PDE Maintaining and Automating Data Workloads Practice Question
A data engineer needs to inspect a BigQuery table for sensitive data such as credit card numbers and email addresses before sharing it with a third party. The engineer also wants to de-identify the data by masking the sensitive columns. Which Google Cloud service should be used?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse BigQuery column-level security (access control) with data masking, but BigQuery column-level security only hides data from unauthorized users and does not inspect or transform the data itself, whereas Cloud DLP performs actual de-identification.
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
✓
Cloud DLP
Cloud DLP (Data Loss Prevention) is the correct service because it is specifically designed to inspect, classify, and de-identify sensitive data such as credit card numbers and email addresses. It provides built-in infoType detectors for over 150 types of sensitive data and supports masking, tokenization, and other de-identification techniques. The engineer can use Cloud DLP to scan BigQuery tables and then apply transformations to mask the sensitive columns before sharing.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Dataplex
Why it's wrong here
Dataplex provides data quality rules and metadata management, but not de-identification transforms.
- ✗
BigQuery column-level security
Why it's wrong here
Column-level security restricts access to columns but does not transform data. The requirement is to de-identify (mask) data, not just restrict access.
- ✗
Data Catalog
Why it's wrong here
Data Catalog manages metadata and tags but does not inspect or transform sensitive data.
- ✓
Cloud DLP
Why this is correct
Cloud DLP can inspect BigQuery tables for sensitive info and apply de-identification transformations like masking, tokenization, etc.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PDE 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 PDE exam.