PCSE Practice Question: Managing Operations in a Cloud Solution Environment
A security engineer needs to automatically remediate a high-severity finding in Security Command Center. The remediation involves restarting a Compute Engine instance. 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
✓
Create a Cloud Function triggered by a Pub/Sub notification from SCC, and use the Compute Engine API to restart the instance.
SCC notifications to Pub/Sub and Cloud Functions is the standard pattern for automated remediation.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Configure a log sink to Cloud Functions and parse logs for the finding.
Why it's wrong here
SCC findings are not directly in Cloud Logging by default; the recommended integration is via Pub/Sub notifications.
- ✗
Use a Compute Engine startup script to check SCC and restart.
Why it's wrong here
Startup scripts run at boot only and cannot react to real-time findings.
- ✓
Create a Cloud Function triggered by a Pub/Sub notification from SCC, and use the Compute Engine API to restart the instance.
Why this is correct
SCC can send notifications to Pub/Sub, which triggers a Cloud Function that performs the remediation action.
- ✗
Use Cloud Scheduler to periodically check SCC and restart instances.
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Scheduler is not event-driven; it would require polling and is less efficient.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
One of 960 original PCSE practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
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.