PCSE Practice Question: Configuring Access Within a Cloud Solution Environment
An organization wants to grant a CI/CD pipeline (running on GitHub Actions) access to deploy resources in a GCP project without storing long-lived service account keys. Which approach is recommended?
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 Federation with GitHub as an identity provider.
Workload Identity Federation allows binding an external identity provider (like GitHub Actions) to a GCP service account. The GitHub Actions workflow can exchange a GitHub OIDC token for a GCP access token, no static keys needed.
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 a service account with the role roles/iam.serviceAccountTokenCreator.
Why it's wrong here
This role allows impersonation but still requires a key or another credential to initiate.
- ✓
Use Workload Identity Federation with GitHub as an identity provider.
Why this is correct
Workload Identity Federation allows keyless authentication from external IdPs.
- ✗
Create a service account and store the JSON key as a GitHub secret.
Why it's wrong here
Storing keys is not recommended; keys can be compromised.
- ✗
Create a compute instance with a service account and run the pipeline from there.
Why it's wrong here
This adds unnecessary complexity and does not leverage GitHub Actions directly.
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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.