: The insight has been generated, but either no actions have been taken, or an action was taken without updating the insight's state. Active insights are updated when the underlying data changes.
- ACCEPTED: Some action has been taken based on the insight. Insights become accepted when an associated recommendation was marked CLAIMED, SUCCEEDED, or FAILED, or the insight was accepted directly. When an insight is in the ACCEPTED state, the content of the insight cannot change. Accepted insights are retained for 90 days after they are accepted.
targetResources: The full resource name of the project that the insight is for. For example, //cloudresourcemanager.googleapis.com/projects/123456789012.

Mark a service account insight as `ACCEPTED`

If you take action based on an active insight, you can mark that insight as ACCEPTED. The ACCEPTED state tells the Recommender API that you have taken action based on this insight, which helps refine your recommendations.

Accepted insights are retained for 90 days after they are marked as ACCEPTED.

gcloud

Use the gcloud recommender insights mark-accepted command with your insight ID to mark an insight as ACCEPTED.

INSIGHT_ID: The ID of the insight that you want to view. To find the ID, list the insights for your project.
PROJECT_ID: The ID of the project that you want to manage insights for.
ETAG: An identifier for a version of the insight. To get the etag, do the following:
1. Get the insight using the gcloud recommender insights describe command.
2. Find and copy the etag value from the output, including the enclosing quotes. For example, "d3cdec23cc712bd0".

gcloud recommender insights mark-accepted INSIGHT_ID \
    --insight-type=google.iam.serviceAccount.Insight \
    --project=PROJECT_ID \
    --location=global \
    --etag=ETAG

The output shows the insight, now with the state of ACCEPTED:

category: SECURITY
content:
  email: sa-1@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com
  lastAuthenticatedTime: '2020-10-11T07:00:00Z'
  serviceAccountId: '103185812403937829397'
description: Service account sa-1@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com
  was inactive.
etag: '"39c4199dcec92848"'
insightSubtype: SERVICE_ACCOUNT_USAGE
lastRefreshTime: '2022-05-24T07:00:00Z'
name: projects/123456789012/locations/global/insightTypes/google.iam.serviceAccount.Insight/insights/446303ba-2a14-49cc-b9fa-e2d2499d4f82
observationPeriod: 19008000s
severity: LOW
stateInfo:
  state: ACCEPTED
targetResources:
- //cloudresourcemanager.googleapis.com/projects/123456789012

To learn more about the state info of an insight, see Review service account insights on this page.

REST

The Recommender API's insights.markAccepted method marks an insight as ACCEPTED.

Before using any of the request data, make the following replacements:

PROJECT_ID: The ID of the project that you want to manage insights for.
INSIGHT_ID: The ID of the insight that you want to view. If you don't know the insight ID, you can find it by listing the insights in your project. The ID of an insight is everything after insights/ in the name field for the insight.
ETAG: An identifier for a version of the insight. To get the etag, do the following:
1. Get the insight using the insights.get method.
2. Find and copy the etag value from the response.

HTTP method and URL:

POST https://recommender.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/global/insightTypes/google.iam.serviceAccount.Insight/insights/INSIGHT_ID:markAccepted

Request JSON body:

{
  "etag": "ETAG"
}

To send your request, expand one of these options:

curl (Linux, macOS, or Cloud Shell)

Save the request body in a file named request.json, and execute the following command:

curl -X POST \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-access-token)" \
     -H "x-goog-user-project: PROJECT_ID" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8" \
     -d @request.json \
     "https://recommender.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/global/insightTypes/google.iam.serviceAccount.Insight/insights/INSIGHT_ID:markAccepted"

PowerShell (Windows)

Save the request body in a file named request.json, and execute the following command:

$cred = gcloud auth print-access-token
$headers = @{ "Authorization" = "Bearer $cred"; "x-goog-user-project" = "PROJECT_ID" }

Invoke-WebRequest `
    -Method POST `
    -Headers $headers `
    -ContentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8" `
    -InFile request.json `
    -Uri "https://recommender.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/global/insightTypes/google.iam.serviceAccount.Insight/insights/INSIGHT_ID:markAccepted" | Select-Object -Expand Content

The response contains the insight, now with the state of ACCEPTED:

{
  "name": "projects/123456789012/locations/global/insightTypes/google.iam.serviceAccount.Insight/insights/446303ba-2a14-49cc-b9fa-e2d2499d4f82",
  "description": "Service account sa-1@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com was inactive.",
  "content": {
    "serviceAccountId": "103185812403937829397",
    "email": "sa-1@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com",
    "lastAuthenticatedTime": "2020-10-11T07:00:00Z"
  },
  "lastRefreshTime": "2022-05-24T07:00:00Z",
  "observationPeriod": "19008000s",
  "stateInfo": {
    "state": "ACCEPTED"
    },
  "category": "SECURITY",
  "targetResources": [
    "//cloudresourcemanager.googleapis.com/projects/123456789012"
  ],
  "insightSubtype": "SERVICE_ACCOUNT_USAGE",
  "etag": "\"39c4199dcec92848\"",
  "severity": "LOW"
}

To learn more about the state info of an insight, see Review service account insights on this page.

What's next

Review the other available tools to understand service account usage.
Use the Recommendation Hub to view and manage all recommendations for your project, including IAM recommendations.

Find unused service accounts

Before you begin

Required roles

Required permissions

List service account insights

gcloud

REST

curl (Linux, macOS, or Cloud Shell)

PowerShell (Windows)

Get a single service account insight

gcloud

REST

curl (Linux, macOS, or Cloud Shell)

PowerShell (Windows)

Review service account insights

Mark a service account insight as ACCEPTED

gcloud

REST

curl (Linux, macOS, or Cloud Shell)

PowerShell (Windows)

What's next

Mark a service account insight as `ACCEPTED`