Google Cloud Certified Professional-Cloud-Security-Engineer Updated Exam

For scenarios involving multi-party collaboration or highly sensitive data where even the "Workload Operator" should not see the data, Confidential Space is the specific Google Cloud solution. It builds on Confidential Computing but adds a software framework for "Trustless" data processing.

According to Google Cloud Documentation (Confidential Space Overview):

"Confidential Space provides a secure environment for multiple parties to share sensitive data without any party (including the cloud provider or the project administrator) being able to see the data or the code being executed. It uses attestations to verify the integrity of the workload and Workload Identity Federation to release encryption keys or access only to verified, authorized workloads."

Key components of the solution:

Separation of Duties: Confidential Space explicitly defines roles for the Data Collaborator (owns data), Workload Author (writes code), and Workload Operator (runs infrastructure). The operator can manage the VM but cannot access the memory or the data.

Attestation: The system uses hardware-rooted attestation to ensure that the code running in the environment is exactly what was approved.

Output Protection: The processed results can be written to a bucket where only the authorized "Data Scientist" (Data Collaborator role) can retrieve them.

Why other options are incorrect:

A, C, and D are incorrect: While they use Confidential VMs (which encrypt data in RAM), they do not inherently provide the attestation-based trust framework or the rigorous separation of duties required to prevent a VM administrator (operator) from potentially accessing the data via standard VM management tools or during the ingestion phase. Confidential Space is the only one that mandates a signed "attestation" before granting access to data.

To ensure that PII data is separated from non-PII data, using Cloud Pub/Sub and Cloud Functions to trigger a scan by the Data Loss Prevention (DLP) API is an effective approach. This method allows for automated detection and handling of PII.

Steps:

Set Up Cloud Pub/Sub: Configure a Cloud Pub/Sub topic to receive notifications whenever a file is uploaded to the shared Cloud Storage bucket.

Deploy Cloud Functions: Create a Cloud Function that is triggered by the Pub/Sub topic. This function will invoke the DLP API to scan the uploaded file for PII.

Move Detected PII Files: If the scan detects PII, the Cloud Function will move the file to a secure Cloud Storage bucket accessible only by the administrator.

Set Permissions: Ensure that appropriate permissions are set on the Cloud Storage buckets to restrict access to files containing PII.

VPC Peering is between organizations not between Projects in an organization. That is Shared VPC. In this case, both projects are in same organization so having VPC Service Controls around both projects with necessary rules should be fine.

To maintain a historical record of what was running in Google Cloud Platform at any point in time, you should use Forseti Security to automate inventory snapshots. Forseti Security is an open-source toolkit that helps to automate security and compliance in GCP by taking inventory snapshots of GCP resources.

Step-by-Step:

Install Forseti Security:

Follow the installation guide to deploy Forseti Security on your GCP environment.

Configure Inventory:

Set up the inventory module in Forseti to capture and store snapshots of GCP resources.

Schedule Snapshots:

Use Forseti’s configuration to schedule regular inventory snapshots.

Access Historical Data:

Review and access historical records through Forseti’s dashboard or by querying the Forseti database.

Compliance and Monitoring: Use Forseti to ensure compliance and monitor changes over time.

Forseti Security Overview

Inventory Module