Google Professional Cloud Security Engineer

The Google Professional Cloud Security Engineer certification is a professional-level certification offered by Google Cloud Platform (GCP). It is designed for individuals who have expertise in using GCP to design, develop, and manage secure infrastructure and applications.

To earn the certification, candidates must pass a two-part exam. The first part is a multiple-choice exam that covers foundational security concepts and best practices, as well as GCP-specific security tools and technologies. The second part is a practical exam that tests candidates’ ability to use GCP to design and implement secure solutions.

To prepare for the exam, candidates should have a deep understanding of security principles and best practices, as well as experience using GCP to implement secure solutions. Google offers several training resources, including online courses, documentation, and hands-on labs, to help candidates prepare for the exam.

Once certified, individuals can demonstrate their expertise in designing and managing secure solutions on GCP, which can be valuable for career advancement and attracting new clients.

Recommended Experience

Google recommends that candidates who are planning to take the exam should have at least three years of industry experience, including a minimum of one year of experience in designing and managing solutions using GCP.

Skills Validation

The Professional Cloud Security Engineer exam assesses the candidates ability in:

• Configuring access within a cloud solution environment
• Configuring network security
• Ensuring data protection
• Managing operations within a cloud solution environment
• Ensuring compliance

Google Professional Cloud Security Engineer Interview Questions

Practice and Prepare with the latest and updated Google Professional Cloud Security Engineer Interview Questions.

Professional Cloud Security Engineer Exam Details

Google Professional Cloud Security Engineer (GCP) exam will have both multiple select and multiple-choice type of questions. To complete this candidates will be given 2 hours during the exam. For this exam, candidates have to score 70% to get through the exam. However, the exam is available in the English language and it will cost you $200 USD.

Scheduling the exam

For Google Professional Cloud Security Engineer certification exam candidates have to go on the Official Google Cloud website.

• Candidates will need a Web assessor account. 
• Create the account with your personal email address and not your work address.
• Check the catalogue and register for the exam you want to apply for.
• Choose the exam centre i.e. Kryterion Testing Centre.
• When you register for an exam, you will need to schedule an exam time at a Kryterion testing centre that is convenient for you. 

Google Professional Cloud Security Practice Exam Questions

1. What is the purpose of a VPC peering connection in Google Cloud Platform?
A) To create a secure connection between two different VPC networks
B) To connect a VPC network to an on-premises network
C) To allow external access to a VPC network
D) To share resources between two different VPC networks

2. Which of the following encryption types does Google Cloud Storage use by default to encrypt objects at rest?
A) AES-128
B) RSA-2048
C) AES-256
D) RSA-4096

3. Which Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM) role grants the ability to manage access control for Google Cloud resources at the project level?
A) Project Editor
B) Project Owner
C) Project Viewer
D) Project IAM Admin

4. Which tool in Google Cloud Security Command Center provides real-time threat detection and response?
A) Security Health Analytics
B) Container Security
C) Web Security Scanner
D) Event Threat Detection

5. Which of the following is not a best practice for securing Google Cloud Platform resources?
A) Use strong passwords and enable two-factor authentication (2FA)
B) Grant excessive permissions to users to minimize their access limitations
C) Use Google-managed SSL certificates for secure communication
D) Use VPC Service Controls to limit access to sensitive resources

Answers:

1. A) To create a secure connection between two different VPC networks

2. C) AES-256

3. B) Project Owner

4. D) Event Threat Detection

5. B) Grant excessive permissions to users to minimize their access limitations

It’s important to note that the actual exam questions may be different from these sample questions, and Google recommends reviewing their official study materials for a comprehensive understanding of the exam topics.

Course Structure

Google Professional Cloud Security Engineer Course covers the following domains:

Topic 1: Configuring access (27%)

1.1 Managing Cloud Identity. Considerations include:

• Configuring Google Cloud Directory Sync and third-party connectors (Google Documentation: Set up Integration Connectors)
• Management of super administrator account (Google Documentation: Super administrator account best practices, Creating and managing organizations)
• Automating the user lifecycle management process (Google Documentation: Object Lifecycle Management)
• Administering user accounts and groups programmatically (Google Documentation: Managing users programmatically)
• Configuring Workforce Identity Federation (Google Documentation: Configure Workforce Identity Federation)

1.2 Managing service accounts. Considerations include:

• Securing and protecting service accounts (including default service accounts) (Google Documentation: Best practices for using service accounts)
• Identification of scenarios requiring service accounts (Google Documentation: Understanding service accounts, Service accounts)
• Creating, disabling, and authorizing service accounts (Google Documentation: Disable and enable service accounts)
• Securing, auditing and mitigating the usage of service account keys (Google Documentation: Best practices for managing service account keys)
• Managing and creating short-lived credentials (Google Documentation: Create short-lived credentials for a service account)
• Configuring Workload Identity Federation (Google Documentation: Configure Workload Identity Federation with AWS or Azure)
• Managing service account impersonation (Google Documentation: Service account impersonation)

1.3 Managing authentication.

• Creating a password and session management policy for user accounts
• Setting up Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) and OAuth (Google Documentation: Signing in users with SAML)
• Configuring and enforcing two-step authentication (Google Documentation: Multi-factor authentication (MFA))

1.4 Managing and implementing authorization controls. Considerations include:

• Managing privileged roles and separation of duties with Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles and permissions (Google Documentation: Separation of duties and Identity and Access Management roles)
• Managing IAM and access control list (ACL) permissions (Google Documentation: Access control lists (ACLs))
• Granting permissions to different types of identities, including using IAM conditions and IAM deny policies (Google Documentation: IAM Overview)
• Designing identity roles at the organization, folder, project, and resource level (Google Documentation: Using resource hierarchy for access control)
• Configuring Access Context Manager (Google Documentation: Access Context Manager Overview)
• Applying Policy Intelligence for better permission management (Google Documentation: Policy Intelligence overview)
• Managing permissions through groups (Google Documentation: Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations)

1.5 Defining resource hierarchy.

• Creating and managing organizations (Google Documentation: Creating and managing organizations)
• Managing organization policies for organization folders, projects, and resources (Google Documentation: Creating and managing organization policies)
• Using resource hierarchy for access control and permissions inheritance (Google Documentation: Using resource hierarchy for access control)

Topic 2: Securing communications and establishing boundary protection (21%)

2.1 Designing and configuring perimeter security. Considerations include:

• Configuring network perimeter controls (firewall rules, hierarchical firewalls, Identity-Aware Proxy [IAP], load balancers, and Certificate Authority Service) (Google Documentation: Setting up IAP for Compute Engine, Using IAP for TCP forwarding)
• Differentiating between private and public IP addressing (Google Documentation: IP addresses)
• Configuring web application firewall (Google Cloud Armor) (Google Documentation: Google Cloud Armor preconfigured WAF rules overview)
• Deploying Secure Web Proxy (Google Documentation: Deploy a Secure Web Proxy instance)
• Configuring Cloud DNS security settings (Google Documentation: Manage DNSSEC configuration)
• Continually monitoring and restricting configured APIs (Google Documentation: Introduction to the Cloud Monitoring API)

2.2 Configuring boundary segmentation. Considerations include:

• Configuring security properties of a VPC network, VPC peering, Shared VPC, and firewall rules (Google Documentation: VPC Network Peering)
• Configuring network isolation and data encapsulation for N-tier application design (Google Documentation: Best practices and reference architectures for VPC design)
• Configuring VPC Service Controls (Google Documentation: Overview of VPC Service Controls)

2.3 Establish private connectivity. 

• Designing and configuring private connectivity between VPC networks and Google Cloud projects (Shared VPC, VPC peering, and Private Google Access for on-premises hosts) (Google Documentation: Configure Private Google Access for on-premises hosts)
• Designing and configuring private connectivity between data centers and VPC network (HA-VPN, IPsec, MACsec, and Cloud Interconnect) (Google Documentation: Cloud Interconnect overview)
• Establishing private connectivity between VPC and Google APIs (Private Google Access, Private Google Access for on-premises hosts, restricted Google access, Private Service Connect) (Google Documentation: Configuring Private Google Access, Private access options for services)
• Using Cloud NAT to enable outbound traffic (Google Documentation: Cloud NAT overview)

Topic 3: Ensuring data protection (20%)

3.1 Protecting sensitive data and preventing data loss. Considerations include:

• Inspecting and redacting personally identifiable information (PII) (Google Documentation: Classification, redaction, and de-identification, De-identifying sensitive data)
• Ensuring continuous discovery of sensitive data (structured and unstructured)
• Configuring pseudonymization (Google Documentation: Pseudonymization)
• Configuring format-preserving substitution (Google Documentation: Transformation reference)
• Restricting access to BigQuery, Cloud Storage, and Cloud SQL datastores (Google Documentation: Restrict access with column-level access control)
• Securing secrets with Secret Manager Secret Manager overview)
• Protecting and managing compute instance metadata About VM metadata)

3.2 Managing encryption at rest, in transit, and in use. Considerations include:

• Understanding the use cases for Google default encryption, customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK) including customer-supplied encryption keys (CSEK), Cloud External Key Manager (EKM), and Cloud HSM (Google Documentation: Encrypt disks with customer-supplied encryption keys, Customer-Supplied Encryption Keys, Customer managed encryption keys (CMEK))
• Creating and managing encryption keys for CMEK, CSEK, and EKM (Google Documentation: Customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK))
• Applying Google’s encryption approach to use cases (Google Documentation: Encryption in transit)
• Configuring object lifecycle policies for Cloud Storage (Google Documentation: Object Lifecycle Management)
• Enabling Confidential Computing (Google Documentation: Confidential VM)

3.3 Planning for security and privacy in AI. Considerations include:

• Implementing security controls for AI/ML systems (e.g., protecting against unintentional exploitation of data or models) (Google Documentation: Preventing Data Exfiltration)
• Determining security requirements for IaaS-hosted and PaaS-hosted training models

Topic 4: Managing operations (22%)

4.1 Automating infrastructure and application security. Considerations include:

• Automating security scanning for Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) through a continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipeline (Google Documentation: Automatically scan workloads for known vulnerabilities)
• Configuring Binary Authorization to secure GKE clusters or Cloud Run (Google Documentation: Enable Binary Authorization for Cloud Run)
• Automating virtual machine image creation, hardening, maintenance, and patch management (Google Documentation: About Patch)
• Automating container image creation, verification, hardening, maintenance, and patch management (Google Documentation: Image management best practices)
• Managing policy and drift detection at scale (custom organization policies and custom modules for Security Health Analytics) (Google Documentation: Using custom modules with Security Health Analytics)

4.2 Configuring logging, monitoring, and detection. Considerations include:

• Configuring and analyzing network logs (firewall rule logs, VPC flow logs, packet mirroring, Cloud Intrusion Detection System [Cloud IDS], Log Analytics) (Google Documentation: VPC Flow Logs, Cloud IDS)
• Designing an effective logging strategy
• Logging, monitoring, responding to, and remediating security incidents (Google Documentation: Data incident response process)
• Designing secure access to logs (Google Documentation: Best practices for Cloud Audit Logs)
• Exporting logs to external security systems (Google Documentation: Scenarios for exporting Cloud Logging: Compliance requirements)
• Configuring and analyzing Google Cloud audit logs and data access logs (Google Documentation: Enable Data Access audit logs)
• Configuring log exports (log sinks and aggregated sinks) (Google Documentation: Collate and route organization- and folder-level logs to supported destinations)
• Configuring and monitoring Security Command Center (Google Documentation: Configure Security Command Center services)

Topic 5: Supporting compliance requirements (10%)

5.1 Determining regulatory requirements for the cloud. Considerations include:

• Determining concerns relative to compute, data, and network
• Evaluating the security shared responsibility model (Google Documentation: Shared responsibilities and shared fate on Google Cloud)
• Configuring security controls within cloud environments to support compliance requirements (regionalization of data and services) (Google Documentation: Regionalization and data residency)
• Restricting compute and data for regulatory compliance (Assured Workloads, organizational policies, Access Transparency, Access Approval) (Google Documentation: Assured Workloads, Access Transparency)
• Determining the Google Cloud environment in scope for regulatory compliance

Exam Policies

Google Cloud Certification provides exam policies to support the candidates by providing every detail related to the certification program. On this page, the candidates will get information about after the exam or before exam procedures. This includes:

Maintaining Google Cloud Certification

To maintain certification candidates must recertify their certification status. As all Google Cloud certifications are valid for two years from the date certified. So, you may attempt recertification starting 60 days prior to your certification expiration date. Any attempt to recertify or attempt the same exam while currently certified before this time period will result in a rejected attempt, forfeiture of any exam fees paid, possible revocation of your current certification as well as any other Google Cloud certifications, and possible suspension from the Google Certification Program.

Google Cloud Exam Retake Policy

Candidates who do not pass the exam on their first attempt must wait for a minimum of fourteen days before they can retake it. If they do not pass on their second attempt, they must wait for at least sixty days before retaking the exam. If they fail for a third time, they must wait for at least one year before attempting to retake the exam.

For More Queries Visit: Google Professional Cloud Security Engineer Exam FAQs

Preparation Guide for Professional Cloud Security Engineer Exam

Preparing for an exam is tough. It gets easy when you follow a guide. Here is the Google Professional Cloud Security Engineer Study Guide to set you on the right track for your certification:

1. Google Professional Cloud Security Engineer Training

Google provides training to candidates with the Security in Google Cloud Platform course. This course gives candidates a good understanding of the security controls and techniques on Google Cloud Platform. This provides lectures, demonstrations, and hands-on labs and helps candidates to explore and deploy the components of a secure Google Cloud solution. This will also help in learning mitigation techniques for attacks at many points in a Google Cloud-based infrastructure, including Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks, phishing attacks, and threats involving content classification and use. Candidates in this course will:

• Understand the Google approach to security Managing administrative identities using Cloud Identity. 
• Implement administrative access using Google Cloud Resource Manager, Cloud IAM. 
• They will implement IP traffic controls using VPC firewalls and Cloud Armor. 

2. Hands-on practice

The Professional Cloud Security Engineer exam assesses candidates’ technical proficiency in areas relevant to their job function. Therefore, candidates must have practical experience to adequately prepare for the exam. To assist candidates in gaining practical experience, Google Cloud offers hands-on labs through Qwiklabs. Additionally, Google Cloud provides the following resources to help candidates enhance their skills and knowledge:

• Google Cloud Free Tier
  • The Google Cloud Free Tier gives candidates free resources to learn about Google Cloud services by trying them on your own. This is for both beginner and professionals who need to learn the basics, or you’re an established customer and want to experiment with new solutions, the Google Cloud Free Tier has you covered.
• Security & Identity Fundamentals
  • Security is an inflexible feature of Google Cloud Platform services. However, GCP has developed specific tools for ensuring safety and identity across your projects. In Security and Identity Fundamental, candidates will get hands-on practice with GCP’s Identity and Access Management (IAM) service, which is the go-to for managing user and virtual machine accounts. They will get experience with network security by provisioning VPCs and VPNs, and learn what tools are available for security threat and data loss protections.

3. Additional resources

Hands-on labs: Networking in the Google Cloud

Cloud computing revolves around networking, which forms the foundation of Google Cloud, allowing all resources and services to interconnect. The importance of networking in Google Cloud is highlighted, and candidates can gain practical experience in essential networking services and specialized tools for building advanced networks. The course will also cover VPCs, enabling the creation of high-performance load balancers for enterprise-grade applications. By taking this course, candidates can acquire practical knowledge and skills necessary for building resilient networks right away.

4. Practice Tests

Preparing for the exam can be greatly enhanced by taking Google Professional Cloud Security Engineer Practice Exams. These tests help candidates identify their strengths and weaknesses, allowing them to focus on areas that require more attention. Through practice, candidates can improve their answering skills, ultimately saving valuable exam time. It is recommended to start practicing after completing each topic, as this provides a revision opportunity. Finding high-quality practice sources is critical to achieving success on the exam. 

Start preparing for Google Professional Cloud Security Engineer Exam Now!