Free Professional-Cloud-Security-Engineer Google Updates

An unmanaged Google account is a personal account created by an individual using a corporate email address (e.g., john@company.com), which the organization cannot control. The root cause is that the organization has not claimed the identity for that email address.

Extracts:

"To prevent unmanaged Google account creation, you have two options: Create a user for every person who has an email address in your domain... If there are unmanaged accounts already created, you can use the Transfer Tool for unmanaged users to invite them to become managed users." (Source 5.1)

"If an admin creates a managed Google Account using the same account name as an existing unmanaged user account, this results in a conflicting account." (Source 5.3)

By provisioning an account for every employee (via Google Workspace or Cloud Identity), you effectively claim that domain identity, making it a managed account under IT control and preventing the creation of a new, unmanaged consumer account with the same email address.

Option B describes the foundational, preventative step in identity management: provisioning managed identities for all users in the domain.

Objective: Implement an encryption at-rest strategy that balances key management complexity and control for sensitive and non-sensitive data, ensuring FIPS 140-2 L1 compliance.

Solution: Use Google default encryption for non-sensitive data and Cloud Key Management Service (KMS) for sensitive data.

Steps:

Step 1: Store non-sensitive data using Google Cloud’s default encryption, which automatically encrypts data at rest without additional configuration.

Step 2: For sensitive data, use Cloud KMS to create and manage encryption keys.

Step 3: Configure key rotation policies for the keys managed by Cloud KMS to meet compliance requirements.

Step 4: Ensure that all data encryption keys used by Cloud KMS comply with FIPS 140-2 Level 1 standards.

By using Google default encryption for non-sensitive data and Cloud KMS for sensitive data, you can manage encryption efficiently while maintaining control over key residency and rotation for sensitive data.

The domain restriction constraint is a type of list constraint. Google Workspace customer IDs can be added and removed from the allowed_values list of a domain restriction constraint. The domain restriction constraint does not support denying values, and an organization policy can't be saved with IDs in the denied_values list. All domains associated with a Google Workspace account listed in the allowed_values will be allowed by the organization policy. All other domains will be denied by the organization policy.

The most effective way to address VM sprawl while enforcing consistent security baselines at the VM creation stage (VM lifecycle management) is through the use of immutable, hardened images built via an automated pipeline.

Centralized Image Management and Hardening: A Cloud Build pipeline is the standard way to automate the creation of "golden images." The pipeline can install OS/packages, apply hardening scripts (e.g., CIS benchmarks), run vulnerability scans, and then store only the verified, secure images in a central registry. This centralizes control over the security baseline.

Enforcement: Instance Templates are the mechanism to standardize VM deployment. By configuring the templates to only point to the central registry of approved, hardened images, you ensure that every new VM spun up automatically adheres to the security baseline. This prevents teams from deploying unhardened or insecure images, solving the "VM sprawl" and "consistent security hardening" problem at its source.

Option A (SCC Posture Management) is a detective control that monitors after the VM is deployed; it does not prevent unhardened VMs from being created, which is the goal of lifecycle management.

Option D (VM Manager) is excellent for ongoing patching and updating of existing VMs, but it doesn't solve the initial problem of ensuring a secure, centralized, hardened image is used for creation (which is where the baseline is enforced).

Extracts:

"Golden images that are configured and used to create servers play a key role in allowing companies to scale securely." (Source 1.2)

"Using an automated tool eradicates this issue. When engineers use images produced by [automated tools], the evidence is clear, as everything needed is pre-baked into the image." (Source 1.2)

"An instance template is a convenient way to save a virtual machine (VM) instance's configuration that includes machine type, boot disk image... You can use an instance template to... Create individual VMs." (Source 3.3)

The overall strategy described in Option B—automate hardening, scan, store, and enforce usage via templates—is the best practice for secure and compliant VM deployment at scale.