Cloud Digital Leader Google Cloud Products and Services Practice Question
A security team needs to protect a web application behind an HTTP(S) Load Balancer from SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. Which Google Cloud service provides these protections?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Cloud Armor
Cloud Armor is a Web Application Firewall (WAF) that provides pre-configured rules for OWASP Top 10 threats like SQLi and XSS. Cloud CDN is for caching, Cloud DNS for domain resolution, and VPC firewall rules operate at the network layer (not application layer).
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
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Cloud CDN
Why it's wrong here
Cloud CDN is a content delivery network that accelerates access to web content by caching responses at Google's edge locations, but it operates entirely at the HTTP cache layer. It can be configured with cache keys, signed URLs, and TTLs, yet it does not inspect request bodies, headers, or query strings for application-layer attack patterns like SQL injection or cross-site scripting (XSS). Cloud CDN is not a Web Application Firewall (WAF); it is designed for delivery performance, not security posturing, and should be paired with Cloud Armor to block malicious traffic.
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VPC firewall rules
Why it's wrong here
VPC firewall rules enforce network-level access control by filtering traffic based on source and destination IP addresses, ports, and protocols at layers 3 and 4 of the OSI model. These rules are stateful and can allow or deny traffic to and from VM instances using network tags, but they cannot parse HTTP requests to detect embedded attack payloads such as SQLi or XSS. Since those attacks occur at the application layer, VPC firewall rules are blind to them and would let the malicious HTTP traffic through as long as it matches the permitted network criteria.
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Cloud DNS
Why it's wrong here
Cloud DNS is a global domain name system service that resolves human-readable hostnames into IP addresses, providing authoritative DNS, zones, and routing policies. It only handles DNS queries and responses; it has no visibility into actual web traffic passing between a client and your application. Therefore, Cloud DNS cannot filter HTTP requests, inspect for SQLi or XSS, or block application-layer attacks, as it simply translates names and returns IP addresses before any HTTP connection is established.
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Cloud Armor
Why this is correct
Cloud Armor is the correct answer because it is Google Cloud's managed Web Application Firewall (WAF) service that provides application-layer (L7) protection for services behind Cloud Load Balancing. It includes pre-configured rules from the OWASP ModSecurity Core Rule Set, which specifically detects and blocks SQL injection and cross-site scripting patterns in HTTP headers, query parameters, and request bodies. Cloud Armor also offers adaptive protection, rate limiting, and geo-based access controls, making it the appropriate tool for defending a web application against these common web exploits.
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Cloud Digital Transformation
Key term
SQL
SQL is a standard programming language used to manage, query, and manipulate relational databases by issuing commands like SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE.
Key term
Cross-site scripting
Cross-site scripting (XSS) is a security vulnerability that allows attackers to inject malicious scripts into web pages viewed by other users, often to steal data or hijack sessions.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This GCDL practice question is part of Courseiva's free Google Cloud certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the GCDL exam.