Google Professional Cloud Security Engineer Exam Dumps and Practice Test Questions Set8 Q141-160

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Question 141:

Your organization has adopted a strict requirement that all newly created Compute Engine VM disks across every project must use customer-managed encryption keys instead of Google-managed encryption. You are tasked with enforcing this rule globally and preventing system administrators from accidentally creating resources without CMEK. Which GCP-native mechanism should you implement to guarantee compliance across the entire organization?

A) Enforce an organization policy restricting the use of Google-managed encryption keys
B) Use IAM deny policies for Google-managed keys
C) Create a Cloud Function that scans all VMs and deletes non-compliant ones
D) Rely on Security Command Center to notify administrators

Correct Answer: A

Explanation:

A) Enforcing an organization policy that restricts the use of Google-managed encryption keys is the strongest and most reliable method for ensuring that all Compute Engine VM disks use customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK). Organization policies operate at the hierarchy level—organization, folder, or project—ensuring uniform compliance and preventing misconfigurations before they occur. Because this is a preventive control, any attempt to create a VM disk without CMEK will fail automatically, eliminating the risk of accidental noncompliance. This enforcement model aligns with regulatory requirements in PCI-DSS, HIPAA, FedRAMP, and ISO 27001, all of which emphasize the importance of preventive security governance, centralized key control, and auditability. Organization policies also integrate seamlessly with Cloud KMS, enabling granular permissions, audit logs for key usage, automatic key rotation, and separation of duties. This comprehensive control model ensures that encryption-related decisions remain under the organization’s authority, not Google’s default settings.

B) IAM deny policies cannot effectively block the use of Google-managed encryption keys because Google-managed keys are not exposed as IAM-governable resources. Deny policies can restrict API operations, but they cannot stop the automatic encryption workflows that Google-managed keys perform internally. Therefore, this option does not provide enforceable compliance.

C) A Cloud Function that scans and deletes non-compliant VMs is dangerous. It introduces operational instability, risks deleting production workloads, and is entirely reactive rather than preventive. It also creates compliance gaps until detection occurs.

D) Security Command Center notifications provide visibility but not enforcement. While useful for monitoring, SCC cannot block the creation of non-compliant disks.

Thus, organization policy enforcement is the only preventive, scalable, compliant, and operationally safe solution.

Question 142:

Your team needs to ensure that access to Cloud SQL instances is only allowed from a private IP range within the VPC and never exposed publicly. Recently, a misconfiguration allowed a public IP to be assigned to a production instance. What is the best way to systematically prevent this in the future?

A) Enforce the Cloud SQL Restrict Public IP organization policy
B) Remove the public IP manually
C) Add firewall rules blocking external access
D) Add IAM conditions preventing developers from modifying instance settings

Correct Answer: A

Explanation:

A) Enforcing the Cloud SQL Restrict Public IP organization policy is the most effective and scalable method for preventing Cloud SQL instances from being assigned public IPs. Organization policies apply at the organization or folder level and ensure that all new Cloud SQL instances must comply with centrally enforced security rules. This approach prevents non-compliant configurations at creation time, eliminating the risk of accidental exposure due to developer error or misconfiguration. It also aligns with regulatory frameworks such as PCI-DSS, HIPAA, FedRAMP, and NIST 800-53, which require minimizing external attack surfaces and securing database access paths. By enforcing private IP-only connectivity, the organization ensures Cloud SQL instances remain isolated within VPC networks and accessible only through controlled internal paths such as VPC peering or private services access. Because the policy is enforced by Google Cloud itself, it provides strong governance, centralized control, and automatic blocking of any attempts to create a public IP—even by privileged users—thereby guaranteeing consistent security posture across all environments.

B) Manually removing public IPs can address a single misconfigured instance, but it does not prevent future occurrences. It relies on human diligence and does not scale in multi-team or multi-project environments.

C) Firewall rules can block external access but cannot stop the assignment of a public IP. The presence of a public IP still increases risk and may violate compliance requirements.

D) IAM conditions can control who modifies instance settings but cannot enforce configuration constraints. Users with legitimate permissions could still create public IPs unless restricted by organization policies.

Thus, organization policy enforcement is the only preventive, scalable, and compliance-aligned solution.

Question 143:

A security team needs to ensure that only specific service accounts can deploy Cloud Run services, and that all deployments must use images stored exclusively in Artifact Registry with customer-managed keys. How can you enforce these requirements at the organizational level?

A) Apply organization policies restricting allowed service accounts and enforcing CMEK usage for Artifact Registry
B) Use IAM to block developers from deploying
C) Enable VPC Service Controls
D) Use Cloud Logging to detect deployments

Correct Answer: A

Explanation:

A) Applying organization policies that restrict allowed service accounts and enforce CMEK usage for Artifact Registry is the most effective and scalable method to ensure secure and compliant Cloud Run deployments. Organization policies enable administrators to define mandatory configuration constraints across the entire resource hierarchy—organization, folders, and projects. By restricting which service accounts may be used to deploy or run Cloud Run services, you eliminate the risk of unauthorized or unintended privilege escalation. Similarly, enforcing CMEK for Artifact Registry ensures that all container images used in Cloud Run services are encrypted with customer-managed keys, providing strong control over cryptographic lifecycle management, rotation, auditing, and compliance. Organization policies operate as preventative controls, meaning noncompliant deployments are rejected before they occur, ensuring consistent enforcement and eliminating configuration drift. This meets the expectations of regulatory frameworks such as ISO 27001, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, and FedRAMP, which require strict access controls and encryption governance.

B) IAM alone cannot enforce constraints on which service accounts may be used or require CMEK usage for artifacts. IAM determines who can deploy but not the compliance posture of their deployments. As a result, relying solely on IAM allows insecure configurations to slip through.

C) VPC Service Controls protect against data exfiltration but do not govern Cloud Run deployment configuration or enforce CMEK in Artifact Registry. VPC-SC adds network-based restrictions, not deployment controls.

D) Cloud Logging helps detect deployments but is purely reactive. It cannot prevent misconfigured or unauthorized deployments from occurring.

Therefore, organization policies (Option A) provide the only preventive, scalable, and governance-aligned solution, ensuring Cloud Run services are deployed using approved service accounts and encrypted artifacts.

Question 144:

Your organization wants to centralize threat detection across 100+ projects and automatically respond to findings such as IAM misconfigurations, risky service accounts, or publicly exposed storage buckets. Which GCP-native approach should you choose to meet these requirements?

A) Security Command Center Premium with automated remediation workflows
B) Manual audits
C) Cloud DNS logs
D) API Gateway filtering

Correct Answer: A

Explanation:

A) Security Command Center (SCC) Premium with automated remediation workflows provides centralized, organization-wide threat detection and continuous security monitoring across all projects. It identifies misconfigurations, public exposures, vulnerable service accounts, and anomalous activity in real time. When paired with Pub/Sub, Cloud Functions, or Workflows, SCC can automatically execute remediation actions—such as removing public access, correcting IAM bindings, or disabling risky service accounts. This reduces attacker dwell time, enforces consistent security posture, and aligns with compliance standards like SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and NIST 800-53.

B) Manual audits are highly inefficient, prone to human error, and impossible to scale in environments with dozens or hundreds of projects. They provide no real-time detection or automated response capability, leaving long exposure windows and increasing operational burden.

C) Cloud DNS logs offer visibility into DNS queries but do not detect configuration issues, IAM vulnerabilities, or risky storage permissions. They cannot perform threat detection across the full cloud environment and do not support automated remediation workflows.

D) API Gateway filtering controls access to API endpoints but cannot protect broader cloud resources such as Storage buckets, IAM policies, or service accounts. It does not provide security insights, threat analytics, or remediation capabilities across an organization’s cloud footprint.

Question 145:

You manage a multi-project environment where developers frequently create service accounts. Your security team needs to prevent privilege escalation attacks by restricting the ability of service accounts to generate access tokens unless explicitly alloweD) What is the most effective strategy?

A) Use IAM deny policies to block serviceAccountTokenCreator except for approved principals
B) Remove IAM permissions from all users
C) Delete unused service accounts manually
D) Use Cloud Armor rules

Correct Answer: A

Explanation:

A) IAM deny policies provide the strongest and most precise control for preventing privilege escalation by blocking the serviceAccountTokenCreator permission except for explicitly approved principals. Because deny policies override all allow policies, they ensure that even users or roles with broad permissions cannot generate service account tokens unless explicitly permitteD) This is essential because serviceAccountTokenCreator enables impersonation, which can escalate privileges across projects or resources. Using deny policies enforces strict boundaries, supports least privilege, and prevents attackers or misconfigured roles from leveraging service accounts to gain elevated access. This approach aligns with compliance frameworks such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, and NIST 800-53, all of which require strong controls over identity impersonation and privilege escalation.

B) Removing IAM permissions from all users is overly disruptive and does not follow operational best practices. While it may reduce risk temporarily, it breaks functionality, prevents legitimate workflows, and does not provide granular control. Least privilege requires thoughtful minimization—not blanket removal—of permissions.

C) Deleting unused service accounts helps reduce attack surface but does not solve the core problem. If serviceAccountTokenCreator remains unrestricted, any remaining service account can still be exploited for privilege escalation. Hygiene alone is insufficient without proper token-creation controls.

D) Cloud Armor rules operate at the network and application edge, protecting HTTP(S) traffiC) They cannot control IAM permissions, token generation, or identity impersonation. They are unrelated to preventing misuse of the serviceAccountTokenCreator

By enforcing IAM deny policies, organizations ensure that only authorized identities can impersonate service accounts, closing a major privilege escalation path and significantly strengthening their overall security posture.

Question 151:

Your security team discovers that several developers are creating OAuth client IDs in random projects, leading to security drift and compliance issues. These OAuth clients are used for external web applications that must follow strict organizational review procedures. You are asked to enforce a rule that OAuth clients can only be created in a single central project and nowhere else. What is the best GCP-native enforcement approach?

A) Apply an organization policy restricting the creation of OAuth clients to the approved project only
B) Disable the OAuth API globally
C) Remove developer IAM permissions
D) Use Cloud Logging to alert when new OAuth clients are created

Correct Answer: A

Explanation:

A) Applying an organization policy that restricts the creation of OAuth clients to a single approved project is the most effective and governance-aligned method for controlling OAuth client usage. Organization policies operate at the highest level of the resource hierarchy—organization, folders, and projects—and enforce preventative controls before resources are even createD) By restricting OAuth client creation to one central project, the organization ensures that all OAuth applications undergo proper review, validation, and security checks. This prevents shadow OAuth apps, avoids accidental exposure of redirect URIs, reduces risks of misconfigured client secrets, and ensures alignment with enterprise identity governance requirements. OAuth clients often interact with external systems and identity providers, so restricting their creation minimizes the risk of phishing vectors, unauthorized integrations, and compliance violations. This approach satisfies audit controls, enforces least privilege, and ensures all OAuth workflows remain centrally governeD)

B) Disabling the OAuth API globally is not feasible because the business still needs OAuth functionality for legitimate authentication and integration workflows. Turning off the API would break essential application flows and does not provide selective governance.

C) Removing developer IAM permissions is overly broad and disrupts normal operations. Developers may require permissions for many APIs unrelated to OAuth, and blanket removal violates proper least-privilege methodology.

D) Cloud Logging alerts are purely reactive. While notifications provide visibility into OAuth client creation, they do not prevent developers from creating unauthorized clients in the first place. Instead, they add operational overhead and fail to meet strict governance and compliance expectations.

Using an organization policy is therefore the only scalable, preventative, and compliant method for maintaining full control over OAuth client lifecycle management.

Question 152:

Your organization mandates that all production GKE clusters must run with shielded GKE nodes and Workload Identity enableD) Some teams have begun creating noncompliant clusters, introducing security risks. How do you enforce compliance automatically?

A) Use the GKE organizational policy constraints to require shielded nodes and Workload Identity
B) Use firewall rules to block cluster creation
C) Rely on Cloud Logging to detect noncompliant clusters
D) Use IAM permissions to prevent cluster creation

Correct Answer: A

Explanation:

A) Using GKE organizational policy constraints to require shielded nodes and Workload Identity is the strongest and most reliable way to enforce secure cluster configurations across an entire organization. These policies operate at the organization and folder level, ensuring that all newly created GKE clusters adhere to predefined security requirements. Shielded GKE nodes provide secure boot, measured boot, and integrity monitoring, which protect against firmware-level and kernel-level tampering. Workload Identity eliminates the need for long-lived service account keys by mapping Kubernetes service accounts to Google service accounts, enabling short-lived, automatically rotated identity tokens. Enforcing these settings at creation time ensures that developers cannot bypass or misconfigure critical security features. This approach minimizes attack surface, prevents misconfiguration drift, and achieves consistency across multi-project or multi-team environments—an essential requirement for regulated industries or zero-trust environments.

B) Firewall rules cannot block cluster creation and have no role in enforcing cluster configuration. They operate at the network layer and cannot enforce GKE security posture or node configuration.

C) Cloud Logging only detects noncompliant clusters after they are createD) While helpful for visibility and auditing, it is a reactive approach. Relying on detection alone introduces delays in remediation and leaves room for risk exposure.

D) Using IAM permissions to prevent cluster creation is too broad and contradicts operational requirements. Developers often need the ability to create clusters, but with enforced secure defaults—not complete restriction.

By leveraging GKE-specific organization policies, enterprises achieve preventative, scalable, and automated enforcement of secure cluster standards, reducing security risk and ensuring consistent compliance across all environments.

Question 153:

Your company has adopted a zero-trust model requiring that access to Cloud Storage for sensitive datasets must be controlled by VPC Service Controls and an access level based on device trust. Only corporate-managed devices should access the datA) How do you achieve this?

A) Create an Access Context Manager access level requiring device trust and apply it to a VPC Service Controls perimeter
B) Use IAM alone
C) Restrict all Cloud Storage access to internal IPs
D) Use Cloud Armor to filter device requests

Correct Answer: A

Explanation:

A) Creating an Access Context Manager (ACM) access level that requires device trust and applying it to a VPC Service Controls (VPC-SC) perimeter is the strongest and most complete security approach for ensuring that only verified, corporate-managed devices can access sensitive Cloud Storage resources. ACM allows organizations to define contextual requirements—such as device encryption status, corporate certificates, OS version compliance, or endpoint management enrollment. When this device-based access level is attached to a VPC-SC perimeter, Cloud Storage becomes accessible only if both IAM authorization and device-trust conditions are met. This enforces a true zero-trust model: access is not granted unless the user identity, network, and device posture all satisfy the security rules. VPC-SC then prevents data exfiltration by blocking access attempts originating from outside approved networks or devices. Together, ACM and VPC-SC create a strong barrier that attackers—even those with valid user credentials—cannot bypass if they lack a compliant device. This approach is essential for protecting regulated datasets where misconfigured or compromised devices pose high risks.

B) IAM alone cannot enforce device trust. IAM evaluates identities and permissions but has no visibility into device security posture, corporate compliance, or endpoint integrity.

C) Restricting Cloud Storage access to internal IPs provides only superficial network-based security and does not validate whether the accessing device is secure, managed, or compromiseD)

D) Cloud Armor filters HTTP(S) traffic and cannot evaluate device trust or protect Cloud Storage API requests.

By combining ACM and VPC-SC, organizations implement layered, context-aware, zero-trust security that significantly reduces data exfiltration risk and aligns with strict compliance frameworks like HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and NIST 800-53.

Question 154:

Your security team identifies that many service accounts have unused or excessive IAM roles attacheD) Some have editor or owner roles that violate least privilege principles. Manually reviewing each account is impractical. What GCP-native method should you use to automatically identify and remediate risky roles?

A) Use Security Command Center’s IAM Recommender combined with automated role tightening
B) Delete all service accounts
C) Migrate all service accounts to human users
D) Enable Cloud Armor

Correct Answer: A

Explanation:

A) Security Command Center (SCC) integrated with IAM Recommender provides a data-driven approach to enforcing least privilege across Google Cloud environments. IAM Recommender analyzes historical usage of assigned permissions for service accounts, users, and groups, identifying permissions that are unused over a configurable time window. Based on this analysis, it generates recommendations to tighten roles by removing excess privileges. Organizations can automate remediation of these recommendations using Cloud Functions, Security Command Center workflows, or other orchestration tools, ensuring that service accounts maintain only the permissions necessary to perform their tasks. This prevents privilege creep, reduces the attack surface, and supports operational efficiency by avoiding manual auditing of IAM policies.

B) Deleting all service accounts is not practical and would disrupt critical workloads, automation pipelines, and service-to-service communication. It does not provide a selective or risk-based approach to enforcing least privilege.

C) Migrating service accounts to human users violates security best practices by assigning long-lived machine credentials to humans, increasing exposure to credential compromise and audit risk. Workloads require dedicated identities to maintain separation between human and service privileges.

D) Cloud Armor focuses on network and application-layer protection for HTTP(S) traffiC) While it enhances perimeter security, it does not manage IAM roles, permissions, or privilege exposure.

By combining SCC with IAM Recommender and automated role tightening, organizations gain continuous visibility into permission usage, enforce least privilege consistently, reduce the potential for privilege escalation, and align with compliance standards such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, and NIST 800-53. This approach ensures that both security and operational requirements are met while minimizing human error.

Question 155:

Your company needs all Cloud Storage buckets that store regulated data to automatically use uniform bucket-level access and prevent public exposure. There have been previous incidents where developers accidentally enabled public access. What is the best governance approach?

A) Enforce an organization policy requiring uniform bucket-level access and blocking public access
B) Use Cloud Functions to scan and modify buckets
C) Remove IAM permissions from developers
D) Use private VPC networks

Correct Answer: A

Explanation:

A) Enforcing an organization policy that mandates uniform bucket-level access and blocks public access provides a strong, preventive control over Cloud Storage security. Uniform bucket-level access removes the legacy ACL model and ensures that all access is governed exclusively through IAM roles, creating a consistent and auditable access model across all buckets. By blocking public access at the organization level, administrators prevent accidental exposure of sensitive data, mitigating the risk of data breaches. This approach scales automatically across projects and folders, ensuring compliance with regulatory standards such as GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS. It also reduces operational overhead by eliminating the need for continuous manual checks of bucket ACLs and permissions.

B) Using Cloud Functions to scan and modify buckets is a reactive approach. While it can detect and remediate misconfigurations, it cannot prevent them from occurring initially. This introduces a window of risk during which sensitive data may be exposeD) Reliance on reactive workflows also increases operational complexity and requires constant maintenance and monitoring.

C) Removing IAM permissions from developers is overly broad and can disrupt legitimate business processes. Developers often need access to buckets for routine operations, and blanket removal of permissions may hinder productivity and slow project timelines without fully addressing public access risks.

D) Private VPC networks control network-level access but do not manage identity-based permissions or enforce uniform bucket policies. They cannot prevent public exposure at the Cloud Storage layer.

By leveraging organization policies, organizations enforce security and compliance by design. This preventive control ensures consistent enforcement across all projects, eliminates accidental exposure, and maintains a strong, auditable security posture while supporting operational efficiency.

Question 156:

A developer accidentally configured a Compute Engine instance with a public IP and disabled OS Login, allowing SSH key injection. Your security team wants to prevent these insecure setups across all projects. What is the correct enforcement approach?

A) Apply organization policies to block external IPs and require OS Login
B) Manually remove public IPs
C) Rely on VPC firewall rules
D) Use Cloud Monitoring alerts

Correct Answer: A

Explanation:

A) Applying organization policies to block external IPs and require OS Login is the most effective preventive mechanism for securing Compute Engine VMs. By preventing the assignment of public IP addresses during VM creation, administrators remove unnecessary exposure to the internet, reducing the risk of brute-force attacks, exploitation, or accidental data exposure. Enforcing OS Login ensures that SSH access is controlled centrally via IAM, eliminating the need for unmanaged SSH keys scattered across multiple instances. This provides a consistent and auditable approach to identity-based access and aligns with least-privilege principles. Organization policies enforce these controls automatically across all projects, folders, and the entire organization hierarchy, ensuring no VM is created in an insecure configuration and reducing reliance on manual oversight.

B) Manually removing public IPs after instance creation is reactive, prone to human error, and does not prevent misconfigurations in the future. It is labor-intensive and difficult to scale in large, multi-project environments.

C) VPC firewall rules control traffic but do not prevent the creation of public IPs or enforce the use of OS Login. While firewall rules can limit exposure, they cannot replace preventive security at the resource creation level.

D) Cloud Monitoring alerts provide visibility when public IPs are detected, but they are reactive rather than preventive. Alerts require follow-up actions and cannot automatically enforce compliance.

By combining public IP blocking and OS Login through organization policies, organizations achieve a proactive, scalable, and compliant security posture, reducing attack surfaces and supporting regulatory standards such as HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and ISO 27001.

Question 157:

An audit reveals that several BigQuery datasets containing sensitive customer data allow domain-wide access due to misconfigured IAM bindings. What is the best way to eliminate this risk?

A) Use IAM deny policies to block domain-wide access to BigQuery datasets
B) Disable BigQuery
C) Delete IAM roles for all developers
D) Use firewall rules

Correct Answer: A

Explanation:

A) Using IAM deny policies to block domain-wide access to BigQuery datasets is the most effective method for preventing unauthorized or overly broad access. In Google Cloud, IAM bindings like allUsers or allAuthenticatedUsers can grant access to anyone on the internet or anyone with a Google account, which poses significant security and compliance risks. Deny policies provide a preventative control that explicitly blocks these risky permissions, regardless of other allow policies in place. This ensures that sensitive data stored in BigQuery cannot be inadvertently exposed outside of approved organizational identities. Deny policies are enforceable at the organization or project level and provide centralized control, auditability, and consistency across all datasets.

B) Disabling BigQuery entirely is impractical because it prevents all legitimate business operations, including analytics, reporting, and machine learning workflows. It is overly restrictive and does not provide the granularity required to protect sensitive datasets.

C) Deleting IAM roles for all developers is excessively broad and would break legitimate workflows. Developers need access to perform analytics, build pipelines, or integrate BigQuery with other services. Removing their roles entirely is not aligned with least privilege principles.

D) Firewall rules are network-level controls and do not influence IAM policies or dataset access. They cannot prevent users from accessing BigQuery datasets via the API if permissions are granteD)

By implementing IAM deny policies, organizations gain precise, enforceable controls over dataset access, mitigate the risk of data exposure, and maintain compliance with frameworks such as GDPR, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and ISO 27001. This approach allows authorized users to continue working without disruption while preventing risky configurations and domain-wide sharing of sensitive information.

Question 158:

You need to ensure that Cloud KMS keys used for data encryption in production cannot be disabled or destroyed by developers, even those with high-level project roles. How do you enforce this?

A) Apply IAM deny policies preventing key disablement and destruction
B) Remove all IAM roles
C) Use VPC Service Controls
D) Use private service access

Correct Answer: A

Explanation:

A) Applying IAM deny policies to prevent disabling, destroying, or altering Cloud KMS keys is the most effective and enforceable approach to safeguard critical cryptographic assets in Google ClouD) Customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK) are central to securing sensitive data, as they provide organizations with full control over encryption, key rotation, and auditing. IAM deny policies are unique because they explicitly override allowed permissions, meaning that even principals with high-level roles, such as Owner or Editor, cannot perform the denied actions unless explicitly permitteD) This is a vital safeguard because keys that are disabled, destroyed, or modified inappropriately could render encrypted data inaccessible, break applications, or violate regulatory compliance requirements.

In regulated industries, including finance, healthcare, and government sectors, the integrity and availability of encryption keys are legally requireD) For example, HIPAA mandates that sensitive health data be encrypted and that cryptographic controls are auditable, while PCI-DSS and ISO 27001 require controls to prevent unauthorized modification or deletion of cryptographic keys. By implementing IAM deny policies at the organization or project level, administrators can enforce a consistent policy across all environments, ensuring that only designated principals—such as a dedicated security or operations team—can perform destructive operations on keys. Deny policies also integrate seamlessly with Cloud Audit Logs, providing a detailed record of attempted actions, which can be correlated for compliance audits and forensic investigations. This proactive, preventive control reduces the risk of accidental or malicious compromise and reinforces zero-trust principles by enforcing strict separation of duties between operational staff and key management privileges.

B) Removing all IAM roles from users and service accounts might seem like a brute-force method to prevent key misuse, but it is not practical or safe in production environments. Roles grant users and service accounts the necessary permissions to interact with KMS for legitimate operational tasks, such as key creation, encryption, decryption, and rotation. Revoking all roles would immediately break applications and workflows, potentially causing downtime and business disruption. Moreover, it would not allow for granular control, leaving administrators without a mechanism to enforce least privilege while maintaining functionality. Effective key management requires precision: the right roles assigned to the right principals combined with deny policies for destructive actions provide both operational capability and security.

C) VPC Service Controls (VPC-SC) are an important security tool in Google Cloud for preventing data exfiltration and controlling API access from untrusted networks. However, they are network-focused and do not enforce restrictions on KMS administrative actions. While VPC-SC can ensure that KMS API calls only originate from trusted networks, they cannot prevent a user with sufficient IAM permissions from disabling, destroying, or otherwise modifying keys. Therefore, relying solely on VPC-SC for cryptographic key protection is insufficient, as it addresses data in transit risks rather than governance over the key lifecycle itself.

D) Private Service Access allows VPC networks to securely connect to Google-managed services over private IP addresses, avoiding exposure to the public internet. While this helps reduce attack surfaces for network-level threats, it does not impose restrictions on KMS operations such as disabling or destroying keys. Private service access is complementary for network security but irrelevant for enforcing lifecycle policies or regulatory compliance for encryption keys.

In conclusion, IAM deny policies represent a precise, scalable, and enforceable method for protecting Cloud KMS keys. They ensure that destructive actions are blocked even from highly privileged users, maintaining cryptographic stability and supporting compliance with regulatory frameworks such as HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and ISO 27001. Removing all IAM roles is operationally disruptive, VPC Service Controls focus on network security rather than key administration, and Private Service Access addresses network connectivity but not cryptographic governance. Implementing deny policies alongside audit logging and role segregation provides organizations with a robust key management framework that balances security, compliance, and operational continuity. This approach minimizes the risk of accidental or malicious compromise, enforces zero-trust principles, and guarantees that sensitive data remains encrypted and accessible only under controlled, auditable conditions.

Question 159:

Your SOC requires that all anomalous IAM activity across all projects be automatically escalated with contextual details. What is the correct GCP-native solution?

A) Security Command Center with Event Threat Detection and automated alerting
B) Manual log review
C) Dashboard-only monitoring
D) Firewall logs

Correct Answer: A

Explanation:

A) Security Command Center (SCC) with Event Threat Detection (ETD) and automated alerting provides a comprehensive, proactive, and scalable approach to monitoring identity and access activity in Google ClouD) ETD continuously analyzes IAM audit logs, identifying anomalies such as suspicious privilege escalation, unusual login patterns, access from atypical geolocations, or usage of service accounts outside normal operational patterns. These anomalies could indicate compromised credentials, insider threats, or misconfigurations that might be exploited by attackers. By integrating ETD with automated alerting through Pub/Sub and Cloud Monitoring, organizations can trigger immediate responses, such as notifying security teams, invoking remediation workflows, or temporarily revoking access. This ensures rapid detection and mitigation of security incidents while reducing the operational burden of manual log review. SCC’s integration with Cloud Functions allows security teams to implement programmatic remediation actions, like disabling anomalous service accounts or enforcing additional authentication challenges, which strengthens the organization’s security posture and enforces least-privilege principles. Additionally, SCC provides centralized visibility across multiple projects and organizational units, correlating IAM events with other findings such as misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, and policy violations. This correlation improves context for security incidents, enabling analysts to prioritize high-risk alerts and reduce noise from false positives.

B) Manual log review, while traditionally used in security operations, is insufficient for detecting identity-based threats in modern cloud environments. IAM audit logs can generate thousands of entries per day across multiple projects and regions, making human review slow, error-prone, and resource-intensive. Threats such as service account impersonation or anomalous privilege escalation can easily be missed without automated analysis. Manual processes also do not provide real-time detection, which means that by the time a human analyst identifies a potential anomaly, an attacker may have already exploited the compromise. In addition, manual reviews lack standardization and cannot scale effectively in large, dynamic organizations with hundreds or thousands of users and service accounts. Consequently, relying on manual review alone is incompatible with the rapid threat landscape faced by cloud-native enterprises.

C) Dashboard-only monitoring provides visibility into metrics and trends but is fundamentally passive. Dashboards display historical data and aggregate statistics, allowing security teams to visualize IAM usage patterns and anomalies after the fact. However, dashboards do not provide automated detection, real-time alerting, or actionable insights. Analysts must interpret patterns manually, which is inefficient and introduces delays in response. In dynamic cloud environments, where changes can occur at any time, relying solely on dashboards is insufficient to detect and respond to malicious or anomalous activity quickly enough to prevent compromise or regulatory violations.

D) Firewall logs capture network-level activity and can indicate attempts to reach services or unauthorized network traffiC) While useful for detecting lateral movement or network-based threats, firewall logs are limited in scope and cannot capture IAM-specific anomalies, such as unusual service account usage, privilege escalation, or identity misconfigurations. Therefore, they cannot provide the granularity or context needed for identity threat detection and are complementary at best when combined with SCC and ETD, rather than serving as a primary control.

In conclusion, Security Command Center with Event Threat Detection and automated alerting provides the most effective and scalable method for identity threat detection in Google ClouD) Manual log reviews are slow and error-prone, dashboards are passive and reactive, and firewall logs do not capture identity anomalies. By combining SCC with ETD, organizations gain proactive, real-time detection, automated response capabilities, and centralized visibility. This approach supports zero-trust principles, ensures compliance with frameworks such as SOC 2, HIPAA, and ISO 27001, and allows security teams to detect and respond to suspicious activity quickly, minimizing risk and maintaining operational resilience in cloud environments.

Question 160:

Your compliance department requires immutable logging for all admin actions for at least seven years. What configuration ensures this?

A) Cloud Logging log buckets with retention lock enabled
B) Cloud Storage bucket
C) Local exports
D) Cloud Monitoring logs

Correct Answer: A

Explanation:

A) Cloud Logging log buckets with retention lock enabled provide a secure, tamper-resistant mechanism to store audit and operational logs in Google ClouD) Retention lock ensures that once logs are written, they cannot be deleted or altered until the retention period expires, providing a WORM-like (Write Once, Read Many) storage model. This immutability is critical for compliance with regulatory frameworks such as PCI-DSS, HIPAA, SOC 2, and ISO 27001, which require verifiable, tamper-proof records of operational events, access activity, and security-relevant incidents. By centralizing logs in Cloud Logging buckets with retention lock, organizations gain a scalable solution for audit and forensic investigations. These buckets can store logs from multiple services—including Cloud Audit Logs, VPC Flow Logs, Cloud Storage access logs, and more—ensuring that all security-relevant events are retained securely. Integration with Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems or Security Command Center allows analysts to correlate events, perform anomaly detection, and trigger automated alerts, all while knowing the underlying log data is immutable. Furthermore, retention lock can be combined with Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK) for additional cryptographic control, ensuring both integrity and confidentiality of log datA)

B) While Cloud Storage buckets can be used to store logs, they do not inherently provide immutability unless additional features like Object Versioning and Bucket Lock are configureD) Without these features, logs can be modified or deleted by users with sufficient permissions, potentially compromising forensic investigations or regulatory compliance. Using plain Cloud Storage alone as a log repository is insufficient for environments that require auditable, tamper-proof records, as it lacks the integrated retention lock policies and monitoring capabilities offered by Cloud Logging. Moreover, managing retention and immutability manually across multiple buckets can become operationally complex, particularly in large organizations with dozens or hundreds of projects.

C) Local exports of logs—such as storing log files on on-premises servers or virtual machines—offer some control but lack true tamper resistance. Local systems can be accidentally or maliciously altered, deleted, or corrupted, and maintaining cryptographic integrity across distributed storage introduces operational challenges. Additionally, local log storage does not easily scale with high-volume cloud environments and is prone to latency and reliability issues, making it unsuitable for long-term, auditable retention. Auditability and compliance reporting require centralized, controlled, and immutable storage, which local exports cannot guarantee.

D) Cloud Monitoring logs focus on performance metrics, system health, and operational trends rather than providing a tamper-proof record of events or user actions. Metrics are important for operational visibility but are not designed for compliance-driven auditing, as they do not record detailed access events, API calls, or security-related activity. They also do not offer retention lock or WORM-like storage, meaning they cannot satisfy regulatory requirements for immutable log retention or forensic investigations. Monitoring logs are complementary to audit logs but cannot replace secure, locked log buckets for compliance purposes.

In conclusion, Cloud Logging log buckets with retention lock enabled are the most reliable and scalable method to store immutable logs in Google ClouD) They provide centralized, tamper-proof storage with built-in compliance support, integrating with SIEM and auditing systems for proactive security monitoring. In contrast, plain Cloud Storage buckets, local exports, or Cloud Monitoring logs either lack immutability, scale, or audit integrity. Using retention-locked log buckets ensures that organizations meet regulatory requirements, maintain forensic readiness, and safeguard against accidental or malicious tampering of critical operational and security logs. This approach forms the foundation of a compliant and secure cloud logging strategy, providing confidence in the integrity and availability of log data for audits, investigations, and continuous security monitoring.