Professional-Cloud-Security-Engineer Google Cloud Certified - Professional Cloud Security Engineer Free Practice Exam Questions (2026 Updated)

Objective: Ensure only front-end Compute Engine instances have public IPs, while others do not.

Solution: Use an organization policy to enforce this requirement.

Steps:

Step 1: Open the Google Cloud Console.

Step 2: Navigate to the Organization Policies page.

Step 3: Create a new policy with the constraint constraints/compute.requireOsLogin (or similar constraint to manage public IPs).

Step 4: Define the conditions to allow public IPs only for the front-end instances.

Step 5: Apply the policy to the organization or specific projects as necessary.

By setting up an organization policy with specific conditions, you can control which instances are allowed to have public IPs based on their role or other attributes.

When dealing with VPC Service Controls (VPC SC), it's important to ensure that only authorized resources can access sensitive data and services. To allow a resource in Project B to access Pub/Sub in Project A without compromising security, you should configure an ingress policy for the service perimeter in Project A.

Identify the Service Account: Determine the service account in Project B that requires access to the Pub/Sub topic in Project A.

Configure Ingress Policy:

Go to the Google Cloud Console.

Navigate to Security > VPC Service Controls.

Select the service perimeter for Project A.

Add an ingress rule specifying the service account from Project B and allowing it access to the necessary Pub/Sub resources.

Define Conditions: Ensure that the ingress policy adheres to the principle of least privilege, granting only the necessary permissions to collect messages from the Pub/Sub topic.

Save and Apply: Save the policy and apply the changes to enforce the new access controls.

This approach maintains the security boundaries set by VPC SC while enabling the required access from Project B to Project A.

VPC Service Controls Documentation

Configuring Ingress Policies

The Google Cloud Resource Hierarchy is designed to allow inheritance with the ability to override policies at lower levels (Folders or Projects).2 This is the standard way to handle exceptions for specific business units without weakening the security posture of the entire organization.

According to Google Cloud Documentation (Understanding Hierarchy Evaluation):

"By default, organization policies are inherited by the descendants of the resource on which the policy is enforced. However, you can explicitly override a policy on a child resource (Folder or Project) by setting a new policy that either adds to or replaces the inherited values.3 This allows for granular control and exception handling."

Why this is the correct approach:

Isolation: By moving the workload to a specific folder, you isolate the exception.

Least Privilege: Only the resources within that folder gain the exception; the rest of the organization remains protected by the constraints/compute.vmExternalIpAccess constraint.

No "Bypass" Role: There is no standard IAM role that allows a user to "bypass" an Org Policy (Option A). Policies are enforced at the API level regardless of user roles.

Auditability: Having a specific folder with an override makes it easy for auditors to see exactly where and why an exception exists.

The problem requires a cost-effective, scalable, and secure strategy to anonymize 3 TB of PII in BigQuery and Cloud SQL.

Cloud Sensitive Data Protection (Cloud DLP): Cloud DLP is Google Cloud's fully managed service designed for discovering, classifying, and de-identifying sensitive data, including PII, across various Google Cloud services and on-premises environments. It is specifically built for scale and security.

Extract Reference: "Sensitive Data Protection helps you discover, classify, and de-identify sensitive data." and "Sensitive Data Protection includes advanced de-identification techniques, such as tokenization, masking, and format-preserving encryption, to help you protect your sensitive data while preserving its utility for analysis." (Google Cloud Documentation: "Sensitive Data Protection overview" - https://cloud.google.com/sensitive-data-protection/docs/overview)

Data Profiling: Cloud DLP's data profiling feature automatically scans your data (e.g., BigQuery tables, Cloud SQL databases) to identify where sensitive data resides and to understand its characteristics. This is crucial for developing an effective de-identification strategy.

Extract Reference: "Data profiles provide metrics and insights about your sensitive and high-risk data, helping you make informed decisions about data protection, access, and storage." and "When you configure Sensitive Data Protection to profile data in BigQuery, Cloud Storage, and Datastore, it automatically scans your data for sensitive information." (Google Cloud Documentation: "About data profiles" - https://cloud.google.com/sensitive-data-protection/docs/concepts-data-profiles)

De-identification Templates and Custom Configurations: After profiling identifies the PII, Cloud DLP offers various de-identification methods, which can be applied using pre-built templates or custom configurations. This allows for flexible and targeted anonymization. For BigQuery specifically, DLP can integrate with remote functions for de-identification at query time, minimizing data movement.

Extract Reference: "De-identification techniques, like encryption, obfuscate raw sensitive identifiers in your data. These techniques let you preserve the utility of your data for joining or analytics, while reducing the risk of handling the data." and "You can use this tutorial to replace that pipeline with a SQL query for only re-identification or both de-identification and re-identification." (Google Cloud Documentation: "De-identify BigQuery data at query time | Sensitive Data Protection Documentation" - https://cloud.google.com/sensitive-data-protection/docs/deidentify-bq-tutorial)

Let's evaluate the other options:

B. Copy small subset... create a custom anonymization script... apply the script to the entire 3 TB dataset: Relying on a "custom anonymization script" for 3 TB of data is generally not scalable, cost-effective, or secure compared to a managed service like Cloud DLP. Custom scripts require significant development, testing, maintenance, and robust error handling for large datasets, and might introduce security vulnerabilities.

C. Export all 3TB of data... to Cloud Storage... anonymize... Re-import: While feasible, exporting and re-importing 3 TB of data is a very time-consuming and potentially costly process due to data transfer and storage operations. Cloud DLP can often process data in-place or integrate more efficiently, especially with BigQuery. This option might not be the most cost-effective or efficient.

D. Inspect a representative sample... develop a custom script: Similar to option B, this relies on a custom script, which is less ideal for scalability, cost-effectiveness, and security than a managed service like Cloud DLP for 3 TB of sensitive data. Sample inspection is a good initial step, but the subsequent custom script for anonymization is the weak point.

Therefore, using Cloud DLP's data profiling to inform a de-identification strategy with its managed templates and configurations is the most appropriate, scalable, secure, and cost-effective approach for anonymizing PII in BigQuery and Cloud SQL.

To minimize the usage of service account keys and implement Workload Identity Federation (WIF) with your on-premises identity provider, you can use a workload identity pool integrated with your corporate Active Directory Federation Service (ADFS). This setup allows your on-premises Windows-based applications to authenticate to Google Cloud APIs without using long-lived service account keys.

Set Up a Workload Identity Pool:

In the Google Cloud Console, go to IAM & Admin > Workload Identity Federation.

Create a new workload identity pool.

Configure the pool to trust your corporate ADFS by specifying the federation provider details.

Create a Workload Identity Provider:

Within the created pool, set up a new provider for ADFS.

Configure the provider with the necessary details such as the issuer URL and credentials.

Configure Impersonation Rules:

Set up rules to allow principals in the workload identity pool to impersonate specific Google Cloud service accounts.

This is done by specifying the identity provider and the conditions under which the service accounts can be impersonated.

Update Applications:

Modify your on-premises applications to use the configured ADFS authentication to obtain tokens.

These tokens can then be exchanged for Google Cloud access tokens to interact with Google Cloud APIs securely.

By setting up the workload identity pool and configuring impersonation rules, you achieve secure authentication without needing to distribute and manage service account keys.

Workload Identity Federation Documentation

Federating On-Premises Identities to Workload Identity Federation

The problem states that Google Cloud applications need to access external web services and requires the ability to monitor, control, and log this access.

Monitoring, Controlling, and Logging external web access: This specifically points to a proxy solution, which can intercept, inspect, and log HTTP/S traffic.

Secure Web Proxy (SWP): Google Cloud's Secure Web Proxy is designed for exactly this use case. It acts as an explicit forward proxy for HTTP(S) traffic, allowing organizations to implement granular access controls, inspect traffic for security threats, and log all outbound web requests from their Google Cloud environment.Extract Reference: "Secure Web Proxy is a managed service that lets you deploy and manage an explicit forward proxy to protect your organization's internal resources from web-based threats and to control access to external web applications." and "With Secure Web Proxy, you can: Enforce granular access policies based on different attributes, Log all HTTP(S) requests that are handled by the proxy, and Monitor web traffic for threats." (Google Cloud documentation: https://cloud.google.com/secure-web-proxy)

Let's evaluate the other options:

A. Configure VPC firewall rules to allow the services to access the IP addresses of required external web services: VPC firewall rules operate at Layer 4 (TCP/UDP) and Layer 3 (IP). While they can allow or deny traffic to specific IP addresses and ports, they cannot monitor, control, or log HTTP/S requests at the application layer. They don't provide granular control over which web services are accessed or inspect the content of the requests.

C. Configure Google Cloud Armor to monitor and protect your applications by checking incoming traffic patterns for attack patterns: Google Cloud Armor is primarily a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection and Web Application Firewall (WAF) service. It focuses on protecting applications from incoming threats (ingress traffic), not controlling and logging outgoing access to external web services.

D. Set up a Cloud NAT instance to allow egress traffic from your VPC: Cloud NAT allows instances without external IP addresses to connect to the internet. While it enables egress, it does not provide monitoring, control, or logging capabilities for specific web services at the application layer. It's a network address translation service, not an application-layer proxy.

Therefore, setting up a Secure Web Proxy is the most appropriate solution to meet the requirements of monitoring, controlling, and logging access to external web services from Google Cloud applications.

Since the domain is already being used by G Suite, the best course of action is to minimize disruption by discovering any existing uses of Google-managed services. Collaborate with the existing Super Administrator to align the setup with the company's requirements.

Step-by-Step:

Identify Existing Usage: Have the customer's management identify all current uses of the domain within Google-managed services.

Collaboration: Work closely with the existing Super Administrator of the domain.

Provision Required Accounts: Ask the Super Administrator to provision necessary accounts and permissions for the data science manager or other relevant personnel.

Integrate SAML IdP: Ensure that the existing domain integrates with the company’s SAML 2.0 IdP for user authentication.

Set Up Cloud Identity: Configure Cloud Identity under the guidance of the Super Administrator without disrupting current services.

Google Cloud Identity Administration

Google Support for Domain Issues

To meet the requirements of encrypted communication over private IP addresses between Compute Engine instances in different Google Cloud organizations, a Cloud VPN connection is appropriate:

Cloud VPN: Cloud VPN creates a secure, encrypted tunnel between your organization's VPC network and the third party's VPC network. This ensures that data transmitted over the network is encrypted and secure.

Private IP Communication: Cloud VPN allows communication over private IP addresses, which helps maintain security by keeping traffic within the Google Cloud network and not exposing it to the public internet.

Firewall Rules: VPC firewall rules can be configured to control the traffic that flows through the VPN, ensuring that only authorized traffic is allowed, further enhancing security.

By setting up a Cloud VPN connection, you can achieve secure, encrypted communication over private IP addresses between different Google Cloud organizations.

References

Cloud VPN Overview

To restrict access to the MySQL instance to only the frontend application while other VMs are present in the subnets, creating an ingress firewall rule is the most appropriate approach. This rule will specifically allow traffic from subnet A (where the frontend application resides) to the MySQL instance in subnet B on port 3306, using network tags to target the specific MySQL VM.

Steps:

Create Network Tags: Apply a network tag (e.g., "data-tag") to the MySQL VM in subnet B.

Create Ingress Firewall Rule: Configure an ingress firewall rule with the following settings:

Source IP Range: Subnet A's IP range.

Target Tag: "data-tag".

Allowed Protocol/Ports: TCP:3306 (for MySQL).

This setup ensures that only instances in subnet A can communicate with the MySQL instance on port 3306.

The problem requires restricting the types of Google Cloud services that can be deployed within specific folders to enforce compliance, without affecting other parts of the resource hierarchy, using the most efficient and simple method.

Organization Policies: Organization policies allow you to define centralized, programmatic controls over your Google Cloud resources. They apply hierarchically, meaning a policy set on a folder applies to all projects and resources within that folder and its descendants.

Restrict Resource Service Usage Constraint: This specific organization policy constraint is designed precisely for controlling which Google Cloud services can be used (and thus deployed/created resources for) within a given part of the resource hierarchy. It supports both allowlists and denylists of service API identifiers.

Extract Reference: "The Restrict Resource Service Usage constraint controls the runtime access to all in-scope resources." and "This constraint can be used in two mutually exclusive ways: Denylist - resources of any service that isn't denied are allowed. Allowlist - resources of any service that isn't allowed are denied." (Google Cloud Documentation: "Restricting resource usage | Resource Manager Documentation" - https://cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/organization-policy/restricting-resources)

Folder-Level Application: Applying this organization policy at the folder level directly meets the requirement of applying restrictions "only to the designated folders without affecting other parts of the resource hierarchy." This is more efficient and simpler than applying a global policy with numerous exceptions.

Let's evaluate the other options:

B. Implement IAM conditions on service account creation within each folder: IAM conditions control permissions for who can do what. While they can be used for very fine-grained access control, they are not designed to restrict the types of services that can be deployed directly. Controlling service account creation doesn't prevent a user with appropriate permissions from deploying other resources.

C. Create a global organization policy... and apply exceptions: While technically possible, this is less efficient and simple if the goal is to only restrict specific folders. Managing exceptions for the entire rest of the organization would be more complex than simply applying the policy directly where it's needed.

D. Configure VPC Service Controls perimeters around each folder: VPC Service Controls primarily prevent data exfiltration and restrict API access at a network perimeter level. They are not designed to restrict which types of Google Cloud services can be deployed within a project or folder; rather, they control how allowed services interact with each other and with external endpoints.

Therefore, creating an organization policy with the "Restrict Resource Service Usage" constraint at the folder level is the most efficient, simple, and direct method to achieve the stated goal.

Enable automatic key version rotation on a regular schedule:

Regularly rotating keys reduces the impact of a potentially compromised key by limiting the amount of data encrypted with a single key version.

Set up automatic key rotation in Cloud KMS to ensure keys are rotated without manual intervention.

Limit the number of messages encrypted with each key version:

Reducing the number of messages encrypted with each key version minimizes the potential data exposure in case of a key compromise.

Implement policies to ensure that new key versions are used periodically to limit the usage of each key version.

To ensure that only trusted container images are deployed on Cloud Run, you can implement Binary Authorization, which is a deploy-time security control that ensures only trusted images are used.

Set Up Binary Authorization:

Navigate to the Google Cloud Console.

Go to Security > Binary Authorization.

Configure the policy to include attestors that verify your trusted images.

Enable Binary Authorization on Cloud Run:

Go to the Cloud Run service.

Enable Binary Authorization on your existing Cloud Run services by selecting the appropriate Binary Authorization policy.

Set Organization Policy:

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

Add a constraint for constraints/run.allowedBinaryAuthorizationPolicies.

Specify the list of allowed Binary Authorization policy names to enforce across your organization.

These steps ensure that any container image deployed on Cloud Run is validated against the specified Binary Authorization policies, preventing untrusted images from being deployed.

Binary Authorization Documentation

Enabling Binary Authorization on Cloud Run

Objective: Ensure that a Cloud Storage bucket in Project A can only be readable from Project B and prevent data access or copying to Cloud Storage buckets outside the network, even with correct credentials.

Solution: Use VPC Service Controls to create a security perimeter.

Steps:

Step 1: Open the Google Cloud Console.

Step 2: Navigate to the VPC Service Controls page.

Step 3: Create a new service perimeter.

Step 4: Add Project A and Project B to the service perimeter.

Step 5: Include Cloud Storage service in the perimeter configuration.

Step 6: Define access levels to ensure that only resources within the perimeter can access the Cloud Storage bucket.

By setting up a VPC Service Controls perimeter, you can enforce security boundaries that restrict data access and movement to within defined projects, providing an extra layer of protection beyond IAM permissions.

Here are the permissions available to organizationRoleAdmin

iam.roles.create

iam.roles.delete

iam.roles.undelete

iam.roles.get

iam.roles.list

iam.roles.update

resourcemanager.projects.get

resourcemanager.projects.getIamPolicy

resourcemanager.projects.list

resourcemanager.organizations.get

resourcemanager.organizations.getIamPolicy

There are sufficient as per least privilege policy. You can do user management as well as auditing.

https://cloud.google.com/iam/docs/understanding-custom-roles

The action fails because a constraints/iam.allowedPolicyMemberDomains organization policy is in place and only members from the flowlogistic.com organization are allowed. The inheritFromParent: false property on the “Apps” folder means that it does not inherit the organization policy from the organization node. Therefore, only the policy set at the folder level applies, which allows only members from the flowlogistic.com organization. As a result, the attempt to grant access to the user testuser@terramearth.com fails because this user is not a member of the flowlogistic.com organization.

To comply with FIPS 140-2 for the messaging app, you need to ensure that both data at rest and data in transit are encrypted according to the standard. Using customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK) ensures that you have control over the encryption keys, and BoringSSL is a library that meets FIPS 140-2 standards for encrypting data in transit.

Steps:

Encrypt Local SSDs: Modify the instance template for the Managed Instance Group (MIG) to use customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK) for encrypting Local SSDs.

Enable BoringSSL: Update the application to use the BoringSSL library for all instance-to-instance communication to ensure that all data in transit is encrypted according to FIPS 140-2 standards.

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.

To provide users with SSO-based access to selected cloud apps, Cloud Identity as your IdP supports the OpenID Connect (OIDC) and Security Assertion Markup Language 2.0 (SAML) protocols. https://cloud.google.com/identity/solutions/enable-sso