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

A security key is a physical device that you can use for two-step verification, providing an additional layer of security for your Google Account. Security keys can defend against phishing and man-in-the-middle attacks, making your login process more secure.

The problem requires exposing a sensitive AI model endpoint internally (strictly isolated from the internet) to a defined list of projects within the organization.

Internal Exposure and Isolation: An "internal Application Load Balancer" is suitable for exposing services within your VPC network, ensuring they are not accessible from the internet.

Private Service Connect (PSC): This is the key technology for securely and privately exposing services from one VPC network (the service producer, where the model is) to other VPC networks (the service consumers, the defined list of projects) within the same or different organizations. PSC allows consumers to access services using internal IP addresses, with traffic remaining on Google's private network. You can configure a service attachment that points to the internal load balancer, and then permit specific consumer projects to connect to this service attachment.Extract Reference: "Private Service Connect is a capability of Google Cloud networking that allows consumers to access managed services privately from inside their VPC network. Similarly, it allows managed service producers to host these services in their own separate VPC networks and offer a private connection to their consumers." (Google Cloud Documentation: "Private Service Connect | VPC" - https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/private-service-connect)

Extract Reference: "Private Service Connect endpoints are internal IP addresses in a consumer VPC network that can be directly accessed by clients in that network. Endpoints are created by deploying a forwarding rule that references a service attachment or a bundle of Google APIs." (Google Cloud Documentation: "About Private Service Connect | VPC" - https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/private-service-connect)

Extract Reference: "Private Service Connect can be used to access managed services that are owned by Google, third-party software as a service (SaaS) companies, or other teams within the consumer's own company. Both published services and Google APIs can be targets of Private Service Connect." (Google Cloud Documentation: "About Private Service Connect | VPC" - https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/private-service-connect)

Let's evaluate the other options:

A. Shared VPC and central firewall rules: While Shared VPC centralizes network management, it does not provide a direct managed service exposure mechanism like PSC for a model endpoint to specific projects. It's more about sharing subnets and network resources. Administering all firewall rules centrally would also not meet the need for exposing only this specific model to a defined list of projects in a managed, private service pattern.

B. Activate Private Google Access (PGA): Private Google Access allows VMs without external IP addresses to access Google APIs and services (like Cloud Storage, BigQuery, etc.) privately from within their VPC network. It's for consuming Google services, not for exposing custom services hosted in a Google Cloud project to other projects.

D. External Application Load Balancer + Cloud Armor: An "external Application Load Balancer" exposes the service to the internet. While Cloud Armor can restrict access based on IP addresses, it still involves internet exposure, which contradicts the "strictly isolated from the internet" requirement. Restricting to "Google Cloud IP addresses" doesn't guarantee access only to a defined list of projects and still exposes the service externally.

Therefore, creating an internal Application Load Balancer and exposing it via Private Service Connect is the most suitable and secure solution for this scenario.

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 ensure that payment information is encrypted between the customer’s browser and Google Cloud Platform during checkout, the company should configure an SSL certificate on an L7 (Layer 7) Load Balancer. Here’s why this is the best solution:

SSL/TLS Termination: An L7 Load Balancer can handle SSL/TLS termination, which means it can decrypt HTTPS traffic, offloading the work from the backend servers. This is essential for handling encrypted connections securely.

HTTPS Configuration: By configuring an SSL certificate, the load balancer ensures that all traffic between the customer’s browser and the application is encrypted using HTTPS.

Security Best Practices: Using an L7 Load Balancer with an SSL certificate aligns with best practices for securing web applications, particularly for e-commerce sites handling sensitive payment information.

Managed Certificates: Google Cloud offers managed SSL certificates, which simplifies the process of obtaining, deploying, and renewing SSL certificates.

Implementation Steps:

Obtain an SSL certificate.

Configure the L7 Load Balancer in the GCP Console.

Associate the SSL certificate with the load balancer.

Ensure that the backend services are configured to handle HTTPS traffic.

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.

Use Google Shielded VM including secure boot Virtual Trusted Platform Module (vTPM) and integrity monitoring: Shielded VMs provide verifiable integrity of the VM by ensuring that it was not tampered with or compromised at the boot level. They use features like Secure Boot, vTPM, and integrity monitoring to detect and prevent malicious changes to the VM's operating system and firmware.

Activate Confidential Computing: Confidential Computing provides a secure environment for processing sensitive data. It uses hardware-based enclaves to protect data in use by ensuring it cannot be accessed by the underlying host or any other unauthorized entity. By leveraging Intel SGX or AMD SEV, it ensures that data remains encrypted even when it is being processed.

Enforce these actions by using organization policies: Organization policies can enforce the use of Shielded VMs and Confidential Computing across your organization. This ensures that all VMs comply with these security measures without requiring manual configuration for each VM.

References

Shielded VMs documentation

Confidential Computing documentation

Organization Policies documentation

Use Cloud External Key Management (EKM) that integrates with an external Hardware Security Module (HSM) system from supported vendors: Cloud EKM allows you to use encryption keys that are managed externally to Google Cloud. This means you can generate and store your keys in an on-premises HSM or another supported external HSM service, and integrate these keys with various Google Cloud services.

Integration with Google Services: Cloud EKM integrates seamlessly with many Google Cloud services, including BigQuery, Cloud Storage, Compute Engine, and more. This provides you with full control over your encryption keys while still taking advantage of Google Cloud's powerful services.

References

Cloud External Key Management (EKM) documentation

External Key Management overview

https://cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/organization-policy/restricting-domains#setting_the_organization_policy

The domain restriction constraint is a type of list constraint. Google Workspace customer IDs can be added and removed from the allowed_values list of a domain restriction constraint. The domain restriction constraint does not support denying values, and an organization policy can't be saved with IDs in the denied_values list. All domains associated with a Google Workspace account listed in the allowed_values will be allowed by the organization policy. All other domains will be denied by the organization policy.