PCSE Practice Question: Managing Operations in a Cloud Solution Environment
A security engineer needs to implement a logging pipeline that sends real-time Cloud Audit Logs to a third-party SIEM. They must ensure that if the SIEM is unavailable, logs are not lost. Which approach 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
✓
Create a log sink that writes to a Pub/Sub topic, and use a subscription with a dead letter topic.
Using a Pub/Sub subscription with a dead letter topic allows messages to be retried and, if delivery fails persistently, moved to a dead letter topic for later reprocessing. This prevents data loss. Cloud Storage is not real-time; BigQuery is not for streaming to SIEM; Cloud Run without Pub/Sub would miss retries.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Create a log sink that writes to a Pub/Sub topic, and use a subscription with a dead letter topic.
Why this is correct
This ensures real-time delivery with retry and dead letter handling to avoid data loss.
- ✗
Configure a Cloud Run service to pull logs from Cloud Logging API and forward to SIEM.
Why it's wrong here
The Cloud Logging API is not designed for streaming; also lacks built-in retry/dead letter.
- ✗
Export logs to Cloud Storage via a sink, and have the SIEM ingest from there.
Why it's wrong here
This is not real-time and may have latency.
- ✗
Use a log sink to BigQuery and have the SIEM query BigQuery periodically.
Why it's wrong here
Not real-time and introduces latency.
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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.