Question 144 of 964
PCD Building and testing applications Practice Question
A company is developing a microservices application on Google Cloud. Each service is deployed as a Docker container on Cloud Run. The development team wants to ensure that inter-service communication is encrypted and authenticated. What is the best approach?
⚠ Common exam trap
The PCD exam often tests the misconception that you need to manually configure mTLS or deploy sidecar proxies for encryption and authentication in Cloud Run, when in fact Cloud Run's built-in IAM and automatic TLS handle both requirements natively.
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
✓
Use Cloud Run's built-in IAM-based authentication and automatic TLS for internal requests.
Cloud Run automatically provisions TLS certificates for all incoming requests and supports IAM-based authentication for internal requests between services in the same Google Cloud project. This means inter-service communication is encrypted by default via HTTPS and can be authenticated by configuring the receiving service to require a valid IAM token from the caller, without any additional infrastructure or sidecar proxies.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Use Cloud Run's built-in IAM-based authentication and automatic TLS for internal requests.
Why this is correct
Cloud Run uses IAM to authenticate requests between services and automatically provisions TLS certificates.
- ✗
Configure mutual TLS (mTLS) between services using Cloud Endpoints.
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Run does not support mTLS natively; IAM-based authentication is preferred.
- ✗
Deploy a sidecar proxy on each Cloud Run service to handle TLS termination.
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Run does not support sidecar proxies; it uses built-in IAM authentication.
- ✗
Assign a service account to each service and use its private key to sign requests.
Why it's wrong here
Service account keys are not used for signing requests in Cloud Run; IAM tokens are used.
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Last reviewed: Jun 11, 2026
This PCD 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 PCD exam.
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