Professional-Cloud-Security-Engineer Practice Exam Questions with Answers Google Cloud Certified - Professional Cloud Security Engineer Certification

To restrict access to the MySQL instance to only the frontend application while other VMs are present in the subnets, creating an ingress firewall rule is the most appropriate approach. This rule will specifically allow traffic from subnet A (where the frontend application resides) to the MySQL instance in subnet B on port 3306, using network tags to target the specific MySQL VM.

Steps:

Create Network Tags: Apply a network tag (e.g., "data-tag") to the MySQL VM in subnet B.

Create Ingress Firewall Rule: Configure an ingress firewall rule with the following settings:

Source IP Range: Subnet A's IP range.

Target Tag: "data-tag".

Allowed Protocol/Ports: TCP:3306 (for MySQL).

This setup ensures that only instances in subnet A can communicate with the MySQL instance on port 3306.

To reduce the scope of systems subject to PCI audit standards, segregate the cardholder data environment (CDE) into a separate GCP project. This ensures that only the project containing the CDE will be subject to PCI DSS compliance, reducing the audit scope for other projects.

Create Separate GCP Project:

Go to the Cloud Console, navigate to IAM & Admin > Manage Resources.

Click "Create Project" and set up a new project for the CDE.

Migrate CDE:

Transfer the systems processing, storing, or transmitting cardholder data to the new project.

Apply PCI DSS Controls:

Implement PCI DSS required controls on the new project.

Use appropriate security measures such as firewalls, access controls, and encryption.

https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/firewalls#service-accounts-vs-tags

https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/firewalls#service-accounts-vs-tags

A service account represents an identity associated with an instance. Only one service account can be associated with an instance. You control access to the service account by controlling the grant of the Service Account User role for other IAM principals. For an IAM principal to start an instance by using a service account, that principal must have the Service Account User role to at least use that service account and appropriate permissions to create instances (for example, having the Compute Engine Instance Admin role to the project).

Objective: Synchronize security groups with email addresses from an LDAP directory to Cloud IAM.

Solution: Use Google Cloud Directory Sync (GCDS) to perform one-way synchronization based on LDAP search rules.

Steps:

Step 1: Download and install Google Cloud Directory Sync (GCDS) on a secure server.

Step 2: Configure GCDS with the LDAP server details and authentication.

Step 3: Define LDAP search rules to filter security groups based on the “user email address” attribute.

Step 4: Map LDAP security groups to Google Cloud IAM roles.

Step 5: Set up a synchronization schedule to keep the groups in sync.

Step 6: Perform a test sync to ensure that the configuration is correct.

Step 7: Activate the synchronization to keep the LDAP directory and Cloud IAM in sync.

Using GCDS for one-way synchronization ensures that the security groups in Cloud IAM are consistently updated based on the LDAP directory, maintaining alignment with the organization’s security policies.

The minimum length for passwords in Cloud Identity can be set to 8 characters. This aligns with common security best practices for password policies, ensuring a basic level of complexity and security.

Step-by-Step:

Access Admin Console: Log in to the Google Admin console.

Navigate to Security Settings: Go to Security > Password Management.

Set Minimum Length: Set the minimum length for passwords to 8 characters.

Save Changes: Save the settings and ensure that all user accounts adhere to the new policy.

To identify all principals who can change firewall rules, you need to determine which users or service accounts have permissions that allow them to modify firewall rules in your Google Cloud project. The correct permissions to check for this are compute.firewalls.create and compute.firewalls.delete. These permissions enable a user to create and delete firewall rules, respectively.

The Policy Analyzer tool in Google Cloud allows you to query and analyze IAM policies to identify which principals have specific permissions. By using Policy Analyzer, you can effectively identify all principals with the compute.firewalls.create and compute.firewalls.delete permissions.

Open Policy Analyzer: Go to the Google Cloud Console, navigate to IAM & Admin, and select Policy Analyzer.

Set Up Query: Create a new query specifying the permissions compute.firewalls.create and compute.firewalls.delete.

Run Query: Execute the query to retrieve a list of principals who have these permissions.

Review Results: Analyze the results to identify all users and service accounts with the capability to modify firewall rules.

This method ensures you have a comprehensive list of all principals who can change firewall rules, enhancing your audit and security posture.

To enhance the security of your machine learning (ML) model supply chain within a serverless architecture, it's crucial to implement measures that protect both the development and deployment pipelines.?

Option A: While limiting external dependencies and rotating encryption keys are good security practices, they do not directly address the risks associated with the ML model supply chain.?

Option B: Implementing container image vulnerability scanning during development and pre-deployment helps identify and mitigate known vulnerabilities in your container images. Enforcing Binary Authorization ensures that only trusted and verified images are deployed in your environment. This combination directly strengthens the security of the ML model supply chain by validating the integrity of container images before deployment.?

Option C: Sanitizing training data and applying role-based access controls are important security practices but do not specifically safeguard the deployment pipeline against compromised container images.?

Option D: While strict firewall rules and intrusion detection systems enhance network security, they do not specifically address vulnerabilities within the container images or the deployment process.?

Therefore, Option B is the most effective approach, as it directly addresses the security of the development and deployment pipeline by ensuring that only vetted and secure container images are used in your environment.?

To ensure user-uploaded comments and product reviews do not include sensitive data before publication, use the Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP) API.

Enable DLP API:

Go to the Cloud Console and navigate to APIs & Services > Library.

Search for "Data Loss Prevention API" and enable it.

Configure DLP API:

Create an inspection template specifying the types of sensitive data to detect.

Set up de-identification templates if you want to redact or mask sensitive data.

Implement DLP in Application:

Use the Google Cloud DLP Client Library for the desired programming language.

Send the text data to the DLP API for inspection before saving or publishing.

from google.cloud import dlp_v2 dlp_client = dlp_v2.DlpServiceClient() parent = f"projects/{project_id}" item = {"value": "User comment text here"} inspect_config = {"info_types": [{"name": "PERSON_NAME"}, {"name": "CREDIT_CARD_NUMBER"}]} response = dlp_client.inspect_content(parent=parent, inspect_config=inspect_config, item=item)

The action fails because a constraints/iam.allowedPolicyMemberDomains organization policy is in place and only members from the flowlogistic.com organization are allowed. The inheritFromParent: false property on the “Apps” folder means that it does not inherit the organization policy from the organization node. Therefore, only the policy set at the folder level applies, which allows only members from the flowlogistic.com organization. As a result, the attempt to grant access to the user testuser@terramearth.com fails because this user is not a member of the flowlogistic.com organization.

"In order to be able to keep using the existing identity management system, identities need to be synchronized between AD and GCP IAM. To do so google provides a tool called Cloud Directory Sync. This tool will read all identities in AD and replicate those within GCP. Once the identities have been replicated then it's possible to apply IAM permissions on the groups. After that you will configure SAML so google can act as a service provider and either you ADFS or other third party tools like Ping or Okta will act as the identity provider. This way you effectively delegate the authentication from Google to something that is under your control."

https://cloud.google.com/logging/docs/export/troubleshoot#errors_exporting_to_cloud_storage

https://cloud.google.com/logging/docs/export/troubleshoot

Unable to grant correct permissions to the destination: Even if the sink was successfully created with the correct service account permissions, this error message displays if the access control model for the Cloud Storage bucket was set to uniform access when the bucket was created. For existing Cloud Storage buckets, you can change the access control model for the first 90 days after bucket creation by using the Permissions tab. For new buckets, select the Fine-grained access control model during bucket creation. For details, see Creating Cloud Storage buckets.

To comply with the regulation to keep instance logging data within Europe, specifically in the Netherlands (region europe-west4), you need to configure Cloud Logging to ensure that all logs are stored in a specified region. Here are the steps to achieve this:

Create a Cloud Storage Bucket:

Go to the Google Cloud Console.

Navigate to Cloud Storage and create a new bucket.

Set the location type to "Region" and select "europe-west4" as the region.

Configure Log Sink:

Go to the Logging section in the Google Cloud Console.

Create a new log sink and configure it to export logs to the Cloud Storage bucket you just created.

Ensure the sink includes all logs you want to keep within europe-west4.

Verify Configuration:

Ensure that the logs are being exported to the Cloud Storage bucket by checking the contents of the bucket.

This setup ensures that all your logging data remains within the specified region, adhering to compliance requirements.

References

Creating and Managing Log Sinks

Cloud Storage Locations

When you use a customer-managed encryption key (CMEK) to secure a Cloud Storage bucket, the key and the bucket must be located in the same region. In this case, the key is in europe-west3 and the bucket is in europe-west1, which is why you’re unable to access the key.

Firewall Rule Analysis: Analyze the existing VPC firewall rules to identify any rules that might allow traffic between VM instances based on the same service account.

Priority Check: Check the priority of these rules. A rule with a priority lower than 1000 (such as 999) will take precedence over your tag-based rules.

Service Account Configuration: Since your VM instances are deployed without any service account customization, they are likely using the default service account. A firewall rule allowing traffic between instances using this default service account will override the tag-based rules if it has a higher priority.

Testing and Validation: Disable or adjust the priority of the rule with priority 999 to test if the tag-based segmentation works correctly. Validate that the traffic is segmented according to your intended configuration. References:

Google Cloud - VPC Firewall Rules

Google Cloud - Service Accounts

This approach allows you to control network traffic at the folder level. By attaching external IP addresses to the VMs in scope, you can ensure that the VMs have a unique, routable IP address for outbound connections. Then, by defining and applying a hierarchical firewall policy at the folder level, you can enforce that egress connections are limited to the specified IP range and only from the specified VPC network.

To ensure that Vertex AI Workbench Instances are automatically kept up-to-date and that users cannot alter operating system settings, implementing specific organization policies is essential.?

Option A: Enabling VM Manager and adding Compute Engine instances assists in managing and monitoring VM instances but does not enforce automatic updates or restrict user modifications to the operating system.?

Option B: Enforcing the disableRootAccess organization policy prevents users from gaining root access, thereby restricting unauthorized changes to the operating system. Additionally, the requireAutoUpgradeSchedule policy ensures that instances are automatically updated according to a defined schedule. Together, these policies maintain system integrity and compliance with update requirements.?

Option C: Assigning AI Notebooks Runner and AI Notebooks Viewer roles controls user permissions related to running and viewing notebooks but does not directly influence operating system settings or update mechanisms.?

Option D: Implementing firewall rules to prevent SSH access limits direct access to instances but does not ensure automatic updates or prevent alterations through other means.?

Therefore, Option B is the most appropriate action, as it directly addresses both the enforcement of automatic updates and the prevention of unauthorized operating system modifications.?

To ensure that no personally identifiable information (PII) is published in your yearly website usage analytics reports while preserving data integrity, the Cloud Data Loss Prevention (Cloud DLP) API can be utilized to identify and transform PII within your datasets.?

Option A: Encrypting PII does not remove it from the reports; it merely obscures it, which may not be sufficient for compliance or privacy requirements.?

Option B: Discovering and transforming PII ensures that sensitive information is either masked, tokenized, or otherwise obfuscated, effectively removing PII from the reports while maintaining the overall structure and utility of the data.?

Option C: Detecting and deleting PII could lead to loss of valuable data and may disrupt the integrity of the reports.?

Option D: Quarantining PII data implies isolating it, which doesn't address the need to publish reports without PII.?

Therefore, Option B is the most appropriate approach, as it leverages the Cloud DLP API to identify and transform PII, ensuring that the published reports are free from sensitive information while preserving data integrity.?

Use the org policy constraint "Google Cloud Platform - Resource Location Restriction" on your Google Cloud organization node: This organizational policy constraint allows you to restrict the locations where your resources can be created. By setting this constraint to allow only Europe regions, you can ensure compliance with GDPR and other regional regulations.

Implementation: To implement this, you need to configure the organization policy with the constraint constraints/gcp.resourceLocations. You can specify allowed regions such as europe-west1 and europe-west4 to ensure resources are only created in these locations.

References

Resource Location Restriction documentation

GDPR compliance on Google Cloud

To ensure that only trusted container images are deployed on Cloud Run, you can implement Binary Authorization, which is a deploy-time security control that ensures only trusted images are used.

Set Up Binary Authorization:

Navigate to the Google Cloud Console.

Go to Security > Binary Authorization.

Configure the policy to include attestors that verify your trusted images.

Enable Binary Authorization on Cloud Run:

Go to the Cloud Run service.

Enable Binary Authorization on your existing Cloud Run services by selecting the appropriate Binary Authorization policy.

Set Organization Policy:

Go to the Organization Policies page in the Google Cloud Console.

Add a constraint for constraints/run.allowedBinaryAuthorizationPolicies.

Specify the list of allowed Binary Authorization policy names to enforce across your organization.

These steps ensure that any container image deployed on Cloud Run is validated against the specified Binary Authorization policies, preventing untrusted images from being deployed.

To grant read access to a third-party disk image stored in an external Google Cloud organization so it can be deployed into a VPC Service Controls perimeter, you need to update the service perimeter to allow egress traffic from your projects to the external project.

Update the Service Perimeter:

Go to the Google Cloud Console, navigate to Security > VPC Service Controls.

Select the appropriate service perimeter that includes your image repository project.

Configure Egress Policy:

Within the perimeter settings, configure the egressTo field to allow traffic to the external project.

Set the identityType to ANY_IDENTITY to permit any principal to access the external project for this specific egress rule.

Specify External Project and Service:

In the egressFrom field, include the external Google Cloud project number as an allowed resource.

Set the serviceName to compute.googleapis.com to specifically allow access to the Compute Engine service in the external project.

This configuration permits your internal projects to read the disk image from the external project while maintaining the security boundaries established by the service perimeter.

To mitigate the risk posed by long-running Google Cloud CLI sessions, it is essential to enforce a reauthentication frequency. This ensures that users must periodically reauthenticate, reducing the window of opportunity for an attacker to exploit an open session. Setting the reauthentication frequency to one hour forces users to reauthenticate after this period, thereby limiting the duration an attacker can use a compromised session.

Access Google Cloud Console: Log in to your Google Cloud Console using your admin credentials.

Navigate to Security Settings: Go to the "Security" section of the Cloud Console.

Set Session Control: Under the session management settings, locate the "Reauthentication frequency" setting. This controls how often users must reauthenticate.

Configure Reauthentication Frequency: Set the reauthentication frequency to "1 hour". This configuration will force users to reauthenticate every hour, thus limiting the duration of each session.

Save Changes: Confirm and save your changes. This setting will now apply to all users, ensuring that open sessions are minimized to a duration of one hour.

Cloud Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP) allows you to control access to your web applications running on Google Cloud. It ensures that only authenticated users who are part of a specified Google Group can access the application. Here’s how you can restrict access to in-progress sites using IAP:

Enable IAP: First, you need to enable Cloud IAP for your App Engine application. This will require configuring OAuth consent and setting up necessary permissions.

Create a Google Group: Create a Google Group that includes all the customers and company employees who should have access to the in-progress sites.

Configure Access: Configure IAP to allow access only to members of the created Google Group. This involves setting up the necessary IAP policies and ensuring that only authenticated users in the group can access the application.

By using IAP, you ensure that the access control is centrally managed and only authorized users can view the in-progress sites from any location.

References

Cloud Identity-Aware Proxy Documentation

Setting up IAP

To organize GCP projects based on different business units and manage IAM permissions, you should create an organization node and assign folders for each business unit. This approach allows you to logically separate projects under folders and apply IAM policies at the folder level.

Step-by-Step:

Create Organization Node: Ensure that your GCP account is linked to an organization.

Create Folders for Business Units:

Navigate to the GCP Console > IAM & Admin > Resource Manager.

Create a folder for each business unit under the organization node.

Move Projects to Folders:

Move existing projects into the respective folders according to the business unit.

Set IAM Policies:

Assign IAM roles and permissions at the folder level to manage access for each business unit independently.

Monitor and Manage: Use Cloud Audit Logs and other GCP tools to monitor the activities and ensure compliance with the organization’s policies.

The problem's critical requirements are: centralized collection of all audit logs (including Data Access logs) from a production folder to a central BigQuery dataset, with long-term retention, and most importantly, the ability to intercept and override any project-level log sinks to prevent duplicate storage or misrouting.

Aggregated Log Sink at Folder Level: To centralize logs from all current and future projects within the "production folder," an aggregated sink configured at the folder level is the correct approach. Logs generated in child projects will flow up to the folder level and be matched by this sink.

Extract Reference: "Aggregated exports allow you to export logs from multiple Google Cloud projects, folders, or your entire organization. An aggregated export can include all logs from all included resources, or you can use queries to include only specific logs." (Google Cloud Documentation: "Route logs to supported destinations | Cloud Logging" - https://cloud.google.com/logging/docs/export/aggregated_exports)

Intercepting Sink (--intercept-logs / overrideDestinations): This is the crucial feature to meet the "intercept and override" requirement. When an aggregated sink is configured as an "intercepting" sink, any log entries that match its filter are immediately routed to its destination and are not processed by any lower-level sinks (e.g., project-level sinks). This ensures that logs are not inadvertently routed elsewhere and prevents duplicate storage.

Extract Reference: "An intercepting sink is an aggregated sink that, if it includes the overrideDestinations field set to true, stops matched log entries from propagating to lower-level sinks in the Cloud Logging resource hierarchy." (Google Cloud Documentation: "Route logs to supported destinations | Cloud Logging" - https://cloud.google.com/logging/docs/export/aggregated_exports)

BigQuery Destination and IAM Permissions: BigQuery is specified as the long-term retention destination. The sink's writer_identity (a service account automatically created for the sink) needs appropriate IAM permissions (e.g., BigQuery Data Editor or BigQuery User) on the target BigQuery dataset to write logs.

Inclusion Filter for Audit Logs: An inclusion filter is necessary to ensure only the required audit logs, including Data Access logs (logName:"cloudaudit.googleapis.com" OR logName:"data_access"), are routed.

Let's evaluate the other options:

A. Standard aggregated log sink... Logs Bucket Writer: A standard aggregated sink does not intercept or override lower-level sinks. Also, Logs Bucket Writer role is for Cloud Logging buckets, not BigQuery. The correct role would be for BigQuery.

B. Log sink in each production project: This is not a centralized solution and would require manual configuration for every project, which is inefficient and error-prone for "all current and future projects." It also doesn't provide any override mechanism.

C. Aggregated log sink at the organization level... configure a log view: While an organization-level sink offers broad centralization, if the requirement is specifically for a production folder and not the entire organization, a folder-level intercepting sink is more targeted. A log view is for displaying logs, not for routing or overriding. The --include-children flag is implied for aggregated sinks but doesn't provide the intercepting behavior.

Therefore, creating an intercepting aggregated log sink at the production folder level, configured to send audit logs to BigQuery, is the precise solution to meet all the stated requirements, especially the crucial "intercept and override" condition.

The problem requires automating user provisioning to a Cloud Identity security group using a service account, adhering to Google-recommended practices and the principle of least privilege.

Cloud Identity Groups and Google Workspace: Cloud Identity groups are managed as part of Google Workspace. To programmatically manage Google Workspace resources (like groups), you typically use the Admin SDK APIs.

Domain-Wide Delegation: Service accounts cannot directly authenticate to Google Workspace APIs using IAM roles. Instead, they require "domain-wide delegation" to impersonate a user with the necessary administrative privileges within Google Workspace. This allows a service account to access user data or perform administrative tasks across the domain. The correct scope for managing groups is https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.group.Extract Reference: "To allow a service account to access user data on behalf of users in a Google Workspace domain, you must delegate domain-wide authority to your service account." (Google Cloud documentation: https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/oauth2/service-account#delegating)

Extract Reference (Admin SDK Scopes): The https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.group scope is explicitly listed for "View and manage all groups on the domain." (Google Workspace Admin SDK documentation: https://developers.google.com/admin-sdk/directory/v1/scopes)

Application Default Credentials (ADC) with Resource-Attached Service Account: Google-recommended practices strongly advise against using service account keys directly for authentication when running on Google Cloud infrastructure. Instead, it's recommended to use Application Default Credentials (ADC) with a service account attached to the resource (e.g., a Compute Engine VM, Cloud Run service, or Cloud Functions). This method manages credentials automatically and securely, reducing the risk associated with managing and rotating keys.Extract Reference: "For most Google Cloud services, Application Default Credentials (ADC) is the recommended way to authenticate." and "When running code in a Google Cloud environment, such as Compute Engine, Cloud Run, or Cloud Functions, use the built-in service account to authenticate automatically with ADC. This is the most secure approach, as you don't need to manually create or manage service account keys." (Google Cloud documentation: https://cloud.google.com/docs/authentication/production)

Options C and D are incorrect because granting an IAM role like "Groups Editor" in Google Cloud does not enable a service account to manage Google Workspace (Cloud Identity) group memberships; domain-wide delegation is required for that. Option A uses a service account key, which is less secure than ADC with a resource-attached service account according to Google's recommendations.

Therefore, option B is the most aligned with Google's recommended practices for securely automating group provisioning using a service account and domain-wide delegation.

To ensure end-user access is only allowed if the traffic originates from a specific known good CIDR and to utilize GCP's native SYN flood protection, you can use the following product:

VPC Firewall Rules: By configuring VPC firewall rules, you can control traffic to and from your instances based on IP address, protocol, and port. You can set rules to only allow traffic from a specific CIDR block, ensuring that only authorized traffic can reach your application.

Additionally, Google Cloud Platform provides built-in protections against SYN flood attacks, which are a type of DDoS attack. These protections are part of the underlying infrastructure and do not require additional configuration.

Using VPC firewall rules will help you comply with the internal requirement of allowing access only from a specific CIDR and provide the necessary SYN flood DDoS protection.

References

Google Cloud VPC Firewall Rules

Google Cloud DDoS Protection

Objective: Quickly recover a deleted service account used for data transfers.

Solution: Use the undelete command available in the gcloud command-line tool to recover the service account.

Steps:

Step 1: Open the Cloud Shell in the Google Cloud Console.

Step 2: Run the following command to list the deleted service accounts:

gcloud iam service-accounts list --filter="deleted: true"

Step 3: Identify the name and ID of the deleted service account.

Step 4: Use the undelete command to recover the service account:

gcloud iam service-accounts undelete [SERVICE_ACCOUNT_ID]

Step 5: Verify that the service account has been restored and reassign any necessary permissions.

By using the undelete command, you can quickly restore the service account and resume application functionality without compromising security.

https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/private-service-connect

An API bundle:

All APIs (all-apis): most Google APIs

(same as private.googleapis.com).

VPC-SC (vpc-sc): APIs that VPC Service Controls supports

(same as restricted.googleapis.com).

VMs in the same VPC network as the endpoint (all regions)

On-premises systems that are connected to the VPC network that contains the endpoint

SSO/SAML Integration: Implement SSO (Single Sign-On) with SAML integration through Cloud Identity to streamline user authentication and lifecycle management. This ensures centralized management of user identities and access.

Predefined Roles: Use predefined roles to provide granular access control. These roles are designed to follow the principle of least privilege, ensuring that users have the minimum necessary permissions to perform their tasks.

User Management: By leveraging SSO/SAML, user provisioning and de-provisioning become more efficient and secure. This integration helps maintain consistent access policies across your organization.

Access Control: Predefined roles reduce the risk of over-permission by offering well-defined access levels, enhancing security and compliance. References:

Google Cloud - SSO with SAML

Google Cloud - IAM Best Practices

Objective: Store and retrieve sensitive configuration data for an application running on Compute Engine.

Solution: Use Secret Manager to securely store and manage access to sensitive configuration data.

Steps:

Step 1: Open the Google Cloud Console.

Step 2: Navigate to the Secret Manager section.

Step 3: Create a new secret and add the sensitive configuration data.

Step 4: Set appropriate IAM policies to control access to the secret.

Step 5: Update the application to retrieve the secret from Secret Manager using the appropriate client libraries or APIs.

Secret Manager provides a secure and centralized way to manage sensitive information, with fine-grained access control and audit logging capabilities.

Challenge:

Prevent common misconfigurations that expose services (e.g., MYSQL) to the public internet.

Hierarchical Firewall Policies:

These policies can be applied at the organization level to enforce consistent network security rules across all projects.

Solution:

Create a hierarchical firewall policy that allows connections only from internal IP ranges.

This policy ensures that services like MySQL are not exposed to 0.0.0.0/0 (the entire internet).

Steps:

Step 1: Define the hierarchical firewall policy at the organization level.

Step 2: Set the rule to allow traffic only from internal IP ranges.

Step 3: Apply the policy to all projects under the organization.

Benefits:

Centralized management of network security.

Prevents accidental exposure of services to the public internet, enhancing security.

Cloud DNS with DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions) provides authentication for DNS responses, ensuring that they are legitimate and have not been tampered with. DNSSEC helps protect against DNS spoofing and cache poisoning attacks, which are common techniques used in DDoS attacks.

Steps:

Enable DNSSEC: In the Google Cloud Console, navigate to Cloud DNS and enable DNSSEC for your managed zones.

Configure Key Signing: Set up key signing keys (KSK) and zone signing keys (ZSK) to sign your DNS records.

Monitor DNSSEC Status: Regularly monitor the DNSSEC status and logs to ensure it is functioning correctly.

To provide users with SSO-based access to selected cloud apps, Cloud Identity as your IdP supports the OpenID Connect (OIDC) and Security Assertion Markup Language 2.0 (SAML) protocols. https://cloud.google.com/identity/solutions/enable-sso

To ensure least-privilege access and provide necessary permissions to the DevOps team only during a deployment issue, follow these steps:

Create a Service Account:

In your Google Cloud project, create a new service account specifically for the DevOps team.

Assign Limited Permissions:

Grant the service account permissions with only the necessary list/view roles. For instance, you can create a custom IAM role with compute.instances.list and compute.instances.get permissions.

Grant Service Account User Role:

Assign the Service Account User role to the DevOps team members for the created service account. This allows them to act as the service account and use its permissions.

Access Control During Incidents:

During a deployment issue, the DevOps team can temporarily use the service account to access the resources. This ensures they have the least-privilege access required to investigate and resolve the issue.

Automation and Monitoring:

Implement automation to enable and disable the service account access as needed and monitor the usage to ensure compliance with the least-privilege principle.

Benefits:

Security: Limits access to only what is necessary, reducing the risk of unauthorized changes.

Flexibility: Provides necessary access during incidents without granting permanent elevated permissions.

References

Creating and Managing Service Accounts

Service Account User Role

Objective: Prevent users from creating projects while allowing only the DevOps team to create projects.

Solution: Modify IAM roles and permissions.

Steps:

Step 1: Open the Google Cloud Console.

Step 2: Navigate to the IAM & Admin page.

Step 3: At the organizational level, find and remove all users from the Project Creator role.

Step 4: Create or identify a group for the DevOps team.

Step 5: Assign the Project Creator role to the DevOps team group at the organizational level.

By removing all users from the Project Creator role and granting it only to the DevOps team, you ensure that only the designated team can create projects.

The problem states that Google Cloud applications need to access external web services and requires the ability to monitor, control, and log this access.

Monitoring, Controlling, and Logging external web access: This specifically points to a proxy solution, which can intercept, inspect, and log HTTP/S traffic.

Secure Web Proxy (SWP): Google Cloud's Secure Web Proxy is designed for exactly this use case. It acts as an explicit forward proxy for HTTP(S) traffic, allowing organizations to implement granular access controls, inspect traffic for security threats, and log all outbound web requests from their Google Cloud environment.Extract Reference: "Secure Web Proxy is a managed service that lets you deploy and manage an explicit forward proxy to protect your organization's internal resources from web-based threats and to control access to external web applications." and "With Secure Web Proxy, you can: Enforce granular access policies based on different attributes, Log all HTTP(S) requests that are handled by the proxy, and Monitor web traffic for threats." (Google Cloud documentation: https://cloud.google.com/secure-web-proxy)

Let's evaluate the other options:

A. Configure VPC firewall rules to allow the services to access the IP addresses of required external web services: VPC firewall rules operate at Layer 4 (TCP/UDP) and Layer 3 (IP). While they can allow or deny traffic to specific IP addresses and ports, they cannot monitor, control, or log HTTP/S requests at the application layer. They don't provide granular control over which web services are accessed or inspect the content of the requests.

C. Configure Google Cloud Armor to monitor and protect your applications by checking incoming traffic patterns for attack patterns: Google Cloud Armor is primarily a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection and Web Application Firewall (WAF) service. It focuses on protecting applications from incoming threats (ingress traffic), not controlling and logging outgoing access to external web services.

D. Set up a Cloud NAT instance to allow egress traffic from your VPC: Cloud NAT allows instances without external IP addresses to connect to the internet. While it enables egress, it does not provide monitoring, control, or logging capabilities for specific web services at the application layer. It's a network address translation service, not an application-layer proxy.

Therefore, setting up a Secure Web Proxy is the most appropriate solution to meet the requirements of monitoring, controlling, and logging access to external web services from Google Cloud applications.

Configure Binary Authorization:

Binary Authorization is a deploy-time security control that ensures only trusted container images are deployed on GKE. It uses attestations to verify the authenticity and integrity of the images.

Enable Binary Authorization in your project through the Google Cloud Console or using the gcloud command-line tool.

Define attestation policies that specify which attestors (trusted entities) must sign off on container images before deployment.

Set Up Attestors:

Create and configure attestors that will sign the container images. This involves generating cryptographic keys and setting up trusted authorities.

Attestors can be configured to sign images based on criteria such as vulnerability scanning results, compliance checks, and other security policies.

Create a Custom Organization Policy Constraint:

Define an organization policy constraint that enforces Binary Authorization across your GKE clusters.

This custom constraint ensures that all clusters in the organization must adhere to the Binary Authorization policy, preventing the deployment of unsigned or unauthorized container images.

Implement and Enforce the Policies:

Apply the Binary Authorization policy and the organization policy constraint to your GKE clusters.

Regularly review and update the policies and attestation rules to align with your security and compliance requirements.

To comply with GDPR requirements and manage encryption keys for workloads across multiple Google Cloud services, customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK) offer a suitable solution.

Customer-managed encryption keys (B):

CMEK allows you to create and manage encryption keys using Google Cloud Key Management Service (KMS). You maintain full control over the key lifecycle, including key rotation and destruction.

CMEK can be used with various Google Cloud services, such as Compute Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Storage, BigQuery, and Pub/Sub, ensuring consistent and compliant encryption across your environment.

Using CMEK, you can implement data protection by design, aligning with GDPR requirements by ensuring that encryption keys are appropriately managed and secured.

References

Customer-Managed Encryption Keys Documentation

Encryption at Rest in Google Cloud

To connect Compute Engine instances within a Google Cloud Platform project to workloads running in a dedicated server room that can only be accessed from within the private company network, you can use the following approaches:

Cloud VPN: Cloud VPN securely connects your on-premises network to your Google Cloud Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) network through an IPsec VPN connection. This enables secure communication between your GCP instances and your on-premises workloads over the internet.

Cloud Interconnect: Cloud Interconnect provides direct physical connections between your on-premises network and Google's network. It offers higher bandwidth and lower latency compared to Cloud VPN, making it suitable for workloads that require fast and reliable connectivity.

Both Cloud VPN and Cloud Interconnect allow you to securely connect your on-premises environments to Google Cloud, ensuring that the workloads remain within the private company network.

References

Cloud VPN Overview

Cloud Interconnect Overview

To allow Compute Engine instances to access public repositories for security updates while an egress firewall rule is in place to deny all internet traffic, you need to create a more specific egress rule that permits traffic to the CIDR range of the repository. The priority of this rule should be lower (i.e., a higher priority number) than the deny rule.

Steps:

Identify the CIDR Range: Determine the CIDR range of the public repository from which the security updates will be fetched.

Create Egress Firewall Rule: Create a new egress firewall rule allowing traffic to the identified CIDR range with a priority less than 1000.

Apply Firewall Rule: Use the Google Cloud Console or gcloud command-line tool to apply the new firewall rule.

Cloud NAT Service: Use Cloud NAT (Network Address Translation) to allow VM instances without external IP addresses to access the internet securely.

Configuration: Configure Cloud NAT for the subnets containing your VM instances. This setup allows the VMs to initiate outbound connections to the internet for updates and other necessary communications.

Security Compliance: By using Cloud NAT, you adhere to the security policy of not assigning external IP addresses to VMs while still enabling necessary internet connectivity. Cloud NAT provides a secure method for outbound internet traffic without exposing VMs directly to the public internet. References:

Google Cloud - Cloud NAT Overview

Google Cloud - Configuring Cloud NAT

The problem describes an application with two Cloud Run services (Service A - frontend, Service B - backend) and requires setting up IAM with the principle of least privilege. Service A calls Service B.

Principle of Least Privilege: This principle dictates that each entity (in this case, a Cloud Run service) should only have the minimum permissions necessary to perform its function.

Separate Service Accounts for Separate Services: To adhere to the principle of least privilege, it's best practice to assign a unique service account to each distinct service or component. This ensures that a compromise of one service account does not grant excessive permissions across other services. Service A needs permissions to run itself and to invoke Service B. Service B only needs permissions to run itself.Extract Reference: "Assign a service account to a Cloud Run service. The service account acts as the identity for your service and determines what permissions your revisions have when executing requests. It is a best practice to grant each service account only the permissions that are required to run the specific service (principle of least privilege)." (Google Cloud documentation: https://cloud.google.com/run/docs/configuring/service-accounts)

Authentication for Cloud Run Services: When one Cloud Run service (caller) needs to invoke another Cloud Run service (callee), the caller must be authorized to do so. This is typically achieved by assigning the roles/run.invoker role on the callee service to the caller's service account.Extract Reference: "To allow a service to invoke another service, grant the roles/run.invoker role on the called service to the caller's service account." (Google Cloud documentation: https://cloud.google.com/run/docs/securing/service-to-service)

Let's evaluate the options:

A. Create a new service account with the permissions to run service A and service B. Require authentication for service B. Permit only the new service account to call the backend. This violates the principle of least privilege by giving a single service account permissions for both services. If that service account were compromised, both services would be affected.

B. Create two separate service accounts. Grant one service account the permissions to execute service A, and grant the other service account the permissions to execute service B. Require authentication for service B. Permit only the service account for service A to call the back-end. This aligns perfectly with least privilege. Service A gets its own identity, Service B gets its own identity. Service A's service account is then granted run.invoker permissions on Service B, allowing it to call the backend while Service B requires authentication. This is the recommended approach.

C. Use the Compute Engine default service account to run service A and service B. Require authentication for service B. Permit only the default service account to call the backend. The Compute Engine default service account often has broad permissions (e.g., editor role in its project). Using it violates the principle of least privilege and is generally discouraged for production applications due to the potential for excessive permissions.

D. Create three separate service accounts. Grant one service account the permissions to execute service A. Grant the second service account the permissions to run service B. Grant the third service account the permissions to communicate between both services A and B. Require authentication for service B. Call the back-end by authenticating with a service account key for the third service account. This introduces unnecessary complexity with a third service account just for communication. More critically, using a service account key for authentication is generally discouraged in Cloud Run environments where ADC (Application Default Credentials) can be used, as managing keys securely becomes an operational overhead and security risk. Cloud Run services automatically use their attached service accounts for authentication when making calls to other Google Cloud services, including other Cloud Run services.

Therefore, option B is the best solution, adhering to the principle of least privilege and Google Cloud best practices for Cloud Run service-to-service authentication.

To access a user's Google Drive on their behalf without relying on the user's credentials and following Google-recommended practices, you should use a service account with domain-wide delegation.

Create a Service Account:

Go to the Cloud Console, navigate to IAM & Admin > Service Accounts.

Click "Create Service Account" and provide necessary details.

Grant Domain-Wide Delegation:

Edit the service account to enable "G Suite Domain-wide Delegation".

Download the JSON key file.

Configure API Access in G Suite:

Go to the Google Admin Console.

Navigate to Security > API Controls > Domain-wide Delegation.

Add a new API client and use the client ID from the service account.

Authorize the necessary API scopes (e.g., https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive).

Implement in Application:

Use the Google API Client Library for the desired language.

Load the service account credentials and perform user impersonation to access Google Drive.

The goal is to detect cryptocurrency mining software using Security Command Center (SCC).

Security Command Center Threat Detection Services: SCC Premium and Enterprise tiers offer various specialized threat detection services.

Virtual Machine Threat Detection (VMTD): This service is explicitly designed to scan virtual machines (Compute Engine instances and GKE nodes) for specific threats, including cryptocurrency mining software. It operates at the hypervisor level, performing deep scans of VM memory and disks.Extract Reference: "Virtual Machine Threat Detection (VMTD) helps you detect potential threats, such as cryptocurrency mining and malware, within your Compute Engine instances and GKE nodes." (Google Cloud Documentation: "Virtual Machine Threat Detection overview | Security Command Center" - https://cloud.google.com/security-command-center/docs/concepts-vm-threat-detection-overview)

Extract Reference: "This service scans virtual machines to detect potentially malicious applications, such as cryptocurrency mining software, kernel-mode rootkits, and malware running in compromised cloud environments." (Google Cloud Documentation: "Virtual Machine Threat Detection overview | Security Command Center" - https://cloud.google.com/security-command-center/docs/concepts-vm-threat-detection-overview)

Let's evaluate the other options:

A. Web Security Scanner: This service scans for common web application vulnerabilities like XSS, Flash injection, and mixed content. It is not designed to detect runtime threats like cryptocurrency mining software.

B. Container Threat Detection: While Container Threat Detection (CTD) also detects cryptocurrency mining, it specifically focuses on runtime threats within GKE containers. The question asks for detection of "cryptocurrency mining software" generally, and VMs are a common target for such activity (and GKE nodes are VMs). VMTD provides a more general detection across Compute Engine VMs and GKE nodes for this specific type of threat. If the context explicitly mentioned containers or Cloud Run, CTD would be the more specific answer. However, for a general detection of "software" on "workloads", and given that VMTD explicitly lists "cryptocurrency mining software" for VMs, it is the most direct and broadly applicable answer among the choices.

C. Rapid Vulnerability Detection: This service actively scans internet-exposed assets for network vulnerabilities and misconfigurations. It focuses on finding known vulnerabilities, not detecting active malicious processes like cryptocurrency mining.

Given the direct and explicit mention of cryptocurrency mining detection for VMs in its documentation, Virtual Machine Threat Detection is the correct SCC service to use.

Managing IAM permissions at the KeyRing level is more efficient and scalable compared to managing them at the individual Key level. By creating a single KeyRing and placing all encryption keys within it, you can apply uniform IAM permissions to the entire KeyRing, simplifying the management of permissions.

Steps:

Create a KeyRing: Set up a single KeyRing in Cloud KMS for all the encryption keys required for the persistent disks.

Create Encryption Keys: Generate the necessary encryption keys within this KeyRing.

Set IAM Permissions: Assign IAM roles and permissions to the KeyRing to manage access control at this level, ensuring that all keys within the KeyRing inherit these permissions.

For managing and rotating encryption keys in a Compute Engine-based cluster using Managed Instance Groups (MIGs), Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK) with Cloud KMS is the appropriate solution.

Set Up Cloud KMS:

Go to the Cloud Console and navigate to Security > Cryptographic Keys.

Create a keyring and a key.

Create and Use CMEK:

While creating or updating a Compute Engine instance, specify the CMEK key.

Example command:

gcloud compute instances create example-instance \ --image-family=debian-9 \ --image-project=debian-cloud \ --boot-disk-kms-key=projects/[PROJECT_ID]/locations/global/keyRings/[KEY_RING]/cryptoKeys/[KEY]

Rotate Keys:

Rotate keys periodically using Cloud KMS by creating new key versions and updating the instances to use the new key versions.

Set up a Dedicated Interconnect link between the on-premises environment and Google Cloud:

Dedicated Interconnect provides a direct physical connection between your on-premises network and Google's network, which is ideal for high-throughput, low-latency connections.

Request a Dedicated Interconnect from the Google Cloud Console, specifying the required bandwidth and location.

Once provisioned, set up the connection on your on-premises router and configure the BGP sessions to exchange routes with Google Cloud.

Configure private access using the restricted.googleapis.com domains in on-premises DNS configurations:

Configure your on-premises DNS server to resolve Google APIs to restricted.googleapis.com. This ensures that the traffic stays within the Google network and is not exposed to the public internet.

Update your DNS settings to use restricted.googleapis.com for the necessary API endpoints.

This setup ensures that all Google Cloud API traffic is routed through the private link and subject to VPC Service Controls for additional security and compliance.

Cloud Asset Inventory: Using Cloud Asset Inventory allows you to quickly identify all the external assets and resources in your Google Cloud environment. This includes information about your projects, instances, storage buckets, and more. This step is crucial for understanding the scope of your audit. Network Security Scanner: Once you have identified the external assets, you can run a network security scanner to assess the security of these assets. Network security scanners can help identify vulnerabilities and potential security risks quickly.

Enable VPC Service Controls:

VPC Service Controls help mitigate the risk of data exfiltration by allowing you to define a security perimeter around GCP resources.

Set up a service perimeter around your BigQuery project to restrict data access to within the defined perimeter.

Create Access Levels:

In the Google Cloud Console, navigate to the Access Context Manager.

Define access levels based on IP address conditions, specifying the authorized source IP addresses that are allowed to access your BigQuery resources.

These access levels are used to enforce policies that restrict who can access your sensitive data based on their IP addresses.

Apply Service Perimeter with Access Levels:

Apply the created access levels to the service perimeter to ensure that only requests originating from the specified IP addresses are able to access BigQuery tables.

This setup ensures that the sensitive PII data is not accessible from unauthorized IP addresses, reducing the risk of data exfiltration.

Objective: Create a Service Account that can list Compute Engine instances in the project following Google-recommended practices.

Solution: Create a custom role and assign it to the Service Account.

Steps:

Step 1: Open the Google Cloud Console.

Step 2: Navigate to the IAM & Admin page and select "Roles".

Step 3: Click on "Create Role" and define a new role with a suitable name and description.

Step 4: Add the permission compute.instances.list to the custom role.

Step 5: Save the custom role.

Step 6: Go to the "Service Accounts" section.

Step 7: Create a new Service Account or select an existing one.

Step 8: Assign the newly created custom role to the Service Account.

By creating a custom role with the specific permission to list Compute Engine instances, you follow the principle of least privilege, which is a recommended security practice.

Objective: Identify the layers of the stack the customer shares responsibility for in a shared security responsibility model for IaaS.

Solution: Understand the shared responsibility model.

Explanation:

Network Security: Customers are responsible for configuring network security, such as setting up firewalls, managing VPCs, and ensuring secure network traffic.

Access Policies: Customers are responsible for managing access policies, including IAM roles and permissions, to ensure only authorized users can access resources.

In IaaS, the cloud provider is typically responsible for the underlying infrastructure, while the customer is responsible for securing their applications and data on the cloud.

This option directly addresses the needs of the business user who must access curated reports. By creating curated tables in a separate dataset, you can control access to specific data. Assigning the roles/bigquery.dataViewer role allows the business user to view the data in BigQuery.

Enable Firewall Rules Logging on the latest rules that were changed. Use Logs Explorer to analyze whether the rules are working correctly:

Enable Firewall Rules Logging for the specific firewall rules in question through the Google Cloud Console.

Once logging is enabled, use Logs Explorer to filter and review the firewall logs.

Analyze the logs to determine if the rules are allowing or blocking traffic as intended, identifying any misconfigurations or issues.

This PD and bucket data is encrypted using a Google-generated data encryption key (DEK) and key encryption key (KEK). The CMEK feature allows you to create, use, and revoke the key encryption key (KEK). Google still controls the data encryption key (DEK). For more information on Google data encryption keys, see Encryption at Rest. https://cloud.google.com/dataproc/docs/concepts/configuring-clusters/customer-managed-encryption

https://codelabs.developers.google.com/codelabs/encrypt-and-decrypt-data-with-cloud-kms#0

With Google Cloud Directory Sync (GCDS), you can synchronize the data in your Google Account with your Microsoft Active Directory or LDAP server. GCDS doesn't migrate any content (such as email messages, calendar events, or files) to your Google Account. You use GCDS to synchronize your Google users, groups, and shared contacts to match the information in your LDAP server.

https://support.google.com/a/answer/106368?hl=en

To manage IAM permissions efficiently for a large engineering team with different levels of access in development and production environments, follow these steps:

Create Separate Folders:

Create a folder for the development environment.

Create a folder for the production environment.

This allows you to organize projects and apply different policies and permissions to each environment.

Navigate to IAM & Admin in the GCP Console.

Select "Folders" from the left-hand menu.

Create a new folder named "Development".

Create a new folder named "Production".

Create Google Groups:

Create Google Groups for different teams within the engineering department (e.g., Development Team, Production Team).

This helps in managing permissions centrally.

Use the Google Admin Console to create groups.

Add relevant engineers to each group.

Assign Permissions at the Folder Level:

Assign appropriate IAM roles to the Google Groups at the folder level.

For example, grant Viewer role to the Development Team group for the development folder.

Grant Editor or more restrictive roles as required for the Production Team group for the production folder.

Select the development folder.

Go to the "Permissions" tab.

Click on "Add" and enter the email address of the Development Team Google Group.

Assign the "Viewer" role.

Repeat for the production folder, assigning appropriate roles to the Production Team Google Group.

By following these steps, you create a clear separation between development and production environments and manage permissions efficiently using Google Groups and folders.

Pseudonymization is a de-identification technique that replaces sensitive data values with cryptographically generated tokens. Pseudonymization is widely used in industries like finance and healthcare to help reduce the risk of data in use, narrow compliance scope, and minimize the exposure of sensitive data to systems while preserving data utility and accuracy.

https://cloud.google.com/dlp/docs/pseudonymization

If the environment variable GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS is set, ADC uses the service account key or configuration file that the variable points to. If the environment variable GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS isn't set, ADC uses the service account that is attached to the resource that is running your code. https://cloud.google.com/docs/authentication/production#passing_the_path_to_the_service_account_key_in_code

Objective: Understand the security characteristics of VPC peering.

Security Characteristics:

Non-transitive Peering: VPC peering connections are non-transitive. This means that peering is strictly between two VPC networks. If VPC A is peered with VPC B, and VPC B is peered with VPC C, VPC A cannot communicate with VPC C unless a direct peering connection is established.

Inter-Organization Peering: VPC peering allows you to connect VPC networks across different Google Cloud Platform organizations, facilitating private communication between distinct organizational units.

These characteristics ensure controlled and secure connectivity between VPC networks while preventing unintended data exposure.

To meet the requirements of encrypted communication over private IP addresses between Compute Engine instances in different Google Cloud organizations, a Cloud VPN connection is appropriate:

Cloud VPN: Cloud VPN creates a secure, encrypted tunnel between your organization's VPC network and the third party's VPC network. This ensures that data transmitted over the network is encrypted and secure.

Private IP Communication: Cloud VPN allows communication over private IP addresses, which helps maintain security by keeping traffic within the Google Cloud network and not exposing it to the public internet.

Firewall Rules: VPC firewall rules can be configured to control the traffic that flows through the VPN, ensuring that only authorized traffic is allowed, further enhancing security.

By setting up a Cloud VPN connection, you can achieve secure, encrypted communication over private IP addresses between different Google Cloud organizations.

References

Cloud VPN Overview

Objective: Implement external web application protection and validate policy changes before enforcement.

Solution: Use Google Cloud Armor's preconfigured rules in preview mode.

Steps:

Step 1: Open the Google Cloud Console.

Step 2: Navigate to the Google Cloud Armor section.

Step 3: Create or select a security policy.

Step 4: Apply preconfigured rules to the policy.

Step 5: Enable preview mode to simulate the effects of the rules without enforcing them.

Step 6: Monitor the logs to validate the policy changes.

Google Cloud Armor's preview mode allows you to test and validate the impact of security policies on your application traffic before applying them, ensuring that they work as intended without disrupting the service.

”This encryption method is reversible, which helps to maintain referential integrity across your database and has no character-set limitations.” https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/identity-security/take-charge-of-your-data-how-tokenization-makes-data-usable-without-sacrificing-privacy

https://cloud.google.com/dlp/docs/pseudonymization

FPE provides fewer security guarantees compared to other deterministic encryption methods such as AES-SIV. For these reasons, Google strongly recommends using deterministic encryption with AES-SIV instead of FPE for all security sensitive use cases. Other methods like deterministic encryption using AES-SIV provide these stronger security guarantees and are recommended for tokenization use cases unless length and character set preservation are strict requirements—for example, for backward compatibility with a legacy data system.

Google Cloud Armor provides protection against DDoS attacks and allows you to define security policies to control access to your application. It enables you to block traffic from specific IP addresses or ranges, making it suitable for denying traffic from a list of malicious IP addresses while protecting your application from being directly exposed to the internet.

Steps:

Set Up Cloud Armor: Enable Cloud Armor in your Google Cloud Console.

Create Security Policies: Define security policies that specify the rules for allowing or denying traffic based on IP addresses.

Attach Policies to Backend Services: Apply these security policies to the backend services of your web application.

Objective: Optimize the usage of Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP) API to reduce costs.

Solution:

rowsLimit and bytesLimitPerFile: These parameters help in sampling data instead of scanning the entire dataset, thereby reducing the amount of data processed.

CloudStorageRegexFileSet: This feature allows you to specify a subset of files to be scanned using regular expressions, limiting the scope and volume of data scanned.

Steps:

Step 1: Set appropriate rowsLimit values for BigQuery data scans to sample rows instead of scanning entire tables.

Step 2: Set bytesLimitPerFile values for Cloud Storage buckets to limit the number of bytes scanned per file.

Step 3: Use CloudStorageRegexFileSet to specify the subset of files to be scanned based on patterns that match the filenames.

By combining these strategies, you effectively reduce the scope and volume of data processed by the DLP API, leading to cost savings.

To grant an IAM user access to HTTPS resources protected by Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP), you should assign the IAP-Secured Web App User role.

IAP-Secured Web App User (C):

This role grants the necessary permissions for a user to access web applications secured by IAP. It includes permissions to access the IAP-secured resources, ensuring that users can authenticate and gain the appropriate access based on the policies defined in IAP.

Assigning this role ensures that users have the right level of access to protected web resources, aligned with the security controls enforced by IAP.

References

Identity-Aware Proxy Documentation

IAP Roles and Permissions

Review Admin Activity logs:

Admin Activity logs contain entries for API calls that modify or read the configuration or metadata of resources.

These logs are useful for monitoring and auditing administrative actions, including those that could indicate malicious activity on a Cloud SQL instance.

To enhance the security of your microservices architecture on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and ensure that only approved container images are deployed, implementing Binary Authorization is a robust solution.?

Option A: Enforcing Binary Authorization in your GKE clusters ensures that only container images that meet your organization's security policies are deployed. By integrating container image vulnerability scanning into your Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipeline, you can assess images for known vulnerabilities before they are deployed. Binary Authorization can be configured to use these vulnerability scan results to make policy decisions, effectively preventing the deployment of insecure images. This approach leverages managed services provided by Google Cloud, ensuring scalability and compliance with security standards.?

Option B: Developing custom organization policies to restrict deployments to images within a specific Artifact Registry project helps in controlling the source of images but does not inherently assess the security posture of those images. Without integrated vulnerability scanning and enforcement mechanisms, this approach may not fully mitigate the risk of deploying vulnerable images.?

Option C: Building a system using third-party vulnerability databases and custom scripts requires significant maintenance and may not integrate seamlessly with GKE. This approach can be error-prone and lacks the efficiency of managed services designed for this purpose.?

Option D: Automatically deploying new images upon successful CI/CD builds ensures rapid deployment but does not address the need for security assessments of the images. While setting up firewall rules is good practice, it does not prevent the deployment of potentially vulnerable images.?

Therefore, Option A is the most effective approach, as it utilizes Google Cloud's managed services to enforce security policies and integrate vulnerability assessments directly into the deployment process, ensuring that only approved and secure container images are deployed to your GKE clusters.?

Understand Organization Policies:

Organization policies allow you to enforce restrictions on Google Cloud resources to adhere to your organization’s security and compliance requirements.

Policies can be set at the organization, folder, or project level, with project-level policies able to override higher-level policies unless explicitly prevented.

Identify the Policy Constraint:

The specific constraint in question is likely constraints/compute.vmExternalIpAccess, which controls whether VMs can have external IP addresses.

Check Policy Overwrites:

Navigate to the Organization Policies page in the Google Cloud Console.

Check the policy settings at the project level under the affected folder to see if there is an override in place with an 'allow' value.

This override would permit the creation of VMs with external IP addresses despite the higher-level restriction.

Resolve the Policy Conflict:

If an override is found, remove or modify the project-level policy to align with the organizational policy denying external IP addresses.

Communicate with project administrators to ensure they understand and comply with the overarching security policies.

App Engine ingress firewall rules are available, but egress rules are not currently available. Per requirements 1.2.1 and 1.3.4, you must ensure that all outbound traffic is authorized. SAQ A-EP and SAQ D–type merchants must provide compensating controls or use a different Google Cloud product. Compute Engine and GKE are the preferred alternatives. https://cloud.google.com/solutions/pci-dss-compliance-in-gcp

To minimize the usage of service account keys and implement Workload Identity Federation (WIF) with your on-premises identity provider, you can use a workload identity pool integrated with your corporate Active Directory Federation Service (ADFS). This setup allows your on-premises Windows-based applications to authenticate to Google Cloud APIs without using long-lived service account keys.

Set Up a Workload Identity Pool:

In the Google Cloud Console, go to IAM & Admin > Workload Identity Federation.

Create a new workload identity pool.

Configure the pool to trust your corporate ADFS by specifying the federation provider details.

Create a Workload Identity Provider:

Within the created pool, set up a new provider for ADFS.

Configure the provider with the necessary details such as the issuer URL and credentials.

Configure Impersonation Rules:

Set up rules to allow principals in the workload identity pool to impersonate specific Google Cloud service accounts.

This is done by specifying the identity provider and the conditions under which the service accounts can be impersonated.

Update Applications:

Modify your on-premises applications to use the configured ADFS authentication to obtain tokens.

These tokens can then be exchanged for Google Cloud access tokens to interact with Google Cloud APIs securely.

By setting up the workload identity pool and configuring impersonation rules, you achieve secure authentication without needing to distribute and manage service account keys.

Objective: Migrate ongoing data backup and disaster recovery solutions to GCP.

Solution: Use Cloud Storage with scheduled tasks and gsutil.

Steps:

Step 1: Set up a Cloud Interconnect to ensure stable networking connectivity between the on-premises environment and GCP.

Step 2: Create a Cloud Storage bucket to store backups.

Step 3: Use gsutil, a command-line tool for Cloud Storage, to create scripts for data transfer.

Step 4: Schedule these scripts using cron jobs or another scheduling tool to automate the backup process.

Using Cloud Storage with scheduled tasks and gsutil ensures efficient and reliable backup and disaster recovery while leveraging stable connectivity provided by Cloud Interconnect.