Pass the Google Google Cloud Certified Professional-Cloud-Security-Engineer Questions and answers with CertsForce

To ensure that no personally identifiable information (PII) is published in your yearly website usage analytics reports while preserving data integrity, the Cloud Data Loss Prevention (Cloud DLP) API can be utilized to identify and transform PII within your datasets.​

Option A: Encrypting PII does not remove it from the reports; it merely obscures it, which may not be sufficient for compliance or privacy requirements.​

Option B: Discovering and transforming PII ensures that sensitive information is either masked, tokenized, or otherwise obfuscated, effectively removing PII from the reports while maintaining the overall structure and utility of the data.​

Option C: Detecting and deleting PII could lead to loss of valuable data and may disrupt the integrity of the reports.​

Option D: Quarantining PII data implies isolating it, which doesn't address the need to publish reports without PII.​

Therefore, Option B is the most appropriate approach, as it leverages the Cloud DLP API to identify and transform PII, ensuring that the published reports are free from sensitive information while preserving data integrity.​

To ensure compliance with strict regulatory requirements for storing and processing sensitive patient data in the cloud, the following measures should be implemented:​

Assured Workloads: Deploying an Assured Workloads environment in an approved region ensures that data residency requirements are met by restricting data storage and processing to specific geographic locations. Assured Workloads provide predefined controls and configurations tailored to meet regulatory compliance needs.​

Access Approval: Configuring Access Approval ensures that certain administrative actions on patient data require explicit approval from designated compliance officers. This adds a layer of control over sensitive operations, aligning with the need for explicit approvals.​

Cloud Audit Logs and Access Transparency: Enabling Cloud Audit Logs provides a detailed record of actions taken on your data, supporting the requirement for auditability. Access Transparency logs offer visibility into Google's administrative access to your content, enhancing transparency and compliance.​

Therefore, Option C is the most appropriate choice, as it comprehensively addresses data residency, administrative control, and auditability requirements.​

The problem focuses on securing "super administrator accounts for the organization" when Cloud Identity is synced with Microsoft Entra ID and uses Entra ID for SSO. The key requirements are the principle of least privilege and strong authentication.

Principle of Least Privilege & Dedicated Accounts: Google's best practices strongly recommend creating dedicated, non-federated accounts for super administrators that are distinct from regular user accounts. These accounts should only be used for super administrator tasks and not for daily activities. This segregation ensures that the highest privilege accounts are isolated and adhere to the principle of least privilege by not having combined responsibilities.

Extract Reference: "Designate Organization Administrators... We recommend keeping your super admin account separate from your Organization Administrator group." and "Give super admins a separate account that requires a separate login. For example, user alice@example.com could have a super admin account alice-admin@example.com." and "Use the super admin account only when needed. Delegate administrator tasks to user accounts with limited admin roles. Use the least privilege approach..." (Google Cloud Documentation: "Super administrator account best practices | Resource Manager Documentation" - https://cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/super-admin-best-practices)

Strong Authentication (Google 2-Step Verification): Even when using a third-party identity provider like Microsoft Entra ID for most users, Google recommends enforcing Google's own 2-Step Verification for the critical super administrator accounts. This provides a "break-glass" mechanism that is independent of the external IdP. If the Entra ID integration were to fail or become compromised, the Google-managed super administrator accounts, protected by Google's own 2SV, would still be accessible for emergency recovery.

Extract Reference: "Even when using the legacy SSO profile, super admins can't sign in with SSO in these cases: Admin console. When super administrators try to sign in to an SSO-enabled domain via admin.google.com, they must enter their full Google administrator account email address and associated Google password (not their SSO username and password), and click Sign in to directly access the Admin console. Google doesn't redirect them to the SSO sign-in page." (Google Cloud Identity Help: "Super administrator SSO" - https://support.google.com/cloudidentity/answer/6341409) - This highlights that super admin accounts can bypass SSO for direct Admin console access, making Google 's 2SV crucial.

Extract Reference: "It's especially important for super admins to use 2SV because their accounts control access to all business and employee data in the organization. Protect your business with 2-Step Verification. Use security keys for 2-Step Verification." (Cloud Identity Help: "Security best practices for administrator accounts" - https://support.google.com/cloudidentity/answer/9011373)

Options C and D are incorrect because combining "organization administrator" (IAM role for GCP resources) and "super administrator" (Google Workspace/Cloud Identity domain-level control) privileges violates the principle of least privilege. Option A is less secure than B because relying solely on Entra ID's 2SV for super administrators means a compromise of Entra ID or an outage would leave the Google Cloud organization vulnerable without an independent break-glass mechanism.

For a client concerned about the control of their encryption keys and not wanting to store these keys within the same cloud service provider (CSP) as the data, the following solutions are suitable:

Customer-supplied encryption keys (A):

With customer-supplied encryption keys, clients manage their own encryption keys outside of Google Cloud and supply them to encrypt and decrypt data. This ensures that the keys are not stored in Google Cloud, providing full control over the key management process.

Cloud External Key Manager (D):

Cloud External Key Manager (EKM) allows clients to integrate an external key management system (KMS) with Google Cloud services. This setup enables the client to keep their encryption keys outside Google Cloud while still allowing the data to be encrypted and decrypted within Google Cloud services. This method offers an additional layer of security and control over the encryption keys.

These options provide robust solutions for clients requiring external key management and enhanced control over their encryption processes.

References

Customer-Supplied Encryption Keys

Cloud External Key Manager

Use the org policy constraint "Google Cloud Platform - Resource Location Restriction" on your Google Cloud organization node: This organizational policy constraint allows you to restrict the locations where your resources can be created. By setting this constraint to allow only Europe regions, you can ensure compliance with GDPR and other regional regulations.

Implementation: To implement this, you need to configure the organization policy with the constraint constraints/gcp.resourceLocations. You can specify allowed regions such as europe-west1 and europe-west4 to ensure resources are only created in these locations.

References

Resource Location Restriction documentation

GDPR compliance on Google Cloud

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.

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.

"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."

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