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

To monitor and get notified in case the script causing the Compute Engine instance to crash is executed again, you should create an Alerting Policy in Stackdriver (now known as Google Cloud Monitoring). The Process Health condition can be set to monitor the number of executions of the script and ensure it remains below the desired threshold. By enabling notifications, you will be alerted if this threshold is exceeded.

Step-by-Step:

Log Script Executions: Ensure that the script execution is logged.

Create a User-Defined Metric: Go to Google Cloud Console > Logging > Logs-based Metrics, and create a new user-defined metric that counts the number of times the script executes.

Set Up Alerting Policy:

Navigate to Google Cloud Console > Monitoring > Alerting.

Click on “Create Policy”.

Add a condition and select “Logs-based Metric”.

Configure the condition to trigger when the number of script executions exceeds the threshold.

Configure Notifications: Add notification channels (email, SMS, etc.) to the alerting policy.

Save and Test: Save the policy and test to ensure notifications are received when the script is executed beyond the threshold.

https://cloud.google.com/load-balancing/docs/ssl - SSL Proxy Load Balancing is a reverse proxy load balancer that distributes SSL traffic coming from the internet to virtual machine (VM) instances in your Google Cloud VPC network.

Objective: Provide evidence of access reviews for an upcoming audit.

Solution: Use Policy Analyzer to review and report on IAM policies.

Steps:

Step 1: Open the Google Cloud Console.

Step 2: Navigate to the Policy Analyzer tool.

Step 3: Select the project for which you need to review access policies.

Step 4: Use the tool to generate reports on IAM roles and permissions.

Step 5: Export the reports as evidence for the audit.

Policy Analyzer provides detailed insights into IAM policies, helping you to review access configurations and generate necessary reports for compliance and auditing purposes.

SSO/SAML Integration: Implement SSO (Single Sign-On) with SAML integration through Cloud Identity to streamline user authentication and lifecycle management. This ensures centralized management of user identities and access.

Predefined Roles: Use predefined roles to provide granular access control. These roles are designed to follow the principle of least privilege, ensuring that users have the minimum necessary permissions to perform their tasks.

User Management: By leveraging SSO/SAML, user provisioning and de-provisioning become more efficient and secure. This integration helps maintain consistent access policies across your organization.

Access Control: Predefined roles reduce the risk of over-permission by offering well-defined access levels, enhancing security and compliance. References:

Google Cloud - SSO with SAML

Google Cloud - IAM Best Practices

To allow Compute Engine instances to access public repositories for security updates while an egress firewall rule is in place to deny all internet traffic, you need to create a more specific egress rule that permits traffic to the CIDR range of the repository. The priority of this rule should be lower (i.e., a higher priority number) than the deny rule.

Steps:

Identify the CIDR Range: Determine the CIDR range of the public repository from which the security updates will be fetched.

Create Egress Firewall Rule: Create a new egress firewall rule allowing traffic to the identified CIDR range with a priority less than 1000.

Apply Firewall Rule: Use the Google Cloud Console or gcloud command-line tool to apply the new firewall rule.

When creating a secure container image, it is essential to follow best practices to minimize vulnerabilities and ensure the container operates as intended. Here are the two key practices:

Package a Single App as a Container: By packaging only a single application within a container, you reduce complexity and potential attack surfaces. This practice aligns with the principle of single responsibility, ensuring each container has a clear and focused purpose.

Remove Any Unnecessary Tools: Any additional tools or software that are not required by the application should be removed from the container image. This minimizes the number of potential vulnerabilities and reduces the attack surface. A minimal container image also leads to smaller image sizes and faster deployment times.

These practices contribute to creating a more secure and efficient container image.

References

Container Security Best Practices

Securing Container Images

Objective: Reduce the risk of Google Cloud user accounts being compromised.

Solution: Implement strong password policies and post-SSO 2-Step Verification using security keys.

Steps:

Step 1: In Active Directory, configure a domain password policy with strong settings (e.g., complexity, length, expiration).

Step 2: In the Google Admin console, navigate to the Security settings.

Step 3: Enable 2-Step Verification and configure it to use security keys for post-SSO verification.

Step 4: Ensure all users enroll in the 2-Step Verification with security keys.

Using strong password policies in Active Directory along with security keys for 2-Step Verification post-SSO provides enhanced security against account compromises.

Understand Organization Policies:

Organization policies allow you to enforce restrictions on Google Cloud resources to adhere to your organization’s security and compliance requirements.

Policies can be set at the organization, folder, or project level, with project-level policies able to override higher-level policies unless explicitly prevented.

Identify the Policy Constraint:

The specific constraint in question is likely constraints/compute.vmExternalIpAccess, which controls whether VMs can have external IP addresses.

Check Policy Overwrites:

Navigate to the Organization Policies page in the Google Cloud Console.

Check the policy settings at the project level under the affected folder to see if there is an override in place with an 'allow' value.

This override would permit the creation of VMs with external IP addresses despite the higher-level restriction.

Resolve the Policy Conflict:

If an override is found, remove or modify the project-level policy to align with the organizational policy denying external IP addresses.

Communicate with project administrators to ensure they understand and comply with the overarching security policies.

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/g-suite/7-ways-admins-can-help-secure-accounts-against-phishing-g-suite

https://www.duocircle.com/content/email-security-services/email-security-in-cryptography#:~:text=Customer%20Login-,Email%20Security%20In%20Cryptography%20Is%20One%20Of%20The%20Most,Measures%20To%20Prevent%20Phishing%20Attempts &text=Cybercriminals%20love%20emails%20the%20most,networks%20all%20over%20the%20world.