This ACE practice question tests your understanding of setting up a cloud solution environment. This is a configuration task: choose the command set that satisfies every stated requirement. Small differences — like 'secret' vs 'password' or 'transport input ssh' vs 'all' — change whether the answer is correct. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
A company wants to ensure that all IAM users in a project must use two-factor authentication. Which Google Cloud service should be used?
Cloud Identity
Cloud Identity provides user management and security policies like 2SV.
Identity Platform
Why wrong: Identity Platform is for customer identity management.
Cloud IAM
Why wrong: IAM manages permissions, not authentication methods.
Cloud Audit Logs
Why wrong: Audit logs record activities, not enforce security policies.
Answer choices
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
Cloud Identity
Cloud Identity is the correct service because it provides identity-as-a-service (IDaaS) that allows administrators to enforce security policies, including requiring two-factor authentication (2FA) for all IAM users. By enabling 2FA at the Cloud Identity level, every user authenticating through Google Cloud's identity layer must complete a second factor (e.g., TOTP via Google Authenticator or a security key) before accessing any Google Cloud resources. This policy applies globally across all projects in the organization, ensuring consistent enforcement without needing to configure per-user or per-project settings.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
Cloud Identity
Why this is correct
Cloud Identity provides user management and security policies like 2SV.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Identity Platform
Why it's wrong here
Identity Platform is for customer identity management.
Cloud IAM
Why it's wrong here
IAM manages permissions, not authentication methods.
Cloud Audit Logs
Why it's wrong here
Audit logs record activities, not enforce security policies.
Common exam traps
The trap here is that candidates confuse Cloud IAM (which handles authorization) with Cloud Identity (which handles authentication and MFA enforcement), leading them to incorrectly select Cloud IAM because they think 'IAM' covers all identity-related settings.
Detailed technical explanation
Under the hood, Cloud Identity integrates with Google's authentication infrastructure, supporting WebAuthn (FIDO2) for hardware security keys and RFC 6238 TOTP for software tokens. When 2FA is enforced via a Cloud Identity policy, the Google Cloud authentication gateway (used by the gcloud CLI, Cloud Console, and APIs) will reject any sign-in attempt that does not include a valid second factor, even if the primary password is correct. In a real-world scenario, if an organization has thousands of users across multiple projects, enabling 2FA at the Cloud Identity level ensures that a compromised password alone cannot grant access to any Google Cloud resource, including Compute Engine instances or Cloud Storage buckets.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
A company's IT admin needs to give a contractor read-only access to production logs without sharing account credentials. Using role-based access control (RBAC) and temporary scoped permissions — not a permanent shared password — is the correct pattern. Questions like this test whether you can apply least-privilege access across cloud identity services.
What to study next
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FAQ
Setting up a cloud solution environment — This question tests Setting up a cloud solution environment — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
The correct answer is: Cloud Identity — Cloud Identity is the correct service because it provides identity-as-a-service (IDaaS) that allows administrators to enforce security policies, including requiring two-factor authentication (2FA) for all IAM users. By enabling 2FA at the Cloud Identity level, every user authenticating through Google Cloud's identity layer must complete a second factor (e.g., TOTP via Google Authenticator or a security key) before accessing any Google Cloud resources. This policy applies globally across all projects in the organization, ensuring consistent enforcement without needing to configure per-user or per-project settings.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Last reviewed: Jun 25, 2026
This ACE 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 ACE exam.
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