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

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

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

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

Steps:

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

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

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

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

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

References:

Active Directory Password Policies

Google Admin Console 2-Step Verification

Pseudonymization is a de-identification technique that replaces sensitive data values with cryptographically generated tokens. Pseudonymization is widely used in industries like finance and healthcare to help reduce the risk of data in use, narrow compliance scope, and minimize the exposure of sensitive data to systems while preserving data utility and accuracy.

https://cloud.google.com/dlp/docs/pseudonymization

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