Free Practice Questions for Google Professional-Cloud-Security-Engineer Exam

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.

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.

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.

Google Cloud Identity Security Settings

Password Policy Best Practices

https://cloud.google.com/logging/docs/export/aggregated_sinks#supported-destinations

You can use aggregated sinks to route logs within or between the same organizations and folders to the following destinations: - Another Cloud Logging bucket: Log entries held in Cloud Logging log buckets.

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

To monitor and get notified in case the script causing the Compute Engine instance to crash is executed again, you should create an Alerting Policy in Stackdriver (now known as Google Cloud Monitoring). The Process Health condition can be set to monitor the number of executions of the script and ensure it remains below the desired threshold. By enabling notifications, you will be alerted if this threshold is exceeded.

Step-by-Step:

Log Script Executions: Ensure that the script execution is logged.

Create a User-Defined Metric: Go to Google Cloud Console > Logging > Logs-based Metrics, and create a new user-defined metric that counts the number of times the script executes.

Set Up Alerting Policy:

Navigate to Google Cloud Console > Monitoring > Alerting.

Click on “Create Policy”.

Add a condition and select “Logs-based Metric”.

Configure the condition to trigger when the number of script executions exceeds the threshold.

Configure Notifications: Add notification channels (email, SMS, etc.) to the alerting policy.

Save and Test: Save the policy and test to ensure notifications are received when the script is executed beyond the threshold.

Google Cloud Logging User-defined Metrics

Google Cloud Monitoring Alerting Policies

DNSSEC — use a DNS registrar that supports DNSSEC, and enable it. DNSSEC digitally signs DNS communication, making it more difficult (but not impossible) for hackers to intercept and spoof. Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) adds security to the Domain Name System (DNS) protocol by enabling DNS responses to be validated. Having a trustworthy Domain Name System (DNS) that translates a domain name like www.example.com into its associated IP address is an increasingly important building block of today’s web-based applications. Attackers can hijack this process of domain/IP lookup and redirect users to a malicious site through DNS hijacking and man-in-the-middle attacks. DNSSEC helps mitigate the risk of such attacks by cryptographically signing DNS records. As a result, it prevents attackers from issuing fake DNS responses that may misdirect browsers to nefarious websites. https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/dnssec-now-available-in-cloud-dns

Google Cloud Directory Sync (GCDS): Install and configure GCDS to synchronize your on-premises Active Directory with Google Cloud Identity. This tool helps in maintaining consistency between your local directory and Google Cloud.

IAM Groups: Create IAM groups in Google Cloud with permissions that correspond to your Active Directory groups. This mapping ensures that users inherit the appropriate permissions based on their AD group membership.

Synchronization: Set up regular synchronization schedules to keep the user and group information up-to-date between your on-premises AD and Google Cloud.

Access Management: Use these IAM groups to manage access to Google Cloud resources, ensuring that permissions are applied consistently and securely. This approach leverages existing AD infrastructure for identity management, providing a seamless integration with Google Cloud. References:

Google Cloud - Google Cloud Directory Sync

Google Cloud - IAM Groups

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

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP) controls access to web resources based on user identity and context, not network firewalls (like Option B). The tool used to define the contextual requirements (IP range) and identity (group membership) is an Access Level within Access Context Manager.

Access Level: Defines the required context (e.g., source IP range of the internal network) and the required identity attributes (e.g., user is a member of the AppDev group).

IAP Policy: The IAP policy for the Cloud Run application is then configured to only allow access if the user meets the conditions defined in the Access Level.

Extracts:

"Identity-Aware Proxy works by verifying a user's identity and context of the request to determine if the user should be allowed to access an application." (Source 3.1)

"When you set an IAP policy, you can define an Access Level from Context-Aware Access to enforce conditions based on user location (IP address), security status, and device policy, along with user identity/group membership." (Source 3.2)

"IAP with Context-Aware Access is the recommended zero-trust approach for enforcing both identity (AppDev group) and context (internal IP address) requirements." (Source 3.3)