ACE · domain
Configuring Access and Security
Practise Google Associate Cloud Engineer Configuring Access and Security practice questions — original exam-style scenarios with answer choices, explanations, and analysis of common mistakes.
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What to know about Configuring Access and Security
Configuring Access and Security questions test whether you can apply the concept in context, not just recognise a definition.
How the topic appears in realistic exam-style scenarios.
Which detail in the question changes the correct answer.
How to eliminate plausible but wrong options.
How to connect the question back to the wider exam objective.
Watch out for
Common Configuring Access and Security exam traps
- ▸Answering from memory before reading the full scenario.
- ▸Missing a constraint such as cost, availability, security, scope or command context.
- ▸Choosing a broad answer when the question asks for the most specific fix.
- ▸Ignoring why the wrong options are tempting.
Question index
All Configuring Access and Security questions (83)
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An engineer needs to allow HTTP traffic from the internet to a set of Compute Engine instances that have the network tag 'web-server'. The instances are in a VPC with a default firewall rule that denies all ingress. Which command creates the required firewall rule?
Medium2An engineer wants to create a VPC with a custom subnet mode and then create a subnet with Private Google Access enabled. Which two commands should they use? (Choose TWO.)
Medium3To meet compliance requirements, a company must encrypt all data at rest in Cloud SQL using customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK). What is required to enable CMEK on a Cloud SQL instance?
Medium4An organization wants to enforce that all Compute Engine instances in a project use customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK) for their boot disks. Which TWO steps should the security team take?
Medium5Which IAM role should be granted to a user to allow them to create and manage secrets in Secret Manager?
Easy6You need to allow inbound HTTP traffic to a set of Compute Engine instances that have the tag 'web-server'. All other inbound traffic should be denied. Which firewall rule configuration should you create?
Easy7A developer wants to allow a Compute Engine instance to access Cloud Storage without using a service account key file. What is the recommended approach?
Medium8An organization has a hierarchy: Organization -> Folder A -> Project 1. An IAM policy at the organization level grants roles/editor to user@example.com. A policy at Folder A denies roles/editor to the same user. What is the effective role for the user in Project 1?
Hard9An engineer needs to grant an external auditor read-only access to a subset of Cloud Storage buckets in a project. The auditor's identity is a Google account. Which IAM approach should the engineer use?
Medium10A company has a Cloud SQL instance with CMEK enabled. The Cloud KMS key used for encryption is accidentally disabled. What is the impact on the Cloud SQL instance?
Medium11You need to view the current IAM policy for a project named 'my-project' in JSON format. Which command should you use?
Easy12A security team wants to enable audit logging for all Data Access (ADMIN_READ, DATA_READ, DATA_WRITE) on a specific Google Cloud project. They plan to use gcloud commands to configure this. What is the correct approach?
Hard13An engineer is configuring a Cloud NAT to allow private Compute Engine instances to access the internet. After creating the Cloud Router and NAT gateway, the instances still cannot connect to the internet. What is the most likely missing configuration?
Hard14A DevOps engineer needs to grant a service account the ability to pull images from a specific Container Registry repository in project 'my-project'. The service account is in project 'other-project'. Which command should the engineer use?
Medium15A security engineer wants to audit all attempts to access a specific Cloud Storage bucket, including successful and failed read requests. Which THREE steps should they take? (Choose THREE)
Medium16A developer wants to create a service account for an application running on Compute Engine. The application needs to access Cloud Storage. What is the best practice for granting this access?
Medium17An engineer needs to view the current IAM policy for a project in JSON format. Which gcloud command should they use?
Easy18You are configuring a Cloud NAT to allow private Compute Engine instances to access the internet for updates. What other resource is required to set up Cloud NAT?
Medium19A security team wants to restrict access to a Cloud Storage bucket so that only objects encrypted with a specific CMEK key can be uploaded. Which three actions are needed? (Choose 3)
Medium20Which Google Cloud service provides a managed, scalable, and secure way to store API keys, passwords, and certificates?
Easy21A security team wants to ensure that all Compute Engine instances in a project automatically use a custom service account with minimal permissions. What must the engineer do when creating new instances?
Medium22A developer needs to store a database password in Secret Manager and then allow a Compute Engine instance to access it. The instance uses the default compute engine service account. Which role should be granted to the service account?
Medium23A company wants to use Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK) for a Cloud SQL instance. What must be done first?
Medium24An organization requires that all Compute Engine instances be created with a specific service account. Which organization policy can enforce this?
Medium25A company has a VPC with two subnets: subnet-a (10.0.1.0/24) and subnet-b (10.0.2.0/24). They want to allow traffic from instances in subnet-a to reach a specific instance in subnet-b only on TCP port 443. What is the most specific firewall rule to achieve this?
Hard26A company has a VPC with a subnet that has Private Google Access enabled. They want their Compute Engine instances to access Google APIs and services through internal IP addresses. Which additional configuration is required?
Medium27An engineer needs to audit all Data Access logs for a project to detect unauthorized access to sensitive data. The engineer must ensure that logs are retained for 5 years and are immutable. Which THREE steps should the engineer take?
Hard28You want to view the current IAM policy for a project in JSON format using the gcloud command-line tool. Which command should you run?
Easy29An engineer needs to view the current IAM policy for a project in JSON format to analyze bindings. Which command should be used?
Medium30An organization has multiple projects under a folder. They want to grant a network admin the ability to create firewall rules in all projects in the folder. Which IAM policy binding achieves this with least privilege?
Medium31You need to store a database password securely in Google Cloud. The password will be used by a Compute Engine instance. Which service should you use?
Easy32A company has an organization with multiple folders and projects. They want to audit all IAM policy changes across the entire organization. Which approach meets the requirement with minimal effort?
Hard33An engineer wants to create a Google-managed SSL certificate for an HTTPS load balancer. Which command should they use?
Medium34An engineer needs to grant a service account the ability to impersonate another service account when making API calls. Which IAM role should be assigned to the impersonating service account?
Medium35A team needs to create a new service account and grant it the roles/storage.objectViewer role on a project. Which two gcloud commands are required?
Medium36An engineer needs to allow a set of Compute Engine instances (with tag 'web-server') to receive traffic on port 443 from the internet. The VPC has a default network with default firewall rules. Which TWO actions should the engineer take? (Choose TWO)
Medium37An engineer needs to grant a service account the ability to start and stop Compute Engine instances in a specific project. The service account should not have permissions to delete instances or modify other resources. Which IAM role should be assigned?
Medium38An engineer needs to create a firewall rule that allows incoming HTTPS traffic only from a specific IP range to instances tagged 'web-server'. Which command should they use?
Medium39An engineer wants to create a Google-managed SSL certificate for a domain and attach it to an HTTPS load balancer. Which gcloud command should they use to create the certificate?
Easy40An engineer wants to view the current IAM policy for a project in JSON format. Which command should they use?
Medium41An engineer needs to grant an external auditor read-only access to view IAM policies on a GCP project. The auditor should not have access to any other resources. Which IAM role should be assigned?
Medium42A company wants to use Cloud NAT to allow private instances in a VPC to send outbound traffic to the internet and to receive inbound responses. Which two resources must be configured to set up Cloud NAT?
Medium43An organization has a folder hierarchy with multiple projects. They want to grant a support team the ability to view all IAM policies across the entire folder. What is the most efficient way?
Hard44A company has multiple VPC networks in their project. They want Compute Engine instances in one VPC to communicate with instances in another VPC using internal IP addresses. Which feature should they use?
Medium45A company has a Google Cloud organization with multiple folders and projects. The security team wants to audit all actions that create or modify IAM policies across the entire organization. Which type of audit log should they examine?
Hard46You need to add an IAM binding for a user to a project using the gcloud command. Which command should you use?
Easy47Which TWO of the following are valid ways to grant IAM roles to a service account for accessing a Cloud Storage bucket? (Select 2 correct answers)
Easy48An engineer wants to view the current IAM policy for a project. Which TWO commands will accomplish this?
Easy49A company needs to audit all actions that modify a Cloud Storage bucket. Which TWO steps should they take to enable this? (Choose 2 answers.)
Medium50An organization needs to audit all data access (read/write) to a Cloud Storage bucket for compliance. Which type of audit log should they enable?
Medium51A developer created a service account for an application running on a Compute Engine instance. The instance was started without specifying the service account. What must the developer do to make the application use the service account?
Hard52A company wants to automate the rotation of encryption keys for Cloud Storage buckets every 30 days. Which key type should be used?
Easy53You need to create a service account for a Compute Engine instance to allow it to access Cloud Storage objects. The service account should have minimal permissions. What is the recommended approach?
Medium54You need to create a Google-managed SSL certificate for an external HTTPS load balancer. The domain is 'www.example.com'. Which command creates the certificate?
Easy55An organization wants to enforce encryption at rest for all data in Cloud Storage using Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK). They have created a Cloud KMS key ring and key. What additional step is required when creating a new bucket to use CMEK?
Hard56Which of the following is required to enable Private Google Access on a subnet?
Easy57A company wants to implement a least-privilege security model for a service account that needs to read secrets from Secret Manager and publish messages to Pub/Sub. Which TWO IAM roles should be granted? (Choose TWO)
Hard58An engineer needs to enable Private Google Access for a subnet to allow instances without external IPs to access Google APIs and services. Which flag should be used when creating or updating the subnet?
Medium59A company wants to allow developers to create and manage secrets in Secret Manager, but prevent them from viewing secret values. Which TWO predefined roles should be combined to achieve this?
Hard60You need to grant a user the ability to view audit logs for a project but not modify any resources. Which predefined IAM role should you assign?
Easy61A security team wants to audit all Data Access attempts in a project for a specific Cloud Storage bucket, including who accessed which object and when. Which configuration is required?
Medium62An organization uses Organization Policies to restrict the use of certain IAM roles. The security team wants to audit all modifications to IAM policies across the organization, including at the project level. Which log type should be enabled and analyzed?
Hard63An organization wants to use Cloud NAT to allow private Compute Engine instances to access the internet for updates. They have a VPC with a custom subnet and a Cloud Router configured. However, instances cannot reach the internet. What is the most likely cause?
Hard64A company is using Cloud NAT to allow private Compute Engine instances to access the internet. They notice that traffic from some instances is not being NATed. What is the most likely cause?
Hard65A security engineer needs to ensure that Compute Engine instances in a VPC can only communicate with each other on port 443 and cannot receive traffic from the internet. The VPC has a default network with default firewall rules. What should the engineer do?
Medium66What is the primary benefit of using a Google-managed SSL certificate for an HTTPS Load Balancer?
Easy67A developer wants to automate the creation of a service account and assign it a role using the gcloud command-line tool. Which TWO commands are needed? (Choose 2 answers.)
Medium68Which IAM role should be granted to a service account to allow it to access a secret stored in Secret Manager?
Easy69A developer wants to store a database password securely and make it accessible to a Compute Engine instance. Which Google Cloud service should be used?
Easy70An engineer creates a firewall rule allowing ingress on port 8080 from source range 10.0.0.0/8 with priority 1000. Another rule denies ingress on port 8080 from source range 10.0.0.0/24 with priority 500. What is the effective behavior for traffic from 10.0.0.1?
Medium71An organization wants to enable Data Access audit logs for all Cloud Storage buckets in a project. Which step is necessary?
Hard72Which THREE configurations are required to enable Private Google Access for Compute Engine instances in a custom VPC subnet? (Select 3 correct answers)
Hard73Which command is used to view the current IAM policy for a Google Cloud project in JSON format?
Easy74A company uses Cloud SQL with Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK). The security team wants to rotate the encryption key. What is the impact on the Cloud SQL instance?
Hard75A DevOps team needs to grant a CI/CD service account the ability to create secrets in Secret Manager. Which role should be assigned?
Medium76A security engineer needs to ensure that all VMs in a subnet use Private Google Access to reach Google APIs without external IP addresses. What must be enabled?
Medium77A company has multiple firewall rules. Rule A (priority 1000) allows TCP 80 from 0.0.0.0/0. Rule B (priority 500) denies TCP 80 from 10.0.0.0/8. An instance with IP 10.0.0.1 tries to connect to TCP 80. What happens?
Hard78What is the purpose of creating a Cloud NAT gateway?
Easy79An engineer created a VPC with a subnet in us-central1 and enabled Private Google Access on that subnet. Compute Engine instances in that subnet can reach Google APIs and services using internal IPs. However, the instances cannot reach external IP addresses on the internet. What should the engineer configure to allow internet access while minimizing cost and management overhead?
Hard80A company wants to ensure that a Compute Engine instance can access only a specific Cloud Storage bucket and no other resources in the project. Which TWO steps should the engineer take? (Select 2 correct answers)
Medium81An organization uses Secret Manager to store database credentials. A new application runs on Compute Engine and needs to access a secret. The application uses the default compute engine service account. What is the most secure way to grant access to the secret?
Hard82Which command creates a Google-managed SSL certificate for the domain 'example.com'?
Easy83A developer created a service account with the roles/storage.admin role and wants to use it from a Compute Engine instance without downloading a key file. What is the best practice?
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Frequently asked questions
- What does the Configuring Access and Security domain cover on the ACE exam?
- Configuring Access and Security questions test whether you can apply the concept in context, not just recognise a definition.
- How many questions are in this domain?
- This page lists all 83 Configuring Access and Security questions in the ACE question bank. The actual exam draws from this domain proportionally to its weighting in the official exam blueprint.
- What is the best way to practise this domain?
- Start with a short focused session (10 questions) to identify gaps, then work through explanations. Repeat with a longer session once the weak areas feel solid.
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