PCSE Multiple Select — 50 Questions

Question 1

A company must store API keys and database credentials securely in Google Cloud. They need automatic rotation of these secrets every 30 days, with notifications sent to a security team after each rotation. Which services should they use? (Choose TWO).

Choose an answer to begin — your selection is scored in the full session.

Accepted Answer

Secret Manager. Secret Manager provides a native API for storing secrets and supports automatic rotation via a rotation period and Pub/Sub notifications. Cloud Functions can be triggered by the Pub/Sub message to perform any additional actions (e.g., updating applications). Cloud KMS manages encryption keys, not secrets. Cloud Scheduler can trigger manual rotation but is not required with automatic rotation. Compute Engine is not a service for secrets management.

Answer

Cloud Scheduler

Answer

Compute Engine

Answer

Cloud KMS

Question 2

A multinational company is migrating sensitive workloads to Google Cloud and must comply with GDPR data residency requirements. Which TWO actions ensure data remains stored only within the European Union? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Define an Organization Policy with constraints/gcp.resourceLocations to allow resource creation only in EU regions.. The Organization Policy constraint `gcp.resourceLocations` explicitly restricts the Google Cloud regions where resources can be created. By setting this constraint to allow only EU regions (e.g., `europe-west1`, `europe-west4`), you enforce that all new resources are provisioned within the European Union, directly meeting GDPR data residency requirements. This policy is evaluated at resource creation time and prevents any resource from being deployed outside the allowed locations.

Answer

Enable Cloud Audit Logs with export to a BigQuery dataset in the EU region.

Answer

Use Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP) to scan for sensitive data and verify it remains in the EU.

Answer

Use Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK) stored in a Cloud KMS key ring located in the EU.

Question 3

A company wants to use Private Service Connect to publish a managed service (e.g., a custom application) so that consumers can access it privately within Google Cloud. Which THREE resources are involved in this setup?

Accepted Answer

PSC endpoint (forwarding rule). Private Service Connect involves creating a service attachment on the producer side (the managed service), which is then accessible via a PSC endpoint in the consumer's VPC. DNS configuration is needed to resolve the endpoint's IP address. IAM roles control who can create endpoints.

Answer

Cloud NAT gateway

Answer

VPC peering

Question 4

A security engineer wants to ensure that sensitive data in BigQuery is masked for analysts but visible in full to data stewards. Which two components must be used together? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Data Catalog taxonomy with policy tags. BigQuery column-level security requires a Data Catalog taxonomy with policy tags, and then BigQuery Data Policy to define masking rules (e.g., email masking). Policy tags alone provide access control but not masking; data policies provide the masking.

Answer

Cloud DLP de-identification templates

Answer

IAM roles with conditions on table

Answer

Cloud KMS key for encryption

Question 5

Which two authentication methods are available for applications to authenticate to Google Cloud APIs without using a service account key? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Compute Engine metadata server default service account token. The Compute Engine metadata server provides a default service account token that applications running on Compute Engine can use to authenticate to Google Cloud APIs without needing to manage a service account key file. This token is automatically obtained from the metadata server at http://metadata.google.internal/computeMetadata/v1/instance/service-accounts/default/token, and it is rotated automatically by Google, eliminating the need for key storage and rotation.

Answer

API key

Answer

OAuth 2.0 client ID

Answer

Service account key

Question 6

Which TWO practices help implement the principle of least privilege when configuring access to Google Cloud resources? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Create custom roles that include only the specific permissions needed.. Creating custom roles allows you to define a precise set of permissions, ensuring that a principal has only the minimum permissions required to perform their job function. This directly implements the principle of least privilege by avoiding the broad permissions often included in predefined roles.

Answer

Grant roles at the organization level to simplify administration.

Answer

Use a single service account for all Cloud Functions in a project to simplify key management.

Answer

Grant IAM roles directly to individual users for better traceability.

Question 7

Which THREE components are required to configure VPC Flow Logs for a Compute Engine instance?

Accepted Answer

Enable VPC Flow Logs on the subnet. VPC Flow Logs capture network traffic metadata at the subnet level. Enabling flow logs on the subnet (A) is the primary configuration step that activates logging for all VM instances within that subnet. The VM's service account must have the compute.instances.get permission (B) to allow the flow log agent to retrieve instance metadata required for log entries. A VM with a network interface in the subnet (D) is necessary because flow logs are generated per network interface; without a VM in the subnet, there is no traffic to log.

Answer

A log sink to export logs to BigQuery

Answer

A metadata server to store logs

Question 8

A company wants to ensure compliance with PCI DSS by monitoring access to BigQuery datasets containing sensitive data. They need to log all read operations and enable real-time alerting for anomalous access. Which TWO actions should they take? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Create a log sink to export BigQuery Data Access logs to Pub/Sub.. BigQuery Data Access logs record read operations but are not enabled by default. To enable them, you must explicitly enable Data Access logs for BigQuery. For real-time alerting, you can export logs to Pub/Sub and process them with a Cloud Function.

Answer

Enable Admin Activity logs for BigQuery.

Answer

Use Security Command Center to detect sensitive data access.

Answer

Create a BigQuery view to restrict access to sensitive columns.

Question 9

Which THREE are best practices for managing encryption keys in Google Cloud?

Accepted Answer

Enable automatic rotation for keys that are used for encryption.. Cloud KMS supports automatic key rotation, which reduces the risk of key compromise by ensuring that encryption keys are periodically replaced without manual intervention. Automatic rotation creates new key versions at a specified interval (e.g., every 90 days) and automatically uses the latest version for encryption, while decryption can still use older versions. This aligns with the security best practice of limiting the amount of data encrypted under a single key version.

Answer

Import key material from on-premises HSMs to avoid vendor lock-in.

Answer

Automatically delete old key versions once they expire.

Question 10

Which THREE of the following are best practices for using Cloud DLP to protect sensitive data in BigQuery?

Accepted Answer

Use inspection jobs to scan tables and identify sensitive data.. Cloud DLP inspection jobs can scan BigQuery tables to identify sensitive data types (e.g., PII, credit card numbers) using built-in infoTypes. This is a foundational step before applying any deidentification or access control measures, as it allows you to discover where sensitive data resides.

Answer

Store transformed data in a separate dataset with stricter access controls.

Answer

Encrypt the entire BigQuery table using CMEK.

Question 11

A security team wants to ensure that a Cloud KMS key is rotated automatically every 30 days and that previous key versions are available for decryption for at least 6 months. Which THREE steps should they take? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

Ensure that the key's destruction policy does not automatically destroy versions before 6 months. To meet the requirements: 1) Set rotation period to 30 days on the key; 2) Do not destroy old key versions until after 6 months; 3) The default destruction policy does not automatically destroy old versions, so they remain available. Setting a primary version is not required for rotation, and disabling rotation is contrary.

Answer

Manually rotate the key every 30 days using a Cloud Function

Answer

Configure the key's `next_rotation_time` to start rotation immediately

Question 12

An incident responder needs to collect forensic evidence from a compromised Compute Engine instance for later analysis. They want to preserve disk state and network logs. Which THREE actions should they take?

Accepted Answer

Export and analyze VPC Flow Logs for the instance's network traffic.. Creating a disk snapshot captures the disk state including deleted files. Analyzing VPC Flow Logs can reveal network connections. Isolating the instance with a firewall rule prevents further damage. Powering off the instance may alter evidence. Deleting the instance loses evidence. Cloning the instance may preserve some state but is not standard forensic practice.

Answer

Delete the instance to stop billing.

Answer

Power off the instance to prevent further compromise.

Question 13

A company is using Security Command Center (SCC) Premium tier and wants to automatically remediate certain high-severity findings. Which two services can be used together to achieve this? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Pub/Sub. SCC findings can be sent to Pub/Sub, which then triggers a Cloud Function (or Cloud Run) that performs automated remediation actions. Cloud Functions can be used for lightweight automation. Cloud Scheduler is for cron jobs, not event-driven. Dataflow is for data processing. IAM is for access control.

Answer

Dataflow

Answer

Cloud Scheduler

Answer

Cloud IAM

Question 14

A multinational organization uses Chronicle SIEM to aggregate and analyze security logs from multiple GCP projects and on-premises systems. The security team wants to detect a known threat pattern: a user authenticating from an anomalous geographic location followed by a large data egress from a Compute Engine instance within 10 minutes. Which three steps are necessary to create this detection? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

Ingest Cloud Audit Logs and VPC Flow Logs into Chronicle via forwarders or native integration. Chronicle uses YARA-L rules to detect patterns across different log sources. UDM normalizes logs into a common schema. The rule can reference events from multiple log types (e.g., authentication logs and network logs) and define temporal relationships.

Answer

Configure a BigQuery export of VPC Flow Logs for long-term analysis

Answer

Enable the Standard tier of Security Command Center to generate finding notifications

Question 15

A gaming company deploys a multiplayer game backend on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) with multiple microservices. The operations team needs to collect structured logs from containers, analyze them in real-time for anomalies, and store them for 30 days for compliance. They also need to monitor custom application metrics (e.g., player count per game server). Which three Google Cloud services should they use? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

Cloud Logging to collect container logs and store them for 30 days using a log bucket retention policy. Cloud Logging collects and stores logs, Cloud Monitoring collects metrics and supports custom metrics, and Chronicle can analyze logs for anomalies in real-time. BigQuery is for long-term analysis but not real-time anomaly detection.

Answer

BigQuery to store logs for 30 days and run real-time queries

Answer

Cloud SQL to store application metrics

Question 16

Your company needs to implement real-time monitoring of security events from Google Cloud resources. They want to ingest logs into a third-party SIEM system. Which two services should they use together? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Cloud Logging log sink with Pub/Sub destination. Cloud Logging can export logs to Pub/Sub, and a subscriber (SIEM connector) can ingest them. Chronicle is a Google SIEM, but the question asks for third-party SIEM integration.

Answer

Cloud Storage export

Answer

Chronicle SIEM

Answer

BigQuery export

Question 17

A financial services company is migrating to Google Cloud and needs to enforce strict security controls. They want to ensure that: 1) No service account keys are created. 2) All Compute Engine instances must be created with Shielded VM enabled. 3) Only users from the corporate domain (example.com) can be granted IAM roles. Which THREE Organization Policy constraints must be used? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

constraints/iam.allowedPolicyMemberDomains. The three constraints are: constraints/iam.disableServiceAccountKeyCreation (prevents key creation), constraints/compute.requireShieldedVm (requires Shielded VM), and constraints/iam.allowedPolicyMemberDomains (restricts IAM members to specific domains). The other constraints are not relevant: constraints/compute.restrictCloudArmorPolicies is about Cloud Armor policies, and constraints/compute.requireOsLogin is about OS Login.

Answer

constraints/compute.requireOsLogin

Answer

constraints/compute.restrictCloudArmorPolicies

Question 18

A company needs to grant developers the ability to deploy applications to App Engine, but they should not be able to modify IAM policies. Which two roles should be assigned to the developers? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

roles/appengine.serviceAdmin. The correct roles are App Engine Deployer and App Engine Service Admin. App Engine Admin includes IAM policy modification.

Answer

roles/owner

Answer

roles/appengine.appViewer

Answer

roles/appengine.appAdmin

Question 19

A company is implementing data loss prevention (DLP) for BigQuery. Which THREE capabilities are provided by Cloud DLP? (Choose THREE.)

Accepted Answer

Redacting sensitive data in query results.. Cloud DLP can inspect and redact sensitive data directly in BigQuery query results. When you configure a DLP job or use the DLP API with BigQuery, you can specify infoTypes to detect and then redact matching values before returning the results to the user, preventing exposure of sensitive information like credit card numbers or PII.

Answer

Auditing all queries that access sensitive columns.

Answer

Encrypting entire tables with customer-managed keys.

Question 20

Which TWO options are required to use Cloud DLP to successfully inspect data in a Cloud Storage bucket?

Accepted Answer

A service account with roles/storage.objectViewer to read the bucket.. Cloud DLP requires read access to the Cloud Storage bucket to inspect objects. The service account used by the DLP job must have the roles/storage.objectViewer IAM role, which grants permission to list and read objects without needing to download them. This ensures the DLP API can access the data for content inspection.

Answer

A Cloud Function to send each file to the DLP API.

Answer

The bucket must be in the same project as the DLP job.

Answer

A Pub/Sub topic to receive inspection results.