Professional-Cloud-Security-Engineer Google Cloud Certified - Professional Cloud Security Engineer Questions and Answers

Objective: Ensure that a Cloud Storage bucket in Project A can only be readable from Project B and prevent data access or copying to Cloud Storage buckets outside the network, even with correct credentials.

Solution: Use VPC Service Controls to create a security perimeter.

Steps:

Step 1: Open the Google Cloud Console.

Step 2: Navigate to the VPC Service Controls page.

Step 3: Create a new service perimeter.

Step 4: Add Project A and Project B to the service perimeter.

Step 5: Include Cloud Storage service in the perimeter configuration.

Step 6: Define access levels to ensure that only resources within the perimeter can access the Cloud Storage bucket.

By setting up a VPC Service Controls perimeter, you can enforce security boundaries that restrict data access and movement to within defined projects, providing an extra layer of protection beyond IAM permissions.

References:

VPC Service Controls Overview

Configuring VPC Service Controls

Enable Security Command Center (SCC):

SCC provides centralized visibility and control over your cloud resources' security status.

Ensure that SCC is enabled in your Google Cloud environment.

Configure Virtual Machine Threat Detection (VMTD):

VMTD is part of SCC and specializes in detecting threats within VM instances, such as cryptocurrency mining malware.

Navigate to the SCC settings in the Google Cloud Console.

Activate VMTD:

Enable VMTD for the projects or resources where you want to monitor and detect potential threats.

VMTD uses behavioral analysis to identify anomalies indicative of unauthorized mining activities.

Monitor and Respond to Alerts:

VMTD generates alerts when it detects suspicious activities, such as unauthorized cryptocurrency mining.

Set up appropriate response actions, such as notifications, automatic remediation, or manual investigation, to handle these alerts.

References:

Security Command Center Documentation

Virtual Machine Threat Detection

To ensure that application teams can only add users from within your organization to their groups, you need to configure the group settings in the Google Workspace Admin console. Here are the steps:

Access Google Workspace Admin Console:

Go to the Google Workspace Admin console.

Navigate to the Groups section.

Configure Group Settings:

Select the relevant groups used by the application teams.

Go to the group settings and set the group to only allow members from your domain.

This prevents external users from being added to these groups.

Apply and Save Changes:

Apply the changes to ensure that only users from within your organization can be added to these groups.

Verify Configuration:

Test the configuration by attempting to add an external user to the group and verifying that it is not allowed.

Benefits:

Security: Prevents unauthorized access by ensuring that only internal users can be added to groups.

Compliance: Helps in adhering to organizational policies regarding user access and management.

References

Google Workspace Admin Help: Groups

To enable developer teams to deploy new applications without the extensive overhead of network and security reviews, it’s recommended to mandate the use of infrastructure as code (IaC) and enforce policies through static analysis in CI/CD pipelines. This approach ensures that security and compliance policies are checked automatically during the development process.

Step-by-Step:

Adopt IaC: Use tools like Terraform or Google Cloud Deployment Manager to manage infrastructure as code.

CI/CD Pipeline Integration: Integrate static analysis tools such as TFLint or Checkov in the CI/CD pipeline to enforce security policies.

Policy Definition: Define security policies and best practices that need to be adhered to in the code.

Automated Checks: Configure automated checks in the CI/CD pipeline to review code against these policies before deployment.

Monitor and Audit: Continuously monitor and audit deployed applications to ensure ongoing compliance.

References:

Infrastructure as Code on Google Cloud

Static Analysis for Terraform

Checkov for IaC

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.

References:

Domain-wide Delegation of Authority

Using OAuth 2.0 for Server to Server Applications

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.

To prepare for migrating Google Cloud projects to a new organization node, it's crucial to ensure that the projects' current configurations and dependencies are appropriately managed. The two necessary preparation steps are:

Identify inherited Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles on projects to be migrated (C):

Projects inherit IAM roles from their parent resources. Identifying these roles is essential to understand the permissions and access levels that users have on the projects. This will help in ensuring that after migration, the appropriate roles and permissions are applied correctly.

Remove the specific migration projects from any VPC Service Controls perimeters and bridges (E):

VPC Service Controls provide security boundaries around your Google Cloud resources to mitigate data exfiltration risks. Before migrating the projects, they need to be removed from any existing VPC Service Controls perimeters and bridges to prevent any disruption in access or network communication. After migration, the projects can be added back to the necessary perimeters.

References

Google Cloud IAM documentation

VPC Service Controls documentation

https://cloud.google.com/load-balancing/docs/ssl - SSL Proxy Load Balancing is a reverse proxy load balancer that distributes SSL traffic coming from the internet to virtual machine (VM) instances in your Google Cloud VPC network.

Objective: Encrypt data using envelope encryption.

Solution: Follow the envelope encryption process.

Steps:

Step 1: Generate a Data Encryption Key (DEK) locally. The DEK is used to encrypt the actual data.

Step 2: Encrypt the data using the DEK.

Step 3: Use a Key Encryption Key (KEK) to wrap the DEK. The KEK is used to encrypt the DEK.

Step 4: Store the encrypted data and the wrapped DEK. This ensures that the data can be securely decrypted in the future using the KEK to unwrap the DEK.

Envelope encryption enhances security by adding an additional layer of encryption to the data encryption key, which is particularly useful for managing large volumes of encrypted data.

References:

Envelope Encryption Overview

Google Cloud Key Management Service Documentation

o ensure that users can only access the data in a BigQuery table during working hours, you can assign the BigQuery Data Viewer role with an IAM condition that specifies the allowed access times. This method leverages IAM Conditions, which allow you to define and enforce time-based access policies. Here's how to do it:

Identify the BigQuery Table: Determine which BigQuery table(s) require restricted access.

Create an IAM Policy with Conditions: Define an IAM policy that includes a condition for time-based access. You can do this using the Google Cloud Console, gcloud command-line tool, or directly editing the IAM policy JSON.

Specify Working Hours: In the IAM condition, specify the time frame during which access is allowed. For example, you can set access to be allowed from 9 AM to 5 PM on weekdays.

Assign the Role with Conditions: Apply the policy to the users or groups who need access. Ensure that the condition is correctly attached to the BigQuery Data Viewer role.

Example using gcloud:

gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding [PROJECT_ID] \

--member=user:[USER_EMAIL] \

--role=roles/bigquery.dataViewer \

--condition=expression="(request.time.getFullYear() == 2024) && (request.time.getDayOfWeek() in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]) && (request.time.getHours() >= 9) && (request.time.getHours() < 17)",title="Working hours condition",description="Access limited to working hours"

References

Google Cloud IAM Conditions

Google Cloud BigQuery IAM Roles

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

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/g-suite/7-ways-admins-can-help-secure-accounts-against-phishing-g-suite

https://www.duocircle.com/content/email-security-services/email-security-in-cryptography#:~:text=Customer%20Login-,Email%20Security%20In%20Cryptography%20Is%20One%20Of%20The%20Most,Measures%20To%20Prevent%20Phishing%20Attempts &text=Cybercriminals%20love%20emails%20the%20most,networks%20all%20over%20the%20world.

Titan Security Keys are a physical form of two-step verification (2SV) that provide the highest level of account security by using cryptographic signatures to verify the user and the URL of the login page.

Cryptographic Security: Titan Security Keys use a hardware-based cryptographic method to authenticate users, which is resistant to phishing attacks. This ensures that the authentication process is secure and not susceptible to being intercepted or spoofed.

URL Verification: Titan Security Keys verify the URL of the login page during the authentication process, providing an additional layer of security against phishing attempts that may try to redirect users to malicious websites.

Ease of Use: These keys are easy to use and integrate with Google's 2SV process, providing a seamless and highly secure authentication method for users.

References

Titan Security Keys

https://cloud.google.com/confidential-computing/confidential-vm/docs/creating-cvm-instance#considerations

Confidential VM does not support live migration. You can only enable Confidential Computing on a VM when you first create the instance. https://cloud.google.com/confidential-computing/confidential-vm/docs/creating-cvm-instance

When dealing with VPC Service Controls (VPC SC), it's important to ensure that only authorized resources can access sensitive data and services. To allow a resource in Project B to access Pub/Sub in Project A without compromising security, you should configure an ingress policy for the service perimeter in Project A.

Identify the Service Account: Determine the service account in Project B that requires access to the Pub/Sub topic in Project A.

Configure Ingress Policy:

Go to the Google Cloud Console.

Navigate to Security > VPC Service Controls.

Select the service perimeter for Project A.

Add an ingress rule specifying the service account from Project B and allowing it access to the necessary Pub/Sub resources.

Define Conditions: Ensure that the ingress policy adheres to the principle of least privilege, granting only the necessary permissions to collect messages from the Pub/Sub topic.

Save and Apply: Save the policy and apply the changes to enforce the new access controls.

This approach maintains the security boundaries set by VPC SC while enabling the required access from Project B to Project A.

References:

VPC Service Controls Documentation

Configuring Ingress Policies

Objective: You want to limit the images that can be used as the source for boot disks to a set of images stored in a dedicated project.

Solution: Use the Organization Policy Service.

Steps:

Step 1: Open the Google Cloud Console.

Step 2: Navigate to the Organization Policies page.

Step 3: Create a new policy by clicking on "Create Policy".

Step 4: Select the constraint compute.trustedimageProjects.

Step 5: Set the policy to ALLOW and specify the project ID where the trusted images are stored in the whitelist.

Step 6: Save and apply the policy.

By creating a compute.trustedimageProjects constraint at the organization level and specifying the trusted project in the allow list, you ensure that only images from this project can be used for boot disks across the organization.

References:

GCP Organization Policy Service Documentation

Compute Trusted Image Projects Constraint

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.

References:

Google Cloud: Cloud Key Management Service (KMS)

Managing access to resources

”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.

To minimize the attack surface of the container for an internet-facing application running on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), the best practice is to build small containers using small base images. This approach helps in the following ways:

Reduce Vulnerabilities: Smaller base images contain fewer packages and dependencies, which minimizes the potential vulnerabilities that an attacker could exploit.

Improved Security: Using minimal base images such as distroless or Alpine Linux ensures that only the necessary components are included, reducing the attack surface significantly.

Easier Maintenance: Small containers are easier to maintain and update, ensuring that security patches can be applied quickly without dealing with unnecessary components.

Steps to Implement:

Choose a Minimal Base Image:

Use base images like gcr.io/distroless/base or alpine.

FROM gcr.io/distroless/base COPY myapp /myapp CMD ["/myapp"]

Optimize Container Image:

Remove unnecessary tools and libraries.

Use multi-stage builds to keep the final image small.

Regularly Update Base Images:

Keep the base images up-to-date with the latest security patches.

References:

Distroless Images

Best Practices for Building Containers

Dedicated Interconnect provides a high-bandwidth (up to 80 Gbps per connection) and secure connection between your on-premises network and Google Cloud. It ensures reliable and high-speed data transfer, meeting the requirement of at least 50 Gbps bandwidth.

Steps:

Set Up Dedicated Interconnect: Order a Dedicated Interconnect connection through the Google Cloud Console.

Configure VLAN Attachments: Set up VLAN attachments to segment traffic between your on-premises network and Google Cloud.

Establish BGP Sessions: Configure BGP sessions for dynamic routing and failover.

References:

Dedicated Interconnect documentation

There is mention about simulating in Web Security Scanner. "Web Security Scanner cross-site scripting (XSS) injection testing *simulates* an injection attack by inserting a benign test string into user-editable fields and then performing various user actions." https://cloud.google.com/security-command-center/docs/how-to-remediate-web-security-scanner-findings#xss

Organization Policy: Use the constraints/compute.skipDefaultNetworkCreation organization policy constraint to disable the creation of default networks in new projects.

Policy Application: Apply this constraint at the organization level to ensure it affects all projects within your organization, preventing the creation of default networks.

Best Practices Compliance: Following this best practice helps maintain a clean and secure network configuration by avoiding the use of default networks, which may not be properly segmented or secured.

Verification: Verify the policy application by creating new projects and ensuring that default networks are not created. References:

Google Cloud - Organization Policy Constraints

Google Cloud - Best Practices for Enterprise Organizations

Packet Mirroring Setup: Configure Packet Mirroring in your Google Cloud VPC to capture traffic to and from specific VM instances. This allows you to analyze the traffic for security and compliance purposes.

Security Software: Use specialized security software to inspect the mirrored traffic. This software can detect invalid or malicious content in the IP packets.

Mirroring Configuration: Specify the instances, network, and traffic direction (ingress, egress, or both) to be mirrored. Ensure that the mirrored traffic is directed to an appropriate analysis destination.

Traffic Analysis: Continuously monitor and analyze the mirrored traffic for any signs of malicious activity or anomalies. Use the findings to enhance your security posture and respond to potential threats. References:

Google Cloud - Packet Mirroring

Google Cloud - Packet Mirroring Best Practices

To handle PII data ingestion and ensure both redaction and re-identification for analytics purposes, you can use Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP) with appropriate techniques for masking and encryption.

Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP) with Cryptographic Hashing (C):

Use Cloud DLP to apply cryptographic hashing to PII data. Hashing transforms the data into a fixed-length string that is not directly readable, providing a layer of obfuscation. This helps in masking the PII while retaining the ability to verify data integrity.

Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP) with Deterministic Encryption using AES-SIV (E):

Apply deterministic encryption using AES-SIV through Cloud DLP. Deterministic encryption ensures that the same input will always produce the same encrypted output, allowing you to re-identify the PII when necessary. This method enables secure encryption while allowing data re-identification for analytics.

By combining these two approaches, you can effectively mask PII for privacy protection and later re-identify it when required for analysis.

References

Cloud Data Loss Prevention Documentation

Data Redaction and Masking Techniques

https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/packet-mirroring

Packet Mirroring clones the traffic of specified instances in your Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) network and forwards it for examination. Packet Mirroring captures all traffic and packet data, including payloads and headers.

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

Use the TCP/UDP Network Load Balancer:

TCP/UDP Network Load Balancer maintains the client IP address by default when forwarding traffic to backends.

Configure a TCP/UDP Network Load Balancer with appropriate backend services and health checks.

Ensure that the load balancer is using the standard network tier to comply with the requirements.

References:

TCP/UDP Network Load Balancing

Network Service Tiers

https://cloud.google.com/logging/docs/access-control#considerations roles/logging.privateLogViewer (Private Logs Viewer) includes all the permissions contained by roles/logging.viewer, plus the ability to read Data Access audit logs in the _Default bucket.

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.

Objective: Reduce the risk of Google Cloud user accounts being compromised.

Solution: Implement strong password policies and post-SSO 2-Step Verification using security keys.

Steps:

Step 1: In Active Directory, configure a domain password policy with strong settings (e.g., complexity, length, expiration).

Step 2: In the Google Admin console, navigate to the Security settings.

Step 3: Enable 2-Step Verification and configure it to use security keys for post-SSO verification.

Step 4: Ensure all users enroll in the 2-Step Verification with security keys.

Using strong password policies in Active Directory along with security keys for 2-Step Verification post-SSO provides enhanced security against account compromises.

References:

Active Directory Password Policies

Google Admin Console 2-Step Verification

Storing secrets securely is crucial for maintaining the integrity and confidentiality of your applications. Here is how you can achieve this using Google Cloud Platform:

Encrypt the Secrets: Use Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK) to encrypt your secrets. CMEK allows you to have greater control over the encryption keys used to protect your data. This ensures that even if the storage medium is compromised, the secrets remain protected by strong encryption.

Store in Cloud Storage: Store the encrypted secrets in Google Cloud Storage. Cloud Storage is a secure and scalable object storage service. By using encrypted storage, you can ensure that the secrets are securely stored and can only be accessed by authorized entities.

This method provides a secure and managed way to store secrets, ensuring that they are not exposed in plain text within your source code management system.

References

Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK)

Google Cloud Storage Security

Enable Dry Run Mode: Start by enabling the dry run mode for your VPC Service Controls perimeter. This mode allows you to test changes without actually enforcing them, thus preventing any disruption to your current setup.

Add Access Level: Add your new access level to the dry run configuration. This way, you can monitor how the new access level would behave and interact with your existing setup without any real impact.

Vetting Process: Carefully vet the new access level by analyzing logs and monitoring the behavior in the dry run mode. Ensure that the new configuration meets your security and operational requirements.

Update Perimeter: Once you are confident that the new access level will not disrupt existing services and meets all requirements, update the actual perimeter configuration with the new access level. This approach minimizes risk by allowing you to test changes before they take effect, ensuring seamless updates with minimal disruption. References:

Google Cloud - Configuring VPC Service Controls

Google Cloud - Using Dry Run Mode

Objective: Ensure VMs can access Cloud Storage without reaching the public internet.

Solution: Enable Private Google Access on the VPC network, allowing VMs with only internal IP addresses to access Google APIs and services privately.

Steps:

Step 1: Open the Google Cloud Console.

Step 2: Go to the VPC Network section.

Step 3: Select the relevant VPC network and subnet.

Step 4: Enable Private Google Access for the subnet.

Private Google Access ensures that instances can access Google APIs and services (such as Cloud Storage) over a private network connection, without requiring a public IP address.

References:

Configuring Private Google Access

Best Practices for Secure Access

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.

References:

Shared Responsibility Model

Google Cloud Security Overview

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).

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

Setting up separate service perimeters for dev, staging, and prod environments allows for more granular control and monitoring. Automating the addition of new projects to the respective perimeters ensures that all projects are consistently secured without manual intervention.

Steps:

Set Up Service Perimeters: Use Access Context Manager to define and configure three separate service perimeters for dev, staging, and prod.

Deploy Monitoring Function: Create a Cloud Function that monitors the "implementation" folder for new projects using Stackdriver (Cloud Monitoring) and Cloud Pub/Sub.

Automate Perimeter Updates: Configure the Cloud Function to execute Terraform scripts that automatically add new projects to the appropriate service perimeter.

References:

Google Cloud: Access Context Manager

Service perimeter automation

To retain security event logs for 2 years while minimizing costs, exporting the logs to Cloud Storage buckets is the most cost-effective solution. Cloud Storage provides scalable and durable storage at a lower cost compared to BigQuery, which is more suited for analytics and querying, or Cloud Pub/Sub, which is designed for messaging and stream processing.

Steps:

Create a Cloud Storage Bucket: Set up a new Cloud Storage bucket configured with appropriate retention policies.

Set Up Log Export: Use the Google Cloud Console or gcloud command-line tool to create a sink that exports the selected log entries to the Cloud Storage bucket.

Configure Retention Policy: Set the retention policy on the Cloud Storage bucket to ensure that logs are retained for the required period of 2 years.

References:

Google Cloud: Exporting logs

Google Cloud Storage pricing

Disable service account key creation You can use the iam.disableServiceAccountKeyCreation boolean constraint to disable the creation of new external service account keys. This allows you to control the use of unmanaged long-term credentials for service accounts. When this constraint is set, user-managed credentials cannot be created for service accounts in projects affected by the constraint. https://cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/organization-policy/restricting-service-accounts#example_policy_boolean_constraint

https://gsuite.google.com/learn-more/security/security-whitepaper/page-1.html

Shared responsibility “Security of the Cloud” - GCP is responsible for protecting the infrastructure that runs all of the services offered in the GCP Cloud. This infrastructure is composed of the hardware, software, networking, and facilities that run GCP Cloud services.

VPC Peering is between organizations not between Projects in an organization. That is Shared VPC. In this case, both projects are in same organization so having VPC Service Controls around both projects with necessary rules should be fine.

https://cloud.google.com/vpc-service-controls/docs/overview

Google Cloud customers with additional requirements for encryption of data over WAN can choose to implement further protections for data as it moves from a user to an application, or virtual machine to virtual machine. These protections include IPSec tunnels, Gmail S/MIME, managed SSL certificates, and Istio. https://cloud.google.com/docs/security/encryption-in-transit

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

"The service evaluates all changes and remote access attempts to detect runtime attacks in near-real time." : https://cloud.google.com/security-command-center/docs/concepts-container-threat-detection-overview This has nothing to do with KNOWN security Vulns in images

"Isolate VMs using service accounts when possible" "even though it is possible to uses tags for target filtering in this manner, we recommend that you use service accounts where possible. Target tags are not access-controlled and can be changed by someone with the instanceAdmin role while VMs are in service. Service accounts are access-controlled, meaning that a specific user must be explicitly authorized to use a service account. There can only be one service account per instance, whereas there can be multiple tags. Also, service accounts assigned to a VM can only be changed when the VM is stopped." https://cloud.google.com/solutions/best-practices-vpc-design#isolate-vms-service-accounts

Set the Resource Location Restriction organization policy constraint at the Folder level:

Setting the constraint at the folder level allows for very granular control over data residency requirements.

Each folder can represent a specific geographical location, and projects within those folders will inherit the location constraint, ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements.

This approach provides flexibility to manage data residency across different regions within the same organization.

References:

Organization Policy Service: Resource Location Restriction

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.​

References:

Cloud DLP Overview

De-identifying Sensitive Data

In Google Cloud's Logging service, log entries are automatically routed to the _Default log bucket unless configured otherwise. When you create a new log bucket and intend to redirect all log entries from the _Default bucket to this new bucket, the most efficient approach is to modify the existing _Default sink to point to the new log bucket.​

Option A: Creating a new user-defined sink with filters replicated from the _Default sink is redundant and may lead to configuration complexities.​

Option B: Implementing exclusion filters on the _Default sink and then creating a new sink introduces unnecessary steps and potential for misconfiguration.​

Option C: Disabling the _Default sink would stop all log routing to it, but creating a new sink to replicate its functionality is inefficient.​

Option D: Editing the _Default sink to change its destination to the new log bucket ensures a seamless transition of log routing without additional configurations.​

Therefore, Option D is the most efficient and straightforward method to achieve the desired log routing.​

References:

Routing and Storage Overview

Configure Default Log Router Settings

The Organization Administrator and Super Admin roles have extensive administrative privileges at the organization level. Restricting these roles is crucial to limit the number of users who have the ability to manage critical resources and configurations within the organization, thereby enhancing security and minimizing potential risks.

Organization Administrator: Has comprehensive permissions to manage all aspects of the Google Cloud organization, including projects, folders, and IAM policies.

Super Admin: In Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), the Super Admin has access to all administrative features and can manage user accounts, services, and settings across the organization.

References:

Google Cloud IAM roles

Managing super admin roles in Google Workspace

Activate Security Command Center (SCC) Premium: Security Command Center (SCC) Premium provides advanced security analytics and best practice recommendations for your Google Cloud environment. It includes functionalities such as asset discovery, vulnerability scanning, and security findings.

Create a Custom Rule to Mute Irrelevant Security Findings:

Navigate to the Security Command Center (SCC) in the Google Cloud Console.

Go to the "Settings" tab and find the "Mute findings" section.

Create a new mute rule by specifying the conditions that match the irrelevant controls you want to disregard. These conditions can be based on attributes such as resource type, finding type, and other metadata.

Apply this mute rule, which will ensure that the specified findings are not evaluated in your security posture assessments.

Ensure Continuous Compliance Monitoring:

The mute rules will automatically filter out the irrelevant findings, ensuring that only relevant controls from the CIS Google Cloud Computing Foundations Benchmark v1.3.0 are evaluated.

Regularly review and update the mute rules to adapt to any changes in your compliance requirements or security posture.

References:

Security Command Center Documentation

Creating and Managing Mute Rules

For a client concerned about the control of their encryption keys and not wanting to store these keys within the same cloud service provider (CSP) as the data, the following solutions are suitable:

Customer-supplied encryption keys (A):

With customer-supplied encryption keys, clients manage their own encryption keys outside of Google Cloud and supply them to encrypt and decrypt data. This ensures that the keys are not stored in Google Cloud, providing full control over the key management process.

Cloud External Key Manager (D):

Cloud External Key Manager (EKM) allows clients to integrate an external key management system (KMS) with Google Cloud services. This setup enables the client to keep their encryption keys outside Google Cloud while still allowing the data to be encrypted and decrypted within Google Cloud services. This method offers an additional layer of security and control over the encryption keys.

These options provide robust solutions for clients requiring external key management and enhanced control over their encryption processes.

References

Customer-Supplied Encryption Keys

Cloud External Key Manager

To validate that all data written to BigQuery was done using the App Engine Default Service Account, you can use StackDriver Logging (now known as Cloud Logging) to filter and inspect the logs for BigQuery insert jobs. By hiding the entries matching the App Engine Default Service Account, you can ensure that no other service account has written to BigQuery if the resulting list is empty.

Steps:

Open Cloud Logging: Navigate to Cloud Logging in the Google Cloud Console.

Filter Logs: Apply a filter to display logs for BigQuery insert jobs.

Inspect Entries: Click on the email address that corresponds to the App Engine Default Service Account in the authentication field.

Hide Matching Entries: Select the option to hide matching entries.

Validate: Check if the resulting list is empty, confirming that no other service account has performed write operations to BigQuery.

References:

Google Cloud Logging

Monitoring BigQuery logs

To ensure that Vertex AI Workbench Instances (formerly AI Platform Notebooks) are automatically updated and that users cannot modify operating system settings, it's crucial to implement organizational policies that enforce these requirements.

disableRootAccess Organization Policy:This policy prevents users from obtaining root access on virtual machines. By enforcing this policy, you ensure that users cannot make unauthorized changes to the operating system settings, maintaining the integrity and security of the instances.

requireAutoUpgradeSchedule Organization Policy:This policy mandates that virtual machines have an auto-upgrade schedule for their operating systems. By enforcing this policy, you ensure that instances are automatically kept up-to-date with the latest security patches and updates, reducing the risk of vulnerabilities.

Given the options:

Option A: Enabling VM Manager helps in managing updates and configurations but does not inherently prevent users from altering OS settings.

Option B: Enforcing the disableRootAccess and requireAutoUpgradeSchedule organization policies directly addresses both requirements: preventing unauthorized OS modifications and ensuring automatic updates.

Option C: Assigning specific roles controls user permissions but does not enforce OS-level restrictions or automatic updates.

Option D: Implementing firewall rules to prevent SSH access adds a layer of security but does not ensure automatic updates or prevent OS modifications through other means.

Therefore, Option B is the most effective approach, as it directly enforces the necessary policies to meet both requirements.

References:

Organization Policy Service

VM Manager Overview

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.

"However, even though it is possible to uses tags for target filtering in this manner, we recommend that you use service accounts where possible. Target tags are not access-controlled and can be changed by someone with the instanceAdmin role while VMs are in service. Service accounts are access-controlled, meaning that a specific user must be explicitly authorized to use a service account. There can only be one service account per instance, whereas there can be multiple tags. Also, service accounts assigned to a VM can only be changed when the VM is stopped"

A. Create a Cloud Build pipeline that will monitor changes to your container templates in a Cloud Source Repositories repository. Add a step to analyze Container Analysis results before allowing the build to continue:

Use Cloud Build to automate your CI/CD pipeline.

Integrate Container Analysis to scan container images for vulnerabilities during the build process.

If vulnerabilities are found, configure the build to fail, preventing deployment of insecure containers.

E. In your CI/CD pipeline, add an attestation on your container image when no vulnerabilities have been found. Use a Binary Authorization policy to block deployments of containers with no attestation in your cluster:

Use Binary Authorization to enforce deploy-time security policies.

Configure your CI/CD pipeline to generate attestations for container images that pass vulnerability scans.

Binary Authorization will then block deployments of any containers without valid attestations, ensuring only secure images are deployed.

References:

Cloud Build Overview

Container Analysis

Binary Authorization

Define Trusted Image Projects:

Identify the project or projects where your trusted operating system images are stored.

Ensure these images meet your organization’s security requirements and are regularly updated to mitigate vulnerabilities.

Create an Organization Policy:

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

Create a policy constraint that restricts the creation of boot disks to only those images stored in your trusted image project(s).

The policy constraint to use is constraints/compute.trustedImageProjects.

Apply the Policy:

Apply this organization policy at the appropriate level (organization, folder, or project) to enforce that all new VM instances use images from the trusted repository.

This ensures consistency in the security posture across all projects within the organization.

Monitor Compliance:

Regularly monitor the compliance with this policy using audit logs and other monitoring tools.

Update the trusted images as necessary to ensure they remain secure and compliant with your security standards.

References:

Organization Policy Service

Trusted Image Projects Constraint

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.

References:

Google Cloud Armor documentation

Creating and managing security policies

To enable Engineering Group A to attach a Compute Engine instance to a specific subnet (10.1.1.0/24) in a Shared VPC, you should grant the Compute Network User Role at the subnet level. This role allows users to use the subnetwork for their instances without giving them broader permissions at the project level.

Step-by-Step:

Identify the Subnet: Locate the subnet (10.1.1.0/24) in the host project.

Grant Role:

Navigate to the GCP Console > VPC network > VPC networks.

Select the Shared VPC host project and locate the specific subnet.

Click on "Edit" and go to the "IAM & Admin" section.

Assign the "Compute Network User" role to Engineering Group A at the subnet level.

Verification: Ensure that Engineering Group A can now attach Compute Engine instances to the specified subnet.

References:

Shared VPC Overview

Compute Network User Role

Here are the permissions available to organizationRoleAdmin

iam.roles.create

iam.roles.delete

iam.roles.undelete

iam.roles.get

iam.roles.list

iam.roles.update

resourcemanager.projects.get

resourcemanager.projects.getIamPolicy

resourcemanager.projects.list

resourcemanager.organizations.get

resourcemanager.organizations.getIamPolicy

There are sufficient as per least privilege policy. You can do user management as well as auditing.

https://cloud.google.com/iam/docs/understanding-custom-roles

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.

References:

Creating and Managing Folders

Managing IAM Policies

Implied IPv4 allow egress rule. An egress rule whose action is allow, destination is 0.0.0.0/0, and priority is the lowest possible (65535) lets any instance send traffic to any destination

Implied IPv4 deny ingress rule. An ingress rule whose action is deny, source is 0.0.0.0/0, and priority is the lowest possible (65535) protects all instances by blocking incoming connections to them.

https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/firewalls?hl=en#default_firewall_rules

Compute Engine doesn't automatically update the OS or the software on your deployed instances. You will need to patch or update your deployed Compute Engine instances when necessary. However, in the cloud it is not recommended that you patch or update individual running instances. Instead it is best to patch the image that was used to launch the instance and then replace each affected instance with a new copy.

Use Cryptographic Verification If there is a risk of IAP being turned off or bypassed, your app can check to make sure the identity information it receives is valid. This uses a third web request header added by IAP, called X-Goog-IAP-JWT-Assertion. The value of the header is a cryptographically signed object that also contains the user identity data. Your application can verify the digital signature and use the data provided in this object to be certain that it was provided by IAP without alteration.

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

Using Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP) for managing SSH access to private VMs ensures secure access control and avoids the need for public IPs. IAP allows you to enforce identity-based access control policies.

Enable IAP: Ensure that IAP is enabled for your project. This can be done via the Google Cloud Console under "Security" -> "Identity-Aware Proxy".

Set Up Firewall Rule: Create a firewall rule to allow SSH traffic from the IAP IP ranges.

Navigate to "VPC network" -> "Firewall".

Create a new rule allowing ingress traffic on port 22 (SSH) from the IAP IP ranges.

Assign IAP-Secured Tunnel User Role: Grant the roles/iap.tunnelResourceAccessor role to the administrators who need SSH access.

Go to "IAM & Admin" -> "IAM".

Assign the IAP-Secured Tunnel User role to the relevant users or groups.

SSH Using IAP: Administrators can now use IAP to SSH into the instances. This can be done using the gcloud command:

gcloud compute ssh [INSTANCE_NAME] --tunnel-through-iap

References:

Using Identity-Aware Proxy for TCP forwarding

Google Cloud Firewall Rules

"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."

Web Security Scanner is designed to scan your web applications deployed on Google Cloud for common vulnerabilities, including cross-site scripting (XSS). It can authenticate using Google accounts and can be scheduled to run scans regularly.

Steps:

Enable Web Security Scanner: In the Google Cloud Console, enable Web Security Scanner for your project.

Configure Scan: Set up the scan configuration, specifying the target URLs, authentication details (Google accounts), and scan frequency (at least once per week).

Run and Monitor Scans: Run the scans and monitor the results for vulnerabilities, addressing any issues found.

References:

Web Security Scanner documentation