PCSE Practice Question: Configuring Access Within a Cloud Solution Environment
A Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) cluster has applications that need to access Cloud Storage. The security team wants to grant fine-grained access per pod. What is the recommended approach?
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 Workload Identity: map each Kubernetes service account to a dedicated GCP service account with minimal permissions.
Workload Identity for GKE allows you to bind a Kubernetes service account to a GCP service account. Pods running with that Kubernetes SA can then authenticate as the GCP SA to access GCP resources. This provides pod-level granularity.
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 Workload Identity: map each Kubernetes service account to a dedicated GCP service account with minimal permissions.
Why this is correct
Workload Identity allows per-pod identity mapping, enabling the principle of least privilege.
- ✗
Use node-level service accounts and rely on network policies to restrict pod access.
Why it's wrong here
Node-level SA gives all pods on the node the same permissions; not fine-grained.
- ✗
Store service account keys as Kubernetes secrets and mount them into pods.
Why it's wrong here
Key management is discouraged; Workload Identity is the secure, managed alternative.
- ✗
Create a single GCP service account with Storage permissions, and use it for all pods in the cluster.
Why it's wrong here
This does not provide fine-grained per-pod access. All pods would share the same identity.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PCSE 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 PCSE exam.