Professional-Cloud-Security-Engineer Premium Exam Questions

Challenge:

Prevent common misconfigurations that expose services (e.g., MYSQL) to the public internet.

Hierarchical Firewall Policies:

These policies can be applied at the organization level to enforce consistent network security rules across all projects.

Solution:

Create a hierarchical firewall policy that allows connections only from internal IP ranges.

This policy ensures that services like MySQL are not exposed to 0.0.0.0/0 (the entire internet).

Steps:

Step 1: Define the hierarchical firewall policy at the organization level.

Step 2: Set the rule to allow traffic only from internal IP ranges.

Step 3: Apply the policy to all projects under the organization.

Benefits:

Centralized management of network security.

Prevents accidental exposure of services to the public internet, enhancing security.

For "automatic discovery, redaction, or pseudonymization" of sensitive data, the specific product is Sensitive Data Protection (formerly known as Cloud Data Loss Prevention - DLP).10

According to Google Cloud Documentation (Sensitive Data Protection Overview):

"Sensitive Data Protection provides visibility into where PII exists in your organization. It allows you to automatically discover and classify data using over 150 predefined infoTypes (like SSN, Credit Card, etc.). Beyond discovery, it can redact (remove), mask (cover), or pseudonymize (replace with a token) the data so that it can be used for analysis without exposing the raw PII."

Why other options are incorrect:

A is incorrect: Cloud Armor is a WAF; it doesn't scan data contents inside a database for PII.

C is incorrect: Encryption (KMS) protects the data from unauthorized disk access, but once an authorized user opens the database, the PII is still visible. It doesn't perform "redaction" or "pseudonymization."

D is incorrect: While the DLP API is mentioned, this option focuses on Cloud Storage and alerts rather than the "redaction/pseudonymization" for analysis requested in the prompt. Option B is the comprehensive managed service approach.

The core requirement is to ensure only scanned and verified containers can run in the environment, which is a deployment-time enforcement action.

Binary Authorization is the service designed for this purpose. It is a deployment-time security control that ensures only trusted container images are deployed on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) or other supported container platforms. The core mechanism it uses to verify that an image has completed required steps (like a vulnerability scan) is an attestation.

Extracts:

"GCP Binary Authorization is a security feature designed to prevent the deployment of unverified, unauthorized, or potentially malicious container images to Kubernetes clusters." (Source 1.1)

"Binary Authorization ensures that only images that are signed by trusted entities (such as a trusted attestation authority) are allowed to be deployed." (Source 1.1)

"Binary Authorization aims to reduce the risk of deploying defective, vulnerable, or unauthorized software in this type of environment. Using this service, you can prevent images from being deployed unless it satisfies a policy you define." (Source 1.2)

"The most common Binary Authorization use cases involve attestations. An attestation certifies that a specific image has completed a previous stage... Attestations signify that the associated image was built by successfully executing a specific, required process. For example, the attestation might indicate that the image has passed all required end-to-end functional testing in a staging environment." (Source 1.2, 1.4)

"After a container image is built, an attestation can be created to affirm that a required activity was performed on the image such as a regression test, vulnerability scan, or other test." (Source 1.5)

Option A correctly identifies the two necessary components for this deployment-time enforcement: Binary Authorization for policy enforcement and attestations to certify that the vulnerability scan (or other required check) has been completed and verified.

The key requirement is restricting access based on the client device (i.e., "corporate computers"). Context-Aware Access (CAA) is the specific Google Cloud tool designed to enforce access based on contextual factors, including the device security status or IP address.

Context Restriction: Context-Aware Access allows you to define an Access Level based on attributes like device policy compliance, operating system, or IP address range—this addresses the "corporate computers" requirement.

Isolation and Control: The Access Level is then enforced via an Organization Policy applied at the Project Level (or the folder/organization level), which fulfills the requirement to isolate access to Cloud Storage for this project and restrict the access to specific resources (Cloud Storage).

VPC Service Controls (VPC SC) (Option B) are great for isolating projects and preventing data exfiltration, but its primary access restriction mechanisms are based on IP range, not fine-grained device security posture and user identity together, making CAA the more precise tool for device-specific enforcement. Also, applying VPC SC ingress/egress based on IP addresses for end-user access can be complex and less flexible than CAA.

IAM (Option D) only controls who (identity) can access a resource, not where or how (context) they are accessing it from.

Extracts:

"Context-Aware Access (CAA) integrates with Google Workspace or Cloud Identity to enforce granular access to Google Cloud resources based on a user's context, such as their location, device security status, and IP address." (Source 7.1)

"To enforce CAA for Google Cloud resources like Cloud Storage, you create an Access Level that defines the required context (e.g., only corporate-managed devices) and apply it via an Organization Policy constraint (e.g., iam.allowedServices) at the project level." (Source 7.2)

"CAA allows you to restrict access based on the device security posture, a key requirement for enforcing 'corporate computer' access." (Source 7.3)