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

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

Use Pub/Sub and Cloud Functions to trigger a Cloud Data Loss Prevention scan every time a file is uploaded to the administrator's bucket. If the scan does not detect PII, have the function move the objects into the shared Cloud Storage bucket:

Configure a Pub/Sub topic to publish notifications when new files are uploaded to the administrator's bucket.

Create a Cloud Function that is triggered by the Pub/Sub topic. This function uses the Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP) API to scan the uploaded files for PII.

If the scan does not detect PII, the function moves the file to the shared Cloud Storage bucket. This ensures that only non-sensitive data is accessible to analysts, while PII remains secure in the administrator's bucket.

References:

Using Pub/Sub with Cloud Functions

Cloud Data Loss Prevention API

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

When creating a secure container image, it is essential to follow best practices to minimize vulnerabilities and ensure the container operates as intended. Here are the two key practices:

Package a Single App as a Container: By packaging only a single application within a container, you reduce complexity and potential attack surfaces. This practice aligns with the principle of single responsibility, ensuring each container has a clear and focused purpose.

Remove Any Unnecessary Tools: Any additional tools or software that are not required by the application should be removed from the container image. This minimizes the number of potential vulnerabilities and reduces the attack surface. A minimal container image also leads to smaller image sizes and faster deployment times.

These practices contribute to creating a more secure and efficient container image.

References

Container Security Best Practices

Securing Container Images

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

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

Steps:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

References:

Google Cloud Directory Sync Documentation

Setting Up Google Cloud Directory Sync

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

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

Steps:

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

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

Source IP Range: Subnet A's IP range.

Target Tag: "data-tag".

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

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

References:

Google Cloud: Configuring firewall rules

"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

To evaluate Google Cloud Platform (GCP) for PCI compliance and identify Google's inherent controls, you should review the "Google Cloud Platform: Customer Responsibility Matrix". This document provides detailed information about the shared responsibility model, outlining the security controls managed by Google and those that are the responsibility of the customer.

Steps to access and use the document:

Access the Document:

Go to the Google Cloud compliance resource center.

Locate the "Customer Responsibility Matrix" for PCI DSS compliance.

Review Inherent Controls:

The document lists various controls and specifies whether they are managed by Google, the customer, or both.

It covers different aspects such as infrastructure security, data protection, and compliance requirements.

Analyze PCI Compliance:

Use the matrix to understand which PCI DSS requirements are inherently addressed by Google Cloud.

Identify the controls you need to implement and manage as a customer to ensure full compliance.

By reviewing this document, you can gain a comprehensive understanding of the inherent controls provided by Google Cloud and the responsibilities you must fulfill to achieve PCI compliance.

References:

Google Cloud Compliance Documentation

PCI DSS Compliance on Google Cloud

https://cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/organization-policy/org-policy-constraints - constraints/compute.trustedImageProjects

This list constraint defines the set of projects that can be used for image storage and disk instantiation for Compute Engine. If this constraint is active, only images from trusted projects will be allowed as the source for boot disks for new instances.

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

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

Step-by-Step:

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

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

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

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

References:

Google Cloud Identity Security Settings

Password Policy Best Practices

Configure Binary Authorization:

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

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

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

Set Up Attestors:

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

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

Create a Custom Organization Policy Constraint:

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

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

Implement and Enforce the Policies:

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

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

References:

Binary Authorization Documentation

Creating Attestors

Organization Policy Constraints

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

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

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

To 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

"Your team needs to obtain a unified log view of all development cloud projects in your SIEM" - This means we are ONLY interested in development projects. "The development projects are under the NONPROD organization folder with the test and pre-production projects" - We will need to filter out development from others i.e test and pre-prod. "The development projects share the ABC-BILLING billing account with the rest of the organization." - This is unnecessary information.

Understanding Unmanaged Users:

Unmanaged users are those who have created Google Cloud accounts using their company email addresses outside of the organization's management (e.g., through GCDS).

Challenge:

The goal is to bring these unmanaged accounts under your company's control without disrupting their existing accounts and access.

Using the Transfer Tool:

Google provides a transfer tool specifically designed to migrate unmanaged users to a managed state.

This tool allows administrators to invite unmanaged users to join the organization's Google Cloud Identity or Google Workspace account.

Steps to Use the Transfer Tool:

Step 1: Access the transfer tool from the Google Admin console.

Step 2: Identify the unmanaged users using their email addresses.

Step 3: Send invitations to these users to transfer their accounts.

Step 4: Users accept the invitations, allowing their accounts to be managed under the organization's domain.

Benefits:

This method ensures a smooth transition for users without losing access to their existing data and services.

It aligns with best practices for managing user accounts in a corporate environment.

References:

Migrate unmanaged users

Google Cloud Directory Sync

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

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

Update the Service Perimeter:

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

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

Configure Egress Policy:

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

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

Specify External Project and Service:

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

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

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

References:

VPC Service Controls Documentation

Configuring Service Perimeters

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.

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

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

To delegate management of access control permissions to each business unit effectively, organizing projects into folders and assigning permissions to Google groups at the folder level allows for scalable and manageable access control. Using Google Cloud Directory Sync (GCDS) to synchronize users and groups from the on-premises directory service ensures that access controls are maintained and updated automatically as users change roles or leave the company.

Steps:

Organize Projects in Folders: Create a folder structure in the Google Cloud Resource Manager to organize projects by business unit.

Assign Permissions to Google Groups: Use IAM to assign necessary permissions to Google Groups at the folder level, ensuring each business unit can manage access controls for their own projects.

Synchronize Users and Groups: Use GCDS to sync users and group memberships from your on-premises directory service to Google Cloud Identity, ensuring that changes in the on-premises directory are reflected in Google Cloud.

References:

Google Cloud Resource Manager

Google Cloud Directory Sync

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.

Cloud Bigtable is a fully managed NoSQL database service designed to handle large analytical and operational workloads. One of its key features is the ability to replicate data across multiple geographic locations automatically, ensuring high availability and resilience. Here’s a detailed explanation:

Replication: Cloud Bigtable supports multi-cluster routing and replication across different geographic regions. This means that data can be replicated across multiple zones within a region or even across regions, providing geo-redundancy.

Automatic Handling: Once configured, Bigtable automatically manages replication without requiring manual intervention. This is in line with the company's policy for long-term data storage that necessitates automatic replication over at least two geographic places.

Use Case Suitability: Bigtable is ideal for applications that require low-latency access to large amounts of data, which makes it suitable for various use cases including analytical applications, IoT, and financial data processing.

Configuration: Setting up replication involves creating instances in multiple zones and configuring them to replicate data. Google Cloud’s management interface and APIs make this straightforward to configure and monitor.

References:

Google Cloud Bigtable Documentation

Google Cloud Storage Options

https://cloud.google.com/identity/solutions/automate-user-provisioning#cloud_identity_automated_provisioning

"Cloud Identity has a catalog of automated provisioning connectors, which act as a bridge between Cloud Identity and third-party cloud apps."

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

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

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

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

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

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

References:

Google Cloud IAM Documentation

Google Cloud Security Best Practices

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

References:

Google Cloud Policy Analyzer Documentation

Google Cloud IAM Documentation

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

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

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

References

Shielded VMs documentation

Confidential Computing documentation

Organization Policies documentation

Uniform Bucket-Level Access: Enable uniform bucket-level access for all your Cloud Storage buckets. This feature ensures that access control is applied consistently at the bucket level, simplifying management and improving security.

Domain Restricted Sharing: Enforce domain-restricted sharing through an organization policy. This policy ensures that only users within your organization’s domain can access the data in the buckets, preventing public exposure.

Policy Enforcement: Apply the necessary IAM policies and ensure that no buckets are configured to allow public access. This combination of settings ensures that data in Cloud Storage buckets remains private and accessible only to authorized users within your organization. References:

Google Cloud - Uniform Bucket-Level Access

Google Cloud - Organization Policy Service

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

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 migrate the current data backup and disaster recovery solutions to GCP while keeping the production environment on-premises, the most scalable and cost-efficient solution is using Google Cloud Storage with scheduled tasks and the gsutil command.

Setup Cloud Storage: Create a Cloud Storage bucket to store the backups.

Go to the Cloud Console and navigate to Cloud Storage.

Click "Create bucket" and follow the prompts to configure the storage bucket.

Install gsutil: Ensure gsutil is installed on the on-premises servers.

gsutil is a command-line tool for interacting with Cloud Storage.

Follow the installation guide here.

Create Backup Script: Write a script to upload data to Cloud Storage using gsutil.

#!/bin/bash gsutil -m cp -r /path/to/local/backup gs://your-bucket-name

Schedule Backup Task: Use a scheduling tool like cron on Linux to run the backup script at regular intervals.

Edit the crontab file with crontab -e and add an entry like:

References:

Cloud Storage Documentation

gsutil Documentation

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

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

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

"Date shifting techniques randomly shift a set of dates but preserve the sequence and duration of a period of time. Shifting dates is usually done in context to an individual or an entity. That is, each individual's dates are shifted by an amount of time that is unique to that individual."

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

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

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

Objective: Understand the security characteristics of VPC peering.

Security Characteristics:

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

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

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

References:

GCP VPC Peering Documentation

VPC Network Peering Overview

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

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

Configure Cloud Interconnect:

Cloud Interconnect provides high-bandwidth, low-latency connectivity between your on-premises network and Google Cloud. You can choose between Dedicated Interconnect or Partner Interconnect depending on your requirements.

Set up the physical connection and establish the interconnect through the Google Cloud Console or by working with a partner.

Set Up HA VPN:

High Availability (HA) VPN provides a robust, reliable VPN connection to Google Cloud with SLA guarantees. This is crucial for ensuring secure and high-bandwidth connectivity.

Configure two VPN tunnels to ensure redundancy and failover capabilities.

Update Default Route:

Replace the default 0.0.0.0/0 route in your Google Cloud VPC to direct traffic to your on-premises network via the Cloud Interconnect and HA VPN setup.

This ensures all internet-facing traffic is securely routed through your on-premises internet connection.

Ensure Proper Security and Routing Policies:

Implement appropriate firewall rules and security policies on both Google Cloud and on-premises environments to control traffic and ensure secure communication.

Monitor the traffic and connectivity status to maintain optimal performance and security.

References:

Cloud Interconnect Documentation

HA VPN Documentation

Routing Traffic

”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.

Objective: Ensure only front-end Compute Engine instances have public IPs, while others do not.

Solution: Use an organization policy to enforce this requirement.

Steps:

Step 1: Open the Google Cloud Console.

Step 2: Navigate to the Organization Policies page.

Step 3: Create a new policy with the constraint constraints/compute.requireOsLogin (or similar constraint to manage public IPs).

Step 4: Define the conditions to allow public IPs only for the front-end instances.

Step 5: Apply the policy to the organization or specific projects as necessary.

By setting up an organization policy with specific conditions, you can control which instances are allowed to have public IPs based on their role or other attributes.

References:

GCP Organization Policies Documentation

Compute Engine Network Configurations

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

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

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

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

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

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

References:

Firewall Rules Logging

Using Logs Explorer

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

To manage user accounts and ensure they comply with corporate policies, using Google Cloud Directory Sync (GCDS) allows synchronization between your local identity system and Cloud Identity. The Transfer Tool for Unmanaged Users (TTUU) helps identify and manage conflicting accounts by allowing users to transfer their personal accounts to managed accounts.

Steps:

Synchronize Identities: Use GCDS to sync users from your local identity management system to Cloud Identity, ensuring that all corporate user accounts are managed.

Identify Conflicting Accounts: Use TTUU to find users who have personal Google accounts using corporate email addresses.

Manage Conflicting Accounts: Request users to transfer their personal accounts to managed accounts using TTUU, ensuring all accounts are under corporate control.

References:

Google Cloud Directory Sync

Transfer Tool for Unmanaged Users

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

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

https://cloud.google.com/access-transparency Access approval Explicitly approve access to your data or configurations on Google Cloud. Access Approval requests, when combined with Access Transparency logs, can be used to audit an end-to-end chain from support ticket to access request to approval, to eventual access.

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

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

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

Google Cloud - Cloud NAT Overview

Google Cloud - Configuring Cloud NAT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

References:

Dedicated Interconnect Overview

Configuring DNS to use restricted.googleapis.com

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

Since the domain is already being used by G Suite, the best course of action is to minimize disruption by discovering any existing uses of Google-managed services. Collaborate with the existing Super Administrator to align the setup with the company's requirements.

Step-by-Step:

Identify Existing Usage: Have the customer's management identify all current uses of the domain within Google-managed services.

Collaboration: Work closely with the existing Super Administrator of the domain.

Provision Required Accounts: Ask the Super Administrator to provision necessary accounts and permissions for the data science manager or other relevant personnel.

Integrate SAML IdP: Ensure that the existing domain integrates with the company’s SAML 2.0 IdP for user authentication.

Set Up Cloud Identity: Configure Cloud Identity under the guidance of the Super Administrator without disrupting current services.

References:

Google Cloud Identity Administration

Google Support for Domain Issues

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

Create Separate Folders:

Create a folder for the development environment.

Create a folder for the production environment.

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

Navigate to IAM & Admin in the GCP Console.

Select "Folders" from the left-hand menu.

Create a new folder named "Development".

Create a new folder named "Production".

Create Google Groups:

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

This helps in managing permissions centrally.

Use the Google Admin Console to create groups.

Add relevant engineers to each group.

Assign Permissions at the Folder Level:

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

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

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

Select the development folder.

Go to the "Permissions" tab.

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

Assign the "Viewer" role.

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

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

References:

Google Cloud IAM Documentation

Google Cloud Resource Manager Documentation

Create a new Service Account that should be able to list the Compute Engine instances in the project. You want to follow Google-recommended practices.

https://cloud.google.com/security/compliance/iso-27017

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