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

Firewall Rule Analysis: Analyze the existing VPC firewall rules to identify any rules that might allow traffic between VM instances based on the same service account.

Priority Check: Check the priority of these rules. A rule with a priority lower than 1000 (such as 999) will take precedence over your tag-based rules.

Service Account Configuration: Since your VM instances are deployed without any service account customization, they are likely using the default service account. A firewall rule allowing traffic between instances using this default service account will override the tag-based rules if it has a higher priority.

Testing and Validation: Disable or adjust the priority of the rule with priority 999 to test if the tag-based segmentation works correctly. Validate that the traffic is segmented according to your intended configuration. References:

Google Cloud - VPC Firewall Rules

Google Cloud - Service Accounts

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

De-identifying sensitive data Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP) can de-identify sensitive data in text content, including text stored in container structures such as tables. De-identification is the process of removing identifying information from data. The API detects sensitive data such as personally identifiable information (PII), and then uses a de-identification transformation to mask, delete, or otherwise obscure the data. For example, de-identification techniques can include any of the following: Masking sensitive data by partially or fully replacing characters with a symbol, such as an asterisk (*) or hash (#). Replacing each instance of sensitive data with a token, or surrogate, string. Encrypting and replacing sensitive data using a randomly generated or pre-determined key. When you de-identify data using the CryptoReplaceFfxFpeConfig or CryptoDeterministicConfig infoType transformations, you can re-identify that data, as long as you have the CryptoKey used to originally de-identify the data. https://cloud.google.com/dlp/docs/deidentify-sensitive-data

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