Google Updated Professional-Cloud-Security-Engineer Exam Questions and Answers by nikolas

https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/firewalls#service-accounts-vs-tags

https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/firewalls#service-accounts-vs-tags

A service account represents an identity associated with an instance. Only one service account can be associated with an instance. You control access to the service account by controlling the grant of the Service Account User role for other IAM principals. For an IAM principal to start an instance by using a service account, that principal must have the Service Account User role to at least use that service account and appropriate permissions to create instances (for example, having the Compute Engine Instance Admin role to the project).

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

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

When a vulnerability patch is released for a running container in Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), the recommended approach is to update the application code or apply the patch directly to the codebase. Then, a new container image should be built incorporating these changes. After building the new image, it should be deployed to replace the running containers. This method ensures that the containers run the updated, secure code.

Steps:

Update Application Code: Modify the application code or dependencies to incorporate the vulnerability patch.

Build New Image: Use a tool like Docker to build a new container image with the updated code.

Push New Image: Push the new container image to the Container Registry.

Update Deployments: Update the Kubernetes deployment to use the new image. This can be done by modifying the image tag in the deployment YAML file.

Redeploy Containers: Apply the updated deployment configuration using kubectl apply -f <deployment-file>.yaml, which will redeploy the containers with the new image.

References:

Google Cloud: Container security

Kubernetes: Updating an application