Professional-Cloud-Security-Engineer Exam Dumps - Google Cloud Certified - Professional Cloud Security Engineer

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.

References:

DLP API Best Practices

Configuring Finding Limits

Objective: Implement an encryption at-rest strategy that balances key management complexity and control for sensitive and non-sensitive data, ensuring FIPS 140-2 L1 compliance.

Solution: Use Google default encryption for non-sensitive data and Cloud Key Management Service (KMS) for sensitive data.

Steps:

Step 1: Store non-sensitive data using Google Cloud’s default encryption, which automatically encrypts data at rest without additional configuration.

Step 2: For sensitive data, use Cloud KMS to create and manage encryption keys.

Step 3: Configure key rotation policies for the keys managed by Cloud KMS to meet compliance requirements.

Step 4: Ensure that all data encryption keys used by Cloud KMS comply with FIPS 140-2 Level 1 standards.

By using Google default encryption for non-sensitive data and Cloud KMS for sensitive data, you can manage encryption efficiently while maintaining control over key residency and rotation for sensitive data.

References:

Google Cloud Default Encryption

Cloud Key Management Service

FIPS 140-2 Compliance

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.

References:

Binary Authorization Documentation

Enabling Binary Authorization on Cloud Run

"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"

Assured Workloads for Google Cloud allows you to deploy regulated workloads with data residency, access, and support requirements. It helps you configure your environment in a manner that aligns with specific compliance frameworks and standards.

To ensure that PII data is separated from non-PII data, using Cloud Pub/Sub and Cloud Functions to trigger a scan by the Data Loss Prevention (DLP) API is an effective approach. This method allows for automated detection and handling of PII.

Steps:

Set Up Cloud Pub/Sub: Configure a Cloud Pub/Sub topic to receive notifications whenever a file is uploaded to the shared Cloud Storage bucket.

Deploy Cloud Functions: Create a Cloud Function that is triggered by the Pub/Sub topic. This function will invoke the DLP API to scan the uploaded file for PII.

Move Detected PII Files: If the scan detects PII, the Cloud Function will move the file to a secure Cloud Storage bucket accessible only by the administrator.

Set Permissions: Ensure that appropriate permissions are set on the Cloud Storage buckets to restrict access to files containing PII.

References:

Google Cloud: Data Loss Prevention

Cloud Functions documentation

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

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.

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.

References:

Google Cloud Armor Documentation

Using Preview Mode

Scenarios for exporting Cloud Logging data: Splunk This scenario shows how to export selected logs from Cloud Logging to Pub/Sub for ingestion into Splunk. Splunk is a security information and event management (SIEM) solution that supports several ways of ingesting data, such as receiving streaming data out of Google Cloud through Splunk HTTP Event Collector (HEC) or by fetching data from Google Cloud APIs through Splunk Add-on for Google Cloud. Using the Pub/Sub to Splunk Dataflow template, you can natively forward logs and events from a Pub/Sub topic into Splunk HEC. If Splunk HEC is not available in your Splunk deployment, you can use the Add-on to collect the logs and events from the Pub/Sub topic. https://cloud.google.com/solutions/exporting-stackdriver-logging-for-splunk

https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs/scan-with-dlp

Cloud Data Loss Prevention API allows to detect and redact or remove sensitive data before the comments or reviews are published. Cloud DLP will read information from BigQuery, Cloud Storage or Datastore and scan it for sensitive data.

"To support common use cases like setting a Time to Live (TTL) for objects, retaining noncurrent versions of objects, or "downgrading" storage classes of objects to help manage costs, Cloud Storage offers the Object Lifecycle Management feature. This page describes the feature as well as the options available when using it. To learn how to enable Object Lifecycle Management, and for examples of lifecycle policies, see Managing Lifecycles." https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/lifecycle

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.

References:

Secret Manager Documentation

Storing and Accessing Secrets

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

Access Google Cloud Console:

Log in to the Google Cloud Console with administrative privileges.

Navigate to the "IAM & Admin" section.

Set Session Length Timeout:

Go to the "Settings" page within IAM & Admin.

Locate the "Session control" settings.

Configure the session length timeout to a shorter duration, such as 15 or 30 minutes. This ensures that user sessions expire automatically after the specified time of inactivity.

Apply and Enforce the Policy:

Save the changes and ensure the new session timeout policy is applied across all users and services.

Communicate the new policy to employees, highlighting the importance of session security and the rationale behind the change.

Additional Security Measures:

Consider implementing additional measures such as automatic screen locks and secure session management practices.

Educate employees on the importance of logging out of their sessions and securing their devices when not in use.

References:

Google Cloud IAM Documentation

Session Management Best Practices

Setting up a Shared VPC allows you to create a centrally managed network that spans multiple projects. Here's how you can achieve this while ensuring separation of duties:

Create a Host Project:

Create a project that will act as the host project for your Shared VPC.

Configure Shared VPC:

In the host project, enable the Shared VPC feature.

Create Service Projects:

Create separate service projects for different teams, such as developers and other stakeholders.

Assign Roles:

Security Team: Grant the Compute Network Admin role. This allows the security team to manage network resources, such as firewall rules, subnets, and routes.

Developers: Share the host project’s network with the service projects. Assign roles like Compute Instance Admin to developers in the service projects, enabling them to create and manage VM instances without altering network configurations.

Firewall Management:

The security team will define and manage firewall rules within the host project, ensuring consistent and secure network policies.

Benefits:

Separation of Duties: Security teams handle networking, and developers focus on application deployment and management.

Centralized Control: Network policies are centrally managed, ensuring compliance and security.

Scalability: Easy to add new projects and teams without compromising the overall network security.

References

Google Cloud VPC Documentation

Managing Resources with Shared VPC

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

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.

References:

Creating and Managing Custom Roles

Best Practices for IAM

Objective: Ensure private communication between application tiers in different GCP Organizations.

Solution: Use VPC peering to enable private communication without traversing the public internet.

Steps:

Step 1: Open the Google Cloud Console.

Step 2: Navigate to the VPC Network Peering page.

Step 3: Create a new VPC peering connection in the project hosting the application tier.

Step 4: Specify the VPC network in the other organization (hosting the storage tier) to peer with.

Step 5: Accept the peering request in the other project.

Step 6: Configure the necessary routes and firewall rules to allow traffic between the peered VPC networks.

VPC peering allows you to connect two VPC networks privately and directly, ensuring that traffic between them does not traverse the public internet.

References:

GCP VPC Peering Documentation

VPC Network Peering Guide

Objective: Ensure that the analytics workload on Compute Engine instances accessing Cloud Storage does not interact with the public internet.

Solution:

Private Google Access: This allows Compute Engine instances that only have internal IP addresses to reach Google APIs and services through a private connection without the need for a public IP address.

No Public IP Addresses: By avoiding public IP addresses for the instances, you ensure that they are not accessible from the internet and do not initiate internet connections.

Steps:

Step 1: Open the Google Cloud Console.

Step 2: Navigate to the VPC Network page and select the subnet where the Compute Engine instances are located.

Step 3: Enable Private Google Access for the subnet.

Step 4: Ensure that when launching the Compute Engine instances, no public IP addresses are assigned to them.

References:

Configuring Private Google Access

Preventing External IP Address Assignment

To ensure that the developers can view audit logs for the development environment and the security team can review all logs, you should grant IAM roles at the appropriate resource levels:

Grant logging.admin Role to the Security Team:

Assign the logging.admin role to the security team at the organization resource level.

This grants the security team full access to all logging data across the organization, including both production and development environments.

Grant logging.viewer Role to the Developer Team:

Assign the logging.viewer role to the developer team at the folder resource level that contains all the development projects.

This restricts the developers' access to only view logs in the development environment, ensuring they do not have access to production logs.

By using these roles and assigning them at the appropriate levels, you ensure that each team has the access they need while adhering to the principle of least privilege.

References:

IAM Roles for Cloud Logging

Resource Hierarchy in Google Cloud

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.

References:

Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK)

Using Customer-Managed Encryption Keys

VM Manager is a suite of tools that can be used to manage operating systems for large virtual machine (VM) fleets running Windows and Linux on Compute Engine. It helps drive efficiency through automation and reduces the operational burden of maintaining these VM fleets. VM Manager includes several services such as OS patch management, OS inventory management, and OS configuration management. By using VM Manager, you can apply patches, collect operating system information, and install, remove, or auto-update software packages. The suite provides a high level of control and automation for managing large VM fleets on Google Cloud.

https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/vm-manager

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 enforce private connectivity between on-premises hosts and Google Cloud APIs while optimizing for cost and operational efficiency, using a dedicated or Partner Interconnect is the best solution. This setup ensures a reliable, high-bandwidth connection with private IP addressing.

Choose Interconnect Type: Decide between Dedicated Interconnect and Partner Interconnect based on your bandwidth needs and proximity to Google Cloud locations.

Set Up Interconnect:

For Dedicated Interconnect, order circuits through the Google Cloud Console.

For Partner Interconnect, select a supported service provider and order the connection through them.

Configure VPC and Private Google Access:

In your VPC, enable Private Google Access to allow on-premises hosts to access Google APIs privately.

Go to "VPC network" -> "Private Google Access" and enable it for your subnets.

Establish Connectivity: Work with your network team and (if applicable) your Partner Interconnect provider to set up the physical and logical connections.

Test Connectivity: Verify that on-premises hosts can reach Google Cloud services using private IP addresses.

References:

Google Cloud Interconnect Overview

Configuring Private Google Access

If a user loses their second factor for 2-Step Verification (2SV), you can help them regain access with minimal risk by generating a backup code.

Generate a Backup Code (A):

In the Google Admin console, navigate to the user's account settings.

Generate a backup code for the user. This code allows them to sign in despite not having access to their usual second factor.

Instruct the user to log in using the backup code and then update their second factor in their account settings.

This method ensures that only the affected user’s access is temporarily adjusted, minimizing risk while maintaining overall security policies.

References

Google Admin console 2-Step Verification documentation

When configuring SAML-based Single Sign-On (SSO) in an organization that's using Active Directory, the general steps would involve setting up a SAML profile, specifying the necessary URLs for sign-in and sign-out processes, uploading an X.509 certificate for secure communication, and setting up the Entity ID and Assertion Consumer Service (ACS) URL in the Identity Provider (which in this case would be Active Directory).

To ensure that data is encrypted while in use by the virtual machines (VMs) and enforce this policy across your organization, you should use Confidential VM instances. Here are the steps:

Enable Confidential VM:

Ensure that Confidential VMs are available in your selected regions and enabled for your project.

Set Organization Policy:

Implement an organization policy to enforce the use of Confidential VM instances for all VMs across your organization.

Use the Google Cloud Console or the gcloud command-line tool to set this policy. Example command:

gcloud resource-manager org-policies set-policy my_policy.yaml

Example my_policy.yaml:

name: organizations/1234567890/policies/compute.requireConfidentialCompute spec: rules: - enforce: true

Verify and Monitor:

Ensure that all newly created VMs across your organization are Confidential VMs.

Regularly monitor compliance through the Google Cloud Console and set up alerts if non-compliant VMs are created.

Benefits:

Data Encryption in Use: Confidential VMs ensure that data is encrypted not just at rest and in transit but also while in use.

Policy Enforcement: Organization policies provide a way to enforce security configurations across all projects under your organization.

References

Confidential Computing Documentation

Creating and Managing Organization Policies

To allow a large number of users to access the GCP Console while keeping the existing Active Directory or LDAP server for identity management, use Google Cloud Directory Sync (GCDS).

Install GCDS:

Download and install Google Cloud Directory Sync from here.

Configure GCDS:

Set up the synchronization by specifying the LDAP server details and the Google domain.

Map the LDAP attributes to Google attributes to ensure user data is synchronized correctly.

Run Synchronization:

Perform an initial synchronization to populate the Google domain with existing users from the LDAP server.

Schedule regular synchronizations to keep the data up-to-date.

Benefits:

Automated Sync: Ensures that user data is consistently updated without manual intervention.

Secure Access: Users can log in to the GCP Console using their existing credentials, enhancing security and user experience.

References:

Google Cloud Directory Sync Documentation

GCDS Administration Guide

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.

References:

Cloud DNS documentation

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

This approach allows you to expose the web interface securely by using Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP), which provides authentication and authorization with Google credentials. The HTTP Load Balancer can distribute traffic to the VMs in the managed group, and the VPC firewall rule ensures that access is allowed from the IAP network range.

https://cloud.google.com/kms/docs/ekm#how_it_works

- First, you create or use an existing key in a supported external key management partner system. This key has a unique URI or key path.

- Next, you grant your Google Cloud project access to use the key, in the external key management partner system.

- In your Google Cloud project, you create a Cloud EKM key, using the URI or key path for the externally-managed key.

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.

References:

Google Cloud and PCI DSS

Creating and Managing Projects

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 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.

References:

VPC Service Controls

Access Context Manager

Defining Access Levels

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

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

Challenge:

Ensuring secure access to Google Cloud resources from GitHub Actions CI/CD pipelines without directly managing service account keys.

Workload Identity Federation:

Allows for the delegation of access to Google Cloud resources based on federated identities, such as those from GitHub.

Benefits:

This approach eliminates the need to manage service account keys, reducing the risk of key leakage.

It leverages GitHub's identity provider capabilities to authenticate and authorize access.

Steps to Configure Workload Identity Federation:

Step 1: Create a workload identity pool in Google Cloud.

Step 2: Add GitHub as an identity provider within the pool.

Step 3: Configure the necessary permissions and bindings for the identity pool to allow GitHub Actions to access Google Cloud resources.

Step 4: Update the GitHub Actions workflow to use the identity federation for authentication.

References:

Workload Identity Federation

Configuring Workload Identity Federation with GitHub

To ensure that an external user cannot gain access to an internal application on Google App Engine even if an employee’s password is compromised, configure Cloud Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP).

Enable IAP:

Go to the Cloud Console, navigate to the App Engine application, and select "Identity-Aware Proxy".

Enable IAP for the application.

Configure Access Policies:

Set up access policies to restrict who can access the application.

Use IAM roles to grant access only to specific users or groups.

Enforce Authentication:

IAP enforces Google authentication, ensuring that users must log in with their GSuite credentials.

Enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA):

Enforce 2FA for all GSuite users to add an extra layer of security.

Advantages:

Protection against Compromised Credentials: Even if passwords are compromised, attackers cannot access the application without passing IAP authentication.

Centralized Access Management: Easily manage and monitor access through IAM and IAP policies.

References:

Identity-Aware Proxy Overview

Setting up IAP

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.

The Standard Tier network only provides regional load balancing, while the Premium Tier supports global load balancing with a single anycast IP address. To distribute requests across multiple regions, you need to use the Premium Tier and update the load balancer configuration accordingly.

Steps:

Upgrade to Premium Tier: Update the load balancer to use the Premium Tier network in the Google Cloud Console.

Add New Instance Group: Add the instance group in the new region (us-east-2) to the backend configuration of the existing load balancer.

Verify Configuration: Ensure that the frontend configuration of the load balancer uses a single external IP address for global distribution.

References:

Google Cloud: Global load balancing

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

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

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 comply with FIPS 140-2 for the messaging app, you need to ensure that both data at rest and data in transit are encrypted according to the standard. Using customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK) ensures that you have control over the encryption keys, and BoringSSL is a library that meets FIPS 140-2 standards for encrypting data in transit.

Steps:

Encrypt Local SSDs: Modify the instance template for the Managed Instance Group (MIG) to use customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK) for encrypting Local SSDs.

Enable BoringSSL: Update the application to use the BoringSSL library for all instance-to-instance communication to ensure that all data in transit is encrypted according to FIPS 140-2 standards.

References:

Google Cloud: Customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK)

BoringSSL documentation

Use Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP) with cryptographic hashing:

Cloud DLP allows you to de-identify sensitive data using several techniques, including cryptographic hashing.

Choose a suitable hashing algorithm like SHA-256 for non-reversible anonymization.

This method converts the original data into a fixed-length hash that does not preserve the original data's format or character set.

Set up a Cloud DLP job to scan your data sources, identify PHI, and apply the cryptographic hashing transformation.

References:

Cloud DLP Overview

De-identification with Cloud DLP

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

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.

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

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

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

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

https://cloud.google.com/sql/docs/mysql/cmek

"You might have situations where you want to permanently destroy data encrypted with CMEK. To do this, you destroy the customer-managed encryption key version. You can't destroy the keyring or key, but you can destroy key versions of the key."

To meet the requirements of rotating the master key every 45 days, achieving FIPS 140-2 Level 3 validation, and ensuring the master key is stored redundantly in multiple US regions, you should use Customer-managed encryption keys with Cloud HSM. Here’s how:

Set Up Cloud HSM:

Deploy Cloud HSM in your Google Cloud environment. Cloud HSM provides a hardware-based key management solution that meets FIPS 140-2 Level 3 compliance.

Create and Manage Keys:

Create your encryption keys in Cloud HSM. These keys can be managed and rotated per your policy requirements.

Key Rotation:

Set up a key rotation schedule to rotate the master key every 45 days. Cloud HSM allows you to automate this process.

Geographic Redundancy:

Ensure that your Cloud HSM configuration spans multiple regions within the US to achieve redundancy. This will ensure that your keys are available even if a particular region experiences an outage.

Compliance:

Cloud HSM’s FIPS 140-2 Level 3 validation ensures that your encryption keys are managed in a secure and compliant manner.

Benefits:

Security and Compliance: Meets stringent compliance requirements.

Automated Management: Simplifies key management and rotation.

Redundancy: Ensures high availability of keys across multiple regions.

References

Cloud HSM Documentation

Key Management with Cloud KMS and Cloud HSM

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 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

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.

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

"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

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

Generate Supply Chain Levels for Software Artifacts (SLSA) level 3 assurance by using Cloud Build: SLSA is a framework for ensuring the integrity of software artifacts. By using Cloud Build, you can automate the build process and generate SLSA level 3 compliance, which includes verifiable build steps and provenance.

View the build provenance in the Security insights side panel within the Google Cloud console: The build provenance provides a detailed history of how the software was built, including the source code, build process, and any dependencies. This information is accessible through the Security insights side panel in the Google Cloud console, allowing you to verify the integrity and authenticity of your software artifacts.

References

Supply Chain Levels for Software Artifacts (SLSA) documentation

Cloud Build documentation

Security insights in Google Cloud console

https://cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/billing-access#overview-of-cloud-billing-roles-in-cloud-iam

Billing Account Costs Manager (roles/billing.costsManager)

- Manage budgets and view and export cost information of billing accounts (but not pricing information)

Billing Account Viewer (roles/billing.viewer)

- View billing account cost information and transactions.

Cloud Identity-Aware Proxy (Cloud IAP) provides a way to control access to your web applications and resources running on Google Cloud. It works by verifying the identity of a user trying to access the application and supports multi-factor authentication (MFA). Cloud IAP can restrict access to users on the corporate network and also supports access over the internet securely.

Steps:

Enable Cloud IAP: In the Google Cloud Console, navigate to the IAP section and enable IAP for your web application.

Configure OAuth Consent Screen: Set up the OAuth consent screen to manage how users grant access.

Set Up Authentication: Use Google Identity Platform to manage users and enable two-factor authentication.

Add Users: Grant users access to the application by adding their identities in the IAP settings.

References:

Google Cloud: Identity-Aware Proxy

Setting up IAP

External HTTP(S) Load Balancer: Deploy an external HTTP(S) load balancer to manage traffic to your VMs. This load balancer will handle incoming traffic from the internet while the VMs themselves do not have public IP addresses.

Host (VPC) Project Deployment: Deploy the load balancer in the host (VPC) project. This allows for centralized management of network resources and maintains the integrity of your shared VPC configuration.

Backend Configuration: Configure the MIG as the backend for the load balancer. This setup ensures that the VMs can still serve external users while reducing their direct exposure to the internet. This solution provides the required access to external users through the load balancer, enhancing security by not exposing individual VM IP addresses. References:

Google Cloud - External HTTP(S) Load Balancer Overview

Google Cloud - Shared VPC Overview