Google Professional-Cloud-Security-Engineer - Google Cloud Certified - Professional Cloud Security Engineer

To enforce access control policies for applications and resources in Google Cloud, the recommended service is Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP).

Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP):

IAP allows you to control access to your applications and resources based on the identity of the user and the context of the request. It integrates with IAM to provide fine-grained access control, ensuring that only authorized users can access specific resources.

IAP helps enforce security policies at the application layer, providing an additional layer of protection beyond traditional network-based security measures.

References

Identity-Aware Proxy documentation

App Engine ingress firewall rules are available, but egress rules are not currently available. Per requirements 1.2.1 and 1.3.4, you must ensure that all outbound traffic is authorized. SAQ A-EP and SAQ D–type merchants must provide compensating controls or use a different Google Cloud product. Compute Engine and GKE are the preferred alternatives. https://cloud.google.com/solutions/pci-dss-compliance-in-gcp

https://cloud.google.com/architecture/framework/security/data-residency-sovereignty#manage_your_operational_sovereignty

To ensure compliance with GDPR and implement data residency and operational sovereignty in the EU, the following steps can be taken:

Limit Physical Location of Resources: Use the Organization Policy Service to enforce the resource locations constraint. This ensures that all new resources are created within the specified regions (EU in this case).

Configure Organization Policy: Set up an organization policy that restricts the locations where new resources can be created. This is done through the Google Cloud Console or via the gcloud command-line tool.

Example:

gcloud resource-manager org-policies allow constraints/gcp.resourceLocations [europe-west1,europe-west2] --organization=YOUR_ORG_ID

Key Access Justifications (KAJ): Use Key Access Justifications to limit Google personnel's access to encryption keys based on attributes like their geographic location or citizenship.

Set Up KAJ: Implement KAJ policies to ensure that only authorized personnel within the EU can access encryption keys.

References

Organization Policy Service

Key Access Justifications

Google Cloud Directory Sync (GCDS): Install and configure GCDS to synchronize your on-premises Active Directory with Google Cloud Identity. This tool helps in maintaining consistency between your local directory and Google Cloud.

IAM Groups: Create IAM groups in Google Cloud with permissions that correspond to your Active Directory groups. This mapping ensures that users inherit the appropriate permissions based on their AD group membership.

Synchronization: Set up regular synchronization schedules to keep the user and group information up-to-date between your on-premises AD and Google Cloud.

Access Management: Use these IAM groups to manage access to Google Cloud resources, ensuring that permissions are applied consistently and securely. This approach leverages existing AD infrastructure for identity management, providing a seamless integration with Google Cloud. References:

Google Cloud - Google Cloud Directory Sync

Google Cloud - IAM Groups

The core requirements are: centralized, tamper-proof, long-term (seven years) immutable audit trails for administrative and data access activity.

Centralization: The current logging is fragmented. To centralize, you need to collect logs from across the organization. Cloud Logging sinks configured at the organization level are designed for this purpose. They allow you to route logs from all projects within an organization to a single destination.Extract Reference: "Aggregated exports allow you to export logs from multiple Google Cloud projects, folders, or your entire organization. An aggregated export can include all logs from all included resources, or you can use queries to include only specific logs." (Google Cloud documentation: https://cloud.google.com/logging/docs/export/aggregated_exports)

Long-Term Storage (Seven Years): Cloud Logging buckets have default retention periods (e.g., 30 days for Data Access logs, 400 days for Admin Activity logs) which are not sufficient for a seven-year requirement. Cloud Storage is ideal for long-term archival.Extract Reference: "Cloud Storage is a highly scalable and durable object storage service suitable for archiving large volumes of data for extended periods." (Google Cloud documentation, general overview of Cloud Storage features)

Tamper-Proof / Immutability: This is a critical requirement for audit trails in financial services under strict regulatory frameworks. Cloud Storage's "object retention lock" feature provides immutability. Once an object retention lock is set on a bucket, objects within that bucket cannot be deleted or overwritten for a specified duration, ensuring data integrity for compliance purposes.Extract Reference: "Object Retention Lock helps you meet compliance requirements by preventing data from being deleted or modified for a fixed amount of time or indefinitely. This feature satisfies SEC Rule 17a-4(f), FINRA Rule 4511(c), and CFTC Regulation 1.31(c)-(d) requirements." (Google Cloud documentation: https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/bucket-lock)

Let's evaluate the other options:

A. Implement Pub/Sub to stream all audit logs from each project in real-time to an external SIEM: While Pub/Sub can centralize real-time streaming to a SIEM, the solution described does not inherently guarantee tamper-proof storage or 7-year immutability within Google Cloud. The SIEM itself would need to provide those capabilities, which is outside the scope of Google Cloud's direct offering for this specific requirement.

C. Enable Security Command Center across the organization: Security Command Center (SCC) provides centralized visibility into security posture, threats, and compliance. However, SCC is a security management and monitoring platform; it does not serve as the primary long-term, immutable storage for raw audit logs. It consumes information from logs but doesn't store them in a way that meets the 7-year immutable archival requirement.

D. Individually configure Cloud Audit Logs for all Google Cloud services in each project. Store the logs in regional Cloud Logging buckets with 30-day retention policies: This fails on multiple counts: it's not centralized (requires individual configuration), and the 30-day retention in Cloud Logging buckets is far short of the seven-year requirement. It also doesn't explicitly guarantee tamper-proof storage beyond the default logging immutability.

Therefore, option B directly addresses all aspects of the requirement: centralization via organization-level sinks, long-term storage with Cloud Storage, and immutability/tamper-proofing with object retention lock.

Cloud Identity-Aware Proxy (Cloud IAP) provides a way to control access to your web applications and resources running on Google Cloud. It works by verifying the identity of a user trying to access the application and supports multi-factor authentication (MFA). Cloud IAP can restrict access to users on the corporate network and also supports access over the internet securely.

Steps:

Enable Cloud IAP: In the Google Cloud Console, navigate to the IAP section and enable IAP for your web application.

Configure OAuth Consent Screen: Set up the OAuth consent screen to manage how users grant access.

Set Up Authentication: Use Google Identity Platform to manage users and enable two-factor authentication.

Add Users: Grant users access to the application by adding their identities in the IAP settings.

To migrate the current data backup and disaster recovery solutions to GCP while keeping the production environment on-premises, the most scalable and cost-efficient solution is using Google Cloud Storage with scheduled tasks and the gsutil command.

Setup Cloud Storage: Create a Cloud Storage bucket to store the backups.

Go to the Cloud Console and navigate to Cloud Storage.

Click "Create bucket" and follow the prompts to configure the storage bucket.

Install gsutil: Ensure gsutil is installed on the on-premises servers.

gsutil is a command-line tool for interacting with Cloud Storage.

Follow the installation guide here.

Create Backup Script: Write a script to upload data to Cloud Storage using gsutil.

#!/bin/bash gsutil -m cp -r /path/to/local/backup gs://your-bucket-name

Schedule Backup Task: Use a scheduling tool like cron on Linux to run the backup script at regular intervals.

Edit the crontab file with crontab -e and add an entry like:

Cloud Storage Documentation

gsutil Documentation

Objective: Optimize the usage of Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP) API to reduce costs.

Solution:

rowsLimit and bytesLimitPerFile: These parameters help in sampling data instead of scanning the entire dataset, thereby reducing the amount of data processed.

CloudStorageRegexFileSet: This feature allows you to specify a subset of files to be scanned using regular expressions, limiting the scope and volume of data scanned.

Steps:

Step 1: Set appropriate rowsLimit values for BigQuery data scans to sample rows instead of scanning entire tables.

Step 2: Set bytesLimitPerFile values for Cloud Storage buckets to limit the number of bytes scanned per file.

Step 3: Use CloudStorageRegexFileSet to specify the subset of files to be scanned based on patterns that match the filenames.

By combining these strategies, you effectively reduce the scope and volume of data processed by the DLP API, leading to cost savings.

In Google Cloud, the best practice for micro-segmentation and tier isolation is to use a single VPC with multiple subnets and apply firewall rules using Service Accounts or Network Tags. Using Service Accounts is generally preferred over tags because they are identity-based and more secure.

According to the Google Cloud Security Foundations Guide:

"Segment your VPC networks into subnets to provide logical isolation. Use firewall rules to control traffic between tiers. Instead of relying on IP addresses, use service accounts to define source and destination for firewall rules. This ensures that even if an IP changes, the security policy remains enforced based on the identity of the workload."

Implementation Details:

Web Tier: Use a firewall rule allowing 0.0.0.0/0 (Internet) to the Service Account associated with the web VMs on port 80/443.

App Tier: Use a firewall rule allowing traffic ONLY from the Web Tier Service Account to the App Tier Service Account.

DB Tier: Use a firewall rule allowing traffic ONLY from the App Tier Service Account to the DB Tier Service Account.

To minimize the attack surface of the container for an internet-facing application running on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), the best practice is to build small containers using small base images. This approach helps in the following ways:

Reduce Vulnerabilities: Smaller base images contain fewer packages and dependencies, which minimizes the potential vulnerabilities that an attacker could exploit.

Improved Security: Using minimal base images such as distroless or Alpine Linux ensures that only the necessary components are included, reducing the attack surface significantly.

Easier Maintenance: Small containers are easier to maintain and update, ensuring that security patches can be applied quickly without dealing with unnecessary components.

Steps to Implement:

Choose a Minimal Base Image:

Use base images like gcr.io/distroless/base or alpine.

FROM gcr.io/distroless/base COPY myapp /myapp CMD ["/myapp"]

Optimize Container Image:

Remove unnecessary tools and libraries.

Use multi-stage builds to keep the final image small.

Regularly Update Base Images:

Keep the base images up-to-date with the latest security patches.

Distroless Images

Best Practices for Building Containers