PCNE Practice Question: Managing, Monitoring, and Optimising Network Operations
A network engineer wants to capture all traffic to and from a specific Compute Engine instance for security analysis and forward it to an IDS appliance in another VPC. Which GCP service should they use?
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
✓
Packet Mirroring
Packet Mirroring clones traffic from a source instance and sends it to a collector (IDS appliance) in the same or different VPC. It is designed for security monitoring.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
VPC Flow Logs
Why it's wrong here
VPC Flow Logs provide metadata, not full packets.
- ✓
Packet Mirroring
Why this is correct
Packet Mirroring forwards actual traffic for deep packet inspection.
- ✗
Firewall Rules Logging
Why it's wrong here
Firewall Rules Logging logs allow/deny events, not full packets.
- ✗
Cloud NAT logging
Why it's wrong here
Cloud NAT logging logs connection information, not full traffic.
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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.