Be able to select the right Google Cloud control for a stated compliance or security requirement: CMEK via Cloud KMS, VPC Service Controls, firewall rules, Cloud Armor, or audit logs. The most important thing is matching the control to the exact threat and regulatory obligation described.
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Domain overview
This domain covers designing Google Cloud architectures that protect data and meet regulatory obligations. Expect questions on CMEK and Cloud KMS, VPC firewall rules and hierarchical policies, VPC Service Controls perimeters, IAM least privilege, and audit logging. Scenarios are framed around HIPAA, GDPR, or data residency, and you must pick the control that satisfies the stated requirement.
Exam objectives
Choosing Cloud KMS CMEK versus Google-managed or CSEK encryption for data at rest
Using VPC firewall rules, hierarchical firewall policies, and Cloud Armor to restrict traffic
Applying VPC Service Controls perimeters and ingress/egress rules to prevent data exfiltration
Reading Cloud Audit Logs to determine why a resource change such as a firewall rule failed
Assuming CMEK alone satisfies compliance; HIPAA and GDPR also require access controls, audit logging, and network restrictions.
Confusing Cloud Armor, which filters HTTP(S) load balancer traffic, with VPC firewall rules that govern instance-level traffic.
Forgetting that a denied API call appears in audit logs with the specific IAM or policy reason, not as a silent failure.
Click any question to see the full explanation and answer options, or start a focused practice session above.
A company is migrating sensitive customer data to Google Cloud. They need to ensure data is encrypted at rest and in transit. Which Google Cloud service provides a centralized way to manage encryption keys used by Google Cloud services?
2A financial services company runs a multi-tier application on Compute Engine. They need to restrict network access so that only the web tier can communicate with the application tier, and only the application tier can access the database tier. All VMs are in the same VPC network. What is the most secure way to implement this?
3A healthcare organization uses Cloud Storage to store protected health information (PHI). They have a compliance requirement to ensure that all objects in the bucket are encrypted with a customer-managed key (CMK) that is rotated every 90 days. They also need to log all access to the bucket and detect anomalous access patterns. Which combination of Google Cloud services should they use?
4A multinational corporation operates in multiple regions and must comply with GDPR. They use Cloud Load Balancing to distribute traffic across regional backends. Their security team wants to block traffic from specific countries (e.g., non-EU countries) at the edge. What should they use?
5Which TWO are recommended practices for securing a Kubernetes Engine (GKE) cluster?
6A company is migrating its on-premises workloads to Google Cloud. They have strict compliance requirements that all data at rest must be encrypted with customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK). Which Google Cloud service should they use to manage the lifecycle of these keys?
7Which TWO of the following are valid methods to control access to Google Cloud resources using Identity and Access Management (IAM)?
8A company is deploying a multi-tier web application on Google Cloud. The application must comply with PCI DSS. Which combination of Google Cloud services should be used to restrict access to the database tier to only the application tier, while also encrypting data at rest and in transit?
9An organization is implementing a data loss prevention (DLP) strategy for sensitive data stored in Cloud Storage. They want to automatically detect and redact credit card numbers in CSV files uploaded to a specific bucket. Which TWO Google Cloud services should they combine to achieve this?
10Drag and drop the steps to configure a Cloud Load Balancer with a backend service consisting of Compute Engine instances into the correct order.
11Drag and drop the steps to set up a shared VPC in Google Cloud for a multi-project environment into the correct order.
12Match each GCP compute service to its characteristic.
13Match each GCP data processing service to its use case.
14A company is deploying a web application on Compute Engine. They want to ensure that only authenticated users can access the application. Which Google Cloud service should they use?
15A company stores sensitive customer data in Cloud Storage buckets. They want to ensure that access to these buckets is only allowed from within their VPC network. Which configuration should they use?
16A multinational corporation must comply with GDPR and requires that all customer data stored in BigQuery be encrypted using customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK) and that the keys are stored in a specific region. Which combination of steps should they take?
17A startup wants to grant a new employee read-only access to view all Compute Engine instances in a project. What is the minimum IAM role they should assign?
18A company runs a Kubernetes cluster on GKE. They need to ensure that pods cannot access Google Cloud APIs unless explicitly allowed through a service account. Which GKE feature should they use?
19An organization has a security policy that prohibits the use of external IP addresses on Compute Engine instances to reduce attack surface. They want to enforce this policy across all new and existing projects. Which approach should they use?
20A company wants to ensure that all access to their Cloud Storage bucket is logged for compliance purposes. Which type of audit log should they enable?
21A company is using Cloud Load Balancing to expose a web application. They want to protect against common web attacks like SQL injection and cross-site scripting. Which Google Cloud service should they configure?
22A financial services company must comply with PCI DSS. They use Cloud SQL for MySQL for transaction processing. They need to ensure that all data at rest is encrypted with keys generated and stored in a Hardware Security Module (HSM) and that key rotation occurs every 90 days. Which configuration should they use?
23A company uses Cloud KMS to encrypt sensitive data. They need to ensure that encryption key usage is audited and that keys are rotated automatically every 30 days. Which two actions should they take? (Choose two.)
24A company is designing a data processing pipeline in Google Cloud that must be HIPAA compliant. Which three security features should they implement? (Choose three.)
25A company wants to restrict data exfiltration from its Google Cloud projects by preventing resources from copying data to external IP addresses. Which service should they use?
26A data scientist needs read-only access to a Cloud Storage bucket containing training data. What is the least privileged IAM role to grant at the bucket level?
27A company wants to automatically rotate cryptographic keys on a schedule without manual intervention. Which service should they use?
28A company has a fleet of Compute Engine instances that need to access a Cloud Storage bucket. The security team requires that only instances in specific VPC networks can access the bucket, and that the data is encrypted in transit. How can this be achieved?
29A company hosts a web application on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and wants to protect against SQL injection attacks. Which service should they configure?
30A data engineer needs to analyze data in BigQuery but must mask personally identifiable information (PII) based on user roles. Which service should they use?
31After executing the command, a security review reveals that the service account sa-bucket-reader can also list buckets in the project, which was not intended. What is the most likely cause?
32The firewall rule 'allow-ssh' was not created. According to the audit log, what is the most likely reason?
33A company wants to restrict access to a Cloud Storage bucket so that only objects encrypted with a specific Cloud KMS key can be read. Which approach should they use?
34A security engineer is configuring VPC Service Controls to protect a project containing BigQuery datasets with PII. They want to prevent data exfiltration while allowing authorized users to query the data from outside the perimeter. Which configuration meets these requirements?
35A healthcare organization is storing sensitive patient data in Cloud Storage. They need to ensure that all objects are encrypted with a key managed by their on-premises HSM. Which encryption approach should they use?
36A company wants to use Cloud Armor to protect their HTTP load balancer from SQL injection attacks. Which rule action should they configure to block malicious requests?
37An organization is implementing a data loss prevention (DLP) strategy for Cloud Storage. They want to automatically scan new objects uploaded to a specific bucket and redact sensitive data. Which service and configuration should they use?
38A security team wants to receive alerts when a user attempts to grant the 'roles/owner' role to a member outside of the organization's domain. Which log filter should they use to create a log-based metric?
39Which THREE Google Cloud services can be used to implement a zero-trust architecture for network security? (Choose three.)
40A company is designing a VPC Service Controls perimeter to protect data stored in Google Cloud. They need to allow access from their on-premises network via a Cloud VPN tunnel while blocking all internet-based access. What is the most secure and manageable approach?
41A startup wants to encrypt data at rest in Cloud Storage using Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK). They have already created a Cloud KMS key ring and key. What additional step is required to enable CMEK for a new Cloud Storage bucket?
42A company is migrating to Google Cloud and needs to implement a least-privilege access model. Which THREE Google Cloud services or features support this goal? (Choose three.)
43A healthcare organization stores Protected Health Information (PHI) in Cloud SQL. They have implemented encryption at rest using CMEK and enforce TLS for all connections. To meet HIPAA compliance, they need to ensure that PHI cannot be exfiltrated from the Cloud SQL instance even if an application is compromised. The Cloud SQL instance is accessed by Compute Engine instances in the same VPC using private IPs. The security team wants to add an additional layer of defense against data exfiltration. What should they do?
44A small company wants to store sensitive files in Cloud Storage and ensure they are encrypted with a key that they control and rotate automatically every 90 days. They are currently using the default encryption provided by Google Cloud. They need a solution that is easy to manage and does not require manual key rotation. What should they do?
45A company uses Google Cloud Armor to protect their HTTP load balancer from OWASP Top 10 attacks. After deploying a security policy with pre-configured WAF rules, they notice that some legitimate user requests are being blocked because they match a rule incorrectly. The security team wants to fine-tune the rules to reduce false positives while maintaining strong protection. They also want to evaluate the impact of changes before enforcing them. What should they do?
46A financial services company is migrating a sensitive customer data application to Google Cloud. The application runs on Compute Engine VMs in a VPC. The security team requires that all data at rest in Cloud Storage and BigQuery must be encrypted with customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK). Additionally, the keys must be stored in a different project than the data, and access to the keys must be audited. The operations team has set up a CMEK key in Cloud KMS in a separate project, assigned the Cloud KMS CryptoKey Encrypter/Decrypter role to the data project's Compute Engine service account, and enabled Cloud Storage and BigQuery to use CMEK. However, when the application tries to read from Cloud Storage, it fails with 'Access Denied.' The Cloud KMS key is in project 'kms-proj' and the data is in project 'data-proj'. What is the most likely cause?
47A healthcare company stores patient records in a Cloud Storage bucket. Compliance requires that all data be encrypted with customer-managed keys, and that the company can revoke access to the data by disabling the key. They also need to audit every key usage. Which approach should they take?
48A healthcare company stores patient records in Cloud Storage and BigQuery. Auditors require that cryptographic keys used to protect this data are generated and stored on hardware security modules, that key material never leaves Google's infrastructure, and that the company retains the ability to control key rotation and revocation. The security team wants the least operational overhead while meeting these requirements. Which key management approach should the architect select?
49A financial services company runs a containerized trading platform on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). Compliance requires that all inter-pod traffic be encrypted without modifying application code, and that the encryption keys be managed by the company rather than Google. The security team wants to enforce this at the infrastructure level. Which approach should they take?
50A financial services firm runs a regulated workload in a Google Cloud organization. Compliance requires that no resource in any project can be created outside a defined set of approved regions, and that violations are blocked before resource creation rather than reported afterward. The organization has many projects and new projects are created frequently. Which approach should the architect implement?
51An engineering team runs workloads on Compute Engine instances in a single VPC. The security team wants the instances to reach Google APIs such as Cloud Storage and BigQuery without any traffic traversing the public internet, and without managing service account key files on disk. The architect must choose the configuration that meets both goals. Which approach should the architect recommend?
52A healthcare company stores patient records in Cloud Storage buckets across several projects. Compliance auditors require that no object can ever be made publicly readable, even by a project Owner, and that any attempt to do so must be blocked centrally. The security team must enforce this without breaking existing application access. What should they do?
53A financial services company runs a PCI-DSS regulated workload on Compute Engine. Auditors require that all administrative access to the VMs is brokered through a single, auditable control plane with short-lived credentials, and that no external IP addresses are assigned to the VMs. Which Google Cloud feature should the architect implement to meet these requirements?
54A multinational retailer must comply with a regulation stating that customer personal data collected in the European Union may not be stored or processed outside the EU, including by support staff. The company uses Google Cloud and wants a platform-level mechanism that enforces this at the data-residency level while still allowing the global analytics team to query aggregated, non-personal results. Which Google Cloud capability should the architect use as the foundation?
55A financial services firm runs a regulated workload on Compute Engine. Auditors require that all data at rest on persistent disks be encrypted with keys the firm controls and can revoke, and that key usage be logged independently of the project's Cloud Audit Logs. The firm's security policy forbids storing key material in the same project as the workload. Which approach meets these requirements?
56A healthcare company stores PHI in BigQuery. Compliance requires that analysts see masked values for patient names and MRNs, while a small data-engineering group must see unmasked values for pipeline troubleshooting. The policy must be enforced by BigQuery itself, independent of any application code. Which approach should the architect implement?
57A software company wants to give a third-party analytics vendor read access to a specific BigQuery dataset containing aggregated, non-sensitive sales data, without creating service account keys that the vendor must store and rotate. The security team also wants to be able to revoke access quickly and to see which vendor identities accessed the data. The vendor already uses its own identity provider that supports OpenID Connect. Which TWO approaches together meet these requirements? (Choose two.)
58A financial services firm stores sensitive customer records in Cloud Storage and must ensure that only identities in its corporate domain can read the objects, that no object can ever be made publicly accessible, and that access decisions are evaluated centrally. The firm wants the least administrative overhead while keeping these guarantees across many buckets created by different teams. What should the architect implement?
59An e-commerce company exposes a public API through an external HTTP(S) load balancer on Google Cloud. The security team wants to block traffic from known malicious IP ranges and apply rate limiting per client IP, while keeping legitimate customers unaffected. They want the least operational overhead and no changes to backend applications. What should they do?
60A media company runs a public web application behind a global external Application Load Balancer. They need to block traffic from specific countries subject to sanctions and rate-limit abusive clients, all without changing application code. Which Google Cloud service should the architect configure?
61A retail company is building a new application on Google Cloud. The security team requires that all data at rest be encrypted with keys the company manages, that key usage be auditable, and that the application on Compute Engine never store long-lived credentials on disk. The architect is selecting controls for the design. (Choose two.)
62A retail company is designing a Google Cloud landing zone for a regulated workload. They must ensure that encryption keys for Cloud Storage and BigQuery are generated and stored outside Google's infrastructure, with the ability to revoke access immediately. They also must retain detailed records of who accessed the data and when, for seven years. Which TWO configurations should the architect include? (Choose two.)
63A company needs to ensure that all data stored in Cloud Storage is encrypted at rest with keys that they control and can rotate on demand. They also need to maintain an audit trail of key usage. Which Google Cloud service should they use?
64A government agency must run sensitive analytics in BigQuery while ensuring that analysts can see aggregated results but never the raw values of specific personal data columns. Analysts use SQL and must not be able to bypass the restriction by writing their own queries. The agency also needs to record who queried which columns. Which combination should the architect use?
65A government agency must retain Cloud Storage objects for seven years in a bucket that also serves live traffic. Regulators require that no user, including project owners, can delete or shorten retention during that period. The architect needs a control that satisfies this. Which should the architect configure?
Be able to select the right Google Cloud control for a stated compliance or security requirement: CMEK via Cloud KMS, VPC Service Controls, firewall rules, Cloud Armor, or audit logs. The most important thing is matching the control to the exact threat and regulatory obligation described.
The Courseiva PCA question bank contains 65 questions in the Design for security and compliance domain, covering the 9% of the exam attributed to this domain in the official Google Cloud blueprint. Click any question to see the full explanation and answer breakdown.
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