Comprehensive and Detailed 150 to 250 words of Explanation From Exact Extract Google Security Operations Engineer documents:
The Google Security Operations (SecOps) platform provides an integrated, zero-impact workflow for developing and testing detections. The standard method is to use the "Test Rule" feature, which is built directly into the Rules Editor.
After the detection engineer has defined the complete YARA-L logic (including events, match, and condition sections), they can click the "Test Rule" button. This function performs a historical search (a retrohunt) against a specified time range of UDM data (e.g., last 24 hours, last 7 days). The platform then returns a list of all events that would have triggered the detection, without creating any live alerts, cases, or impacting production.
This allows the engineer to "ensure that the detections are accurate" by reviewing the historical matches, identifying potential false positives, and refining the rule's logic. This iterative "develop and test" cycle within the editor is the primary method for validating a rule before it is enabled. While UDM search (Option A) is useful for testing the events section logic, it cannot test the full match and condition logic of the rule. Setting a rule to "live but not alerting" (Option D) is a valid, later step, but the "Test Rule" feature is the correct initial development and testing tool.
(Reference: Google Cloud documentation, "Create and manage rules using the Rules Editor"; "Test a rule")
