PCNE Practice Question: Managing, Monitoring, and Optimising Network Operations
A company wants to audit firewall rules for security best practices. They need to identify overly permissive rules (e.g., allowing all traffic from 0.0.0.0/0) and rules that are never used. Which two Google Cloud tools can help? (Choose two.)
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
✓
Firewall Insights
Firewall Insights provides analytics on rule usage (including shadowed and overly permissive rules) and suggests improvements. VPC Flow Logs can be analyzed to see which firewall rules are matched by actual traffic, identifying unused rules. Connectivity Tests is for reachability testing, not auditing. Packet Mirroring is for traffic capture. Cloud Armor is for WAF.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Firewall Insights
Why this is correct
Correct: Firewall Insights identifies overly permissive and shadowed rules.
- ✗
Packet Mirroring
Why it's wrong here
Packet Mirroring copies packets, not for rule auditing.
- ✗
Cloud Armor
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Armor is a WAF, not for firewall rule auditing.
- ✓
VPC Flow Logs
Why this is correct
Correct: Flow Logs can be analyzed to see which rules are hit, identifying unused rules.
- ✗
Connectivity Tests
Why it's wrong here
Connectivity Tests test reachability, not rule usage analytics.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PCNE 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 PCNE exam.