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

https://gsuite.google.com/learn-more/security/security-whitepaper/page-1.html

Shared responsibility “Security of the Cloud” - GCP is responsible for protecting the infrastructure that runs all of the services offered in the GCP Cloud. This infrastructure is composed of the hardware, software, networking, and facilities that run GCP Cloud services.

Implied IPv4 allow egress rule. An egress rule whose action is allow, destination is 0.0.0.0/0, and priority is the lowest possible (65535) lets any instance send traffic to any destination

Implied IPv4 deny ingress rule. An ingress rule whose action is deny, source is 0.0.0.0/0, and priority is the lowest possible (65535) protects all instances by blocking incoming connections to them.

https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/firewalls?hl=en#default_firewall_rules

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.

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.

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.

This approach allows you to expose the web interface securely by using Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP), which provides authentication and authorization with Google credentials. The HTTP Load Balancer can distribute traffic to the VMs in the managed group, and the VPC firewall rule ensures that access is allowed from the IAP network range.

Activate Security Command Center (SCC) Premium: Security Command Center (SCC) Premium provides advanced security analytics and best practice recommendations for your Google Cloud environment. It includes functionalities such as asset discovery, vulnerability scanning, and security findings.

Create a Custom Rule to Mute Irrelevant Security Findings:

Navigate to the Security Command Center (SCC) in the Google Cloud Console.

Go to the "Settings" tab and find the "Mute findings" section.

Create a new mute rule by specifying the conditions that match the irrelevant controls you want to disregard. These conditions can be based on attributes such as resource type, finding type, and other metadata.

Apply this mute rule, which will ensure that the specified findings are not evaluated in your security posture assessments.

Ensure Continuous Compliance Monitoring:

The mute rules will automatically filter out the irrelevant findings, ensuring that only relevant controls from the CIS Google Cloud Computing Foundations Benchmark v1.3.0 are evaluated.

Regularly review and update the mute rules to adapt to any changes in your compliance requirements or security posture.

The goal is to detect cryptocurrency mining software using Security Command Center (SCC).

Security Command Center Threat Detection Services: SCC Premium and Enterprise tiers offer various specialized threat detection services.

Virtual Machine Threat Detection (VMTD): This service is explicitly designed to scan virtual machines (Compute Engine instances and GKE nodes) for specific threats, including cryptocurrency mining software. It operates at the hypervisor level, performing deep scans of VM memory and disks.Extract Reference: "Virtual Machine Threat Detection (VMTD) helps you detect potential threats, such as cryptocurrency mining and malware, within your Compute Engine instances and GKE nodes." (Google Cloud Documentation: "Virtual Machine Threat Detection overview | Security Command Center" - https://cloud.google.com/security-command-center/docs/concepts-vm-threat-detection-overview)

Extract Reference: "This service scans virtual machines to detect potentially malicious applications, such as cryptocurrency mining software, kernel-mode rootkits, and malware running in compromised cloud environments." (Google Cloud Documentation: "Virtual Machine Threat Detection overview | Security Command Center" - https://cloud.google.com/security-command-center/docs/concepts-vm-threat-detection-overview)

Let's evaluate the other options:

A. Web Security Scanner: This service scans for common web application vulnerabilities like XSS, Flash injection, and mixed content. It is not designed to detect runtime threats like cryptocurrency mining software.

B. Container Threat Detection: While Container Threat Detection (CTD) also detects cryptocurrency mining, it specifically focuses on runtime threats within GKE containers. The question asks for detection of "cryptocurrency mining software" generally, and VMs are a common target for such activity (and GKE nodes are VMs). VMTD provides a more general detection across Compute Engine VMs and GKE nodes for this specific type of threat. If the context explicitly mentioned containers or Cloud Run, CTD would be the more specific answer. However, for a general detection of "software" on "workloads", and given that VMTD explicitly lists "cryptocurrency mining software" for VMs, it is the most direct and broadly applicable answer among the choices.

C. Rapid Vulnerability Detection: This service actively scans internet-exposed assets for network vulnerabilities and misconfigurations. It focuses on finding known vulnerabilities, not detecting active malicious processes like cryptocurrency mining.

Given the direct and explicit mention of cryptocurrency mining detection for VMs in its documentation, Virtual Machine Threat Detection is the correct SCC service to use.

To prevent developers from creating user-managed service account keys and reduce the risk of key mismanagement, you should enable an organization policy that specifically prohibits the creation of these keys.

Enable an organization policy to prevent service account keys from being created (C):

Google Cloud provides the capability to enforce organizational policies that restrict various actions, including the creation of service account keys. By enabling this policy, you ensure that developers cannot create new user-managed service account keys, thus minimizing the risk of key mismanagement and potential security breaches.

References

Service Accounts documentation

Organization Policy Service documentation

Enable Security Command Center (SCC):

SCC provides centralized visibility and control over your cloud resources' security status.

Ensure that SCC is enabled in your Google Cloud environment.

Configure Virtual Machine Threat Detection (VMTD):

VMTD is part of SCC and specializes in detecting threats within VM instances, such as cryptocurrency mining malware.

Navigate to the SCC settings in the Google Cloud Console.

Activate VMTD:

Enable VMTD for the projects or resources where you want to monitor and detect potential threats.

VMTD uses behavioral analysis to identify anomalies indicative of unauthorized mining activities.

Monitor and Respond to Alerts:

VMTD generates alerts when it detects suspicious activities, such as unauthorized cryptocurrency mining.

Set up appropriate response actions, such as notifications, automatic remediation, or manual investigation, to handle these alerts.