Challenge:

Prevent common misconfigurations that expose services (e.g., MYSQL) to the public internet.

Hierarchical Firewall Policies:

These policies can be applied at the organization level to enforce consistent network security rules across all projects.

Solution:

Create a hierarchical firewall policy that allows connections only from internal IP ranges.

This policy ensures that services like MySQL are not exposed to 0.0.0.0/0 (the entire internet).

Steps:

Step 1: Define the hierarchical firewall policy at the organization level.

Step 2: Set the rule to allow traffic only from internal IP ranges.

Step 3: Apply the policy to all projects under the organization.

Benefits:

Centralized management of network security.

Prevents accidental exposure of services to the public internet, enhancing security.

References:

Hierarchical Firewall Policies

Securing MySQL on GCP

Objective: Quickly recover a deleted service account used for data transfers.

Solution: Use the undelete command available in the gcloud command-line tool to recover the service account.

Steps:

Step 1: Open the Cloud Shell in the Google Cloud Console.

Step 2: Run the following command to list the deleted service accounts:

gcloud iam service-accounts list --filter="deleted: true"

Step 3: Identify the name and ID of the deleted service account.

Step 4: Use the undelete command to recover the service account:

gcloud iam service-accounts undelete [SERVICE_ACCOUNT_ID]

Step 5: Verify that the service account has been restored and reassign any necessary permissions.

By using the undelete command, you can quickly restore the service account and resume application functionality without compromising security.

References:

Restoring a Deleted Service Account

gcloud iam service-accounts undelete

Cloud NAT Service: Use Cloud NAT (Network Address Translation) to allow VM instances without external IP addresses to access the internet securely.

Configuration: Configure Cloud NAT for the subnets containing your VM instances. This setup allows the VMs to initiate outbound connections to the internet for updates and other necessary communications.

Security Compliance: By using Cloud NAT, you adhere to the security policy of not assigning external IP addresses to VMs while still enabling necessary internet connectivity. Cloud NAT provides a secure method for outbound internet traffic without exposing VMs directly to the public internet. References:

Google Cloud - Cloud NAT Overview

Google Cloud - Configuring Cloud NAT

The minimum length for passwords in Cloud Identity can be set to 8 characters. This aligns with common security best practices for password policies, ensuring a basic level of complexity and security.

Step-by-Step:

Access Admin Console: Log in to the Google Admin console.

Navigate to Security Settings: Go to Security > Password Management.

Set Minimum Length: Set the minimum length for passwords to 8 characters.

Save Changes: Save the settings and ensure that all user accounts adhere to the new policy.

References:

Google Cloud Identity Security Settings

Password Policy Best Practices

Rewriting the objects in-place within the same bucket, specifying the new CMEK for encryption, allows you to re-encrypt the data without downloading and re-uploading it, thus minimizing costs and time.

https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/encryption/using-customer-managed-keys

To configure the behavior where each department member automatically has read-only access to all new project resources created by any department member, you should use Google Cloud's folder structure and IAM roles effectively. Here are the steps:

Create Folders for Departments: Create a folder under your Organization for each department. Folders help organize resources and provide a hierarchy for applying policies and permissions.

Assign IAM Roles to Google Groups: Assign the Project Viewer role to the Google Group associated with each department at the folder level. This ensures that all members of the group have the necessary permissions.

Inherited Permissions: When a department member creates a new project under their department's folder, the permissions assigned to the folder are inherited by the new project. Thus, all department members will automatically have read-only access to the project's resources.

Navigate to IAM & Admin in the GCP Console.

Select "Folders" from the left-hand menu.

For each department, create a new folder under the organization.

Select the newly created folder, and then go to the "Permissions" tab.

Click on "Add" to assign a new role.

Enter the email address of the Google Group for the department.

Assign the "Project Viewer" role to the group.

Access Restrictions: Since the permissions are applied at the folder level, only the members of the specific department's Google Group will have read-only access to the projects created in that folder. Other departments will not have access unless explicitly granted.

By following these steps, you ensure that department members have the required access to their respective projects without manual configuration for each new project.

References:

Google Cloud IAM Documentation

Google Cloud Resource Manager Documentation

Cloud Identity-Aware Proxy (Cloud IAP) provides a way to control access to your web applications and resources running on Google Cloud. It works by verifying the identity of a user trying to access the application and supports multi-factor authentication (MFA). Cloud IAP can restrict access to users on the corporate network and also supports access over the internet securely.

Steps:

Enable Cloud IAP: In the Google Cloud Console, navigate to the IAP section and enable IAP for your web application.

Configure OAuth Consent Screen: Set up the OAuth consent screen to manage how users grant access.

Set Up Authentication: Use Google Identity Platform to manage users and enable two-factor authentication.

Add Users: Grant users access to the application by adding their identities in the IAP settings.

References:

Google Cloud: Identity-Aware Proxy

Setting up IAP

https://cloud.google.com/sql/docs/mysql/cmek

"You might have situations where you want to permanently destroy data encrypted with CMEK. To do this, you destroy the customer-managed encryption key version. You can't destroy the keyring or key, but you can destroy key versions of the key."

VPC Peering is between organizations not between Projects in an organization. That is Shared VPC. In this case, both projects are in same organization so having VPC Service Controls around both projects with necessary rules should be fine.

https://cloud.google.com/vpc-service-controls/docs/overview

To comply with the regulation to keep instance logging data within Europe, specifically in the Netherlands (region europe-west4), you need to configure Cloud Logging to ensure that all logs are stored in a specified region. Here are the steps to achieve this:

Create a Cloud Storage Bucket:

Go to the Google Cloud Console.

Navigate to Cloud Storage and create a new bucket.

Set the location type to "Region" and select "europe-west4" as the region.

Configure Log Sink:

Go to the Logging section in the Google Cloud Console.

Create a new log sink and configure it to export logs to the Cloud Storage bucket you just created.

Ensure the sink includes all logs you want to keep within europe-west4.

Verify Configuration:

Ensure that the logs are being exported to the Cloud Storage bucket by checking the contents of the bucket.

This setup ensures that all your logging data remains within the specified region, adhering to compliance requirements.

References

Creating and Managing Log Sinks

Cloud Storage Locations

Firewall Rule Analysis: Analyze the existing VPC firewall rules to identify any rules that might allow traffic between VM instances based on the same service account.

Priority Check: Check the priority of these rules. A rule with a priority lower than 1000 (such as 999) will take precedence over your tag-based rules.

Service Account Configuration: Since your VM instances are deployed without any service account customization, they are likely using the default service account. A firewall rule allowing traffic between instances using this default service account will override the tag-based rules if it has a higher priority.

Testing and Validation: Disable or adjust the priority of the rule with priority 999 to test if the tag-based segmentation works correctly. Validate that the traffic is segmented according to your intended configuration. References:

Google Cloud - VPC Firewall Rules

Google Cloud - Service Accounts

When you use a customer-managed encryption key (CMEK) to secure a Cloud Storage bucket, the key and the bucket must be located in the same region. In this case, the key is in europe-west3 and the bucket is in europe-west1, which is why you’re unable to access the key.

Scenarios for exporting Cloud Logging data: Splunk This scenario shows how to export selected logs from Cloud Logging to Pub/Sub for ingestion into Splunk. Splunk is a security information and event management (SIEM) solution that supports several ways of ingesting data, such as receiving streaming data out of Google Cloud through Splunk HTTP Event Collector (HEC) or by fetching data from Google Cloud APIs through Splunk Add-on for Google Cloud. Using the Pub/Sub to Splunk Dataflow template, you can natively forward logs and events from a Pub/Sub topic into Splunk HEC. If Splunk HEC is not available in your Splunk deployment, you can use the Add-on to collect the logs and events from the Pub/Sub topic. https://cloud.google.com/solutions/exporting-stackdriver-logging-for-splunk

Set up a Dedicated Interconnect link between the on-premises environment and Google Cloud:

Dedicated Interconnect provides a direct physical connection between your on-premises network and Google's network, which is ideal for high-throughput, low-latency connections.

Request a Dedicated Interconnect from the Google Cloud Console, specifying the required bandwidth and location.

Once provisioned, set up the connection on your on-premises router and configure the BGP sessions to exchange routes with Google Cloud.

Configure private access using the restricted.googleapis.com domains in on-premises DNS configurations:

Configure your on-premises DNS server to resolve Google APIs to restricted.googleapis.com. This ensures that the traffic stays within the Google network and is not exposed to the public internet.

Update your DNS settings to use restricted.googleapis.com for the necessary API endpoints.

This setup ensures that all Google Cloud API traffic is routed through the private link and subject to VPC Service Controls for additional security and compliance.

References:

Dedicated Interconnect Overview

Configuring DNS to use restricted.googleapis.com

When using Google Cloud's Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offerings like App Engine, Google manages the infrastructure, including the underlying OS, runtime, and scaling. However, securing the application code itself, such as defending against cross-site scripting (XSS) and SQL injection (SQLi) attacks, remains the responsibility of the user. This involves implementing secure coding practices, validating inputs, and employing appropriate security measures within the application.

References:

Google Cloud: Shared responsibility model

App Engine security

To meet the requirements for exporting and auditing security logs in near real-time for login activity events and API calls:

Organization-Level Log Sink with Pub/Sub: Create a log sink at the organization level to ensure logs from all projects are captured. Use the includeChildren parameter to include logs from all child resources (projects). Set the destination to a Pub/Sub topic to facilitate near real-time log export to an external SIEM.

Enable Data Access Audit Logs: Enable Data Access audit logs at the organization level to capture and export detailed information about API calls that modify configurations of Google Cloud resources across all projects.

These steps ensure comprehensive logging and real-time export capabilities, which are crucial for security auditing and monitoring.

References

Audit Logs Overview

Exporting with Sinks

To mitigate the risk posed by long-running Google Cloud CLI sessions, it is essential to enforce a reauthentication frequency. This ensures that users must periodically reauthenticate, reducing the window of opportunity for an attacker to exploit an open session. Setting the reauthentication frequency to one hour forces users to reauthenticate after this period, thereby limiting the duration an attacker can use a compromised session.

Access Google Cloud Console: Log in to your Google Cloud Console using your admin credentials.

Navigate to Security Settings: Go to the "Security" section of the Cloud Console.

Set Session Control: Under the session management settings, locate the "Reauthentication frequency" setting. This controls how often users must reauthenticate.

Configure Reauthentication Frequency: Set the reauthentication frequency to "1 hour". This configuration will force users to reauthenticate every hour, thus limiting the duration of each session.

Save Changes: Confirm and save your changes. This setting will now apply to all users, ensuring that open sessions are minimized to a duration of one hour.

References:

Google Cloud IAM Documentation

Google Cloud Security Best Practices

https://cloud.google.com/confidential-computing/confidential-vm/docs/creating-cvm-instance#considerations

Confidential VM does not support live migration. You can only enable Confidential Computing on a VM when you first create the instance. https://cloud.google.com/confidential-computing/confidential-vm/docs/creating-cvm-instance

Use Cloud External Key Management (EKM) that integrates with an external Hardware Security Module (HSM) system from supported vendors: Cloud EKM allows you to use encryption keys that are managed externally to Google Cloud. This means you can generate and store your keys in an on-premises HSM or another supported external HSM service, and integrate these keys with various Google Cloud services.

Integration with Google Services: Cloud EKM integrates seamlessly with many Google Cloud services, including BigQuery, Cloud Storage, Compute Engine, and more. This provides you with full control over your encryption keys while still taking advantage of Google Cloud's powerful services.

References

Cloud External Key Management (EKM) documentation

External Key Management overview

Setting up separate service perimeters for dev, staging, and prod environments allows for more granular control and monitoring. Automating the addition of new projects to the respective perimeters ensures that all projects are consistently secured without manual intervention.

Steps:

Set Up Service Perimeters: Use Access Context Manager to define and configure three separate service perimeters for dev, staging, and prod.

Deploy Monitoring Function: Create a Cloud Function that monitors the "implementation" folder for new projects using Stackdriver (Cloud Monitoring) and Cloud Pub/Sub.

Automate Perimeter Updates: Configure the Cloud Function to execute Terraform scripts that automatically add new projects to the appropriate service perimeter.

References:

Google Cloud: Access Context Manager

Service perimeter automation

There is mention about simulating in Web Security Scanner. "Web Security Scanner cross-site scripting (XSS) injection testing *simulates* an injection attack by inserting a benign test string into user-editable fields and then performing various user actions." https://cloud.google.com/security-command-center/docs/how-to-remediate-web-security-scanner-findings#xss

Objective: Migrate ongoing data backup and disaster recovery solutions to GCP.

Solution: Use Cloud Storage with scheduled tasks and gsutil.

Steps:

Step 1: Set up a Cloud Interconnect to ensure stable networking connectivity between the on-premises environment and GCP.

Step 2: Create a Cloud Storage bucket to store backups.

Step 3: Use gsutil, a command-line tool for Cloud Storage, to create scripts for data transfer.

Step 4: Schedule these scripts using cron jobs or another scheduling tool to automate the backup process.

Using Cloud Storage with scheduled tasks and gsutil ensures efficient and reliable backup and disaster recovery while leveraging stable connectivity provided by Cloud Interconnect.

References:

Cloud Storage Documentation

gsutil Tool Documentation

Cloud Interconnect Documentation

"The service evaluates all changes and remote access attempts to detect runtime attacks in near-real time." : https://cloud.google.com/security-command-center/docs/concepts-container-threat-detection-overview This has nothing to do with KNOWN security Vulns in images

If you want to manage the key encryption keys used for your data at rest, instead of having Google manage the keys, use Cloud Key Management Service to manage your keys. This scenario is known as customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK). https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs/encryption-at-rest

Activate Security Command Center (SCC) Premium: Security Command Center (SCC) Premium provides advanced security analytics and best practice recommendations for your Google Cloud environment. It includes functionalities such as asset discovery, vulnerability scanning, and security findings.

Create a Custom Rule to Mute Irrelevant Security Findings:

Navigate to the Security Command Center (SCC) in the Google Cloud Console.

Go to the "Settings" tab and find the "Mute findings" section.

Create a new mute rule by specifying the conditions that match the irrelevant controls you want to disregard. These conditions can be based on attributes such as resource type, finding type, and other metadata.

Apply this mute rule, which will ensure that the specified findings are not evaluated in your security posture assessments.

Ensure Continuous Compliance Monitoring:

The mute rules will automatically filter out the irrelevant findings, ensuring that only relevant controls from the CIS Google Cloud Computing Foundations Benchmark v1.3.0 are evaluated.

Regularly review and update the mute rules to adapt to any changes in your compliance requirements or security posture.

References:

Security Command Center Documentation

Creating and Managing Mute Rules

Google Cloud Storage provides an Object Lifecycle Management feature that can help automate data retention and deletion processes, ensuring compliance with data privacy regulations while minimizing storage costs.

Lifecycle Management: Object Lifecycle Management allows you to define rules that automatically delete objects after a specific period. This ensures that data is only retained for the required amount of time and is deleted once it expires.

Configuration: You can configure lifecycle rules to delete objects based on conditions such as the age of the object, the creation date, or custom metadata. This allows for precise control over the retention period of your data.

Cost Efficiency: By using lifecycle policies to delete data automatically, you can reduce storage costs, as you only pay for the storage you actively use.

References

Cloud Storage Object Lifecycle Management

Objective: Optimize the usage of Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP) API to reduce costs.

Solution:

rowsLimit and bytesLimitPerFile: These parameters help in sampling data instead of scanning the entire dataset, thereby reducing the amount of data processed.

CloudStorageRegexFileSet: This feature allows you to specify a subset of files to be scanned using regular expressions, limiting the scope and volume of data scanned.

Steps:

Step 1: Set appropriate rowsLimit values for BigQuery data scans to sample rows instead of scanning entire tables.

Step 2: Set bytesLimitPerFile values for Cloud Storage buckets to limit the number of bytes scanned per file.

Step 3: Use CloudStorageRegexFileSet to specify the subset of files to be scanned based on patterns that match the filenames.

By combining these strategies, you effectively reduce the scope and volume of data processed by the DLP API, leading to cost savings.

References:

DLP API Best Practices

Configuring Finding Limits

Assured Workloads for Google Cloud allows you to deploy regulated workloads with data residency, access, and support requirements. It helps you configure your environment in a manner that aligns with specific compliance frameworks and standards.

Requirement:

Enforce the use of Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK) for all new Cloud Storage resources in the organization.

Policy Constraint:

Use the constraints/gcp.restrictNonCmekServices constraint to enforce CMEK usage.

Policy Type and Value:

Set the policy type to allow to specify which services must use CMEK.

In this case, the policy value should be storage.googleapis.com to target Cloud Storage.

Command:

Applying the organization policy with the appropriate binding ensures that all new Cloud Storage resources under the organization will require CMEK.

Steps:

Step 1: Go to the Google Cloud Console.

Step 2: Navigate to the Organization Policies page.

Step 3: Apply the policy constraint constraints/gcp.restrictNonCmekServices with the allow policy type and storage.googleapis.com as the policy value.

References:

Organization Policy Constraints

Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK)

To ensure that a Compute Engine instance does not have access to the internet or to any Google APIs or services, you need to disable the following settings:

Public IP: Disabling the public IP address ensures that the instance does not have a direct connection to the internet. Without a public IP address, the instance cannot be accessed from or communicate with the internet directly.

Private Google Access: Disabling Private Google Access ensures that the instance does not have access to Google APIs and services through the internal Google network. Private Google Access allows instances without a public IP to reach Google APIs and services using private IP addresses, but disabling it will block this path.

Disabling these settings will effectively isolate the instance from both the public internet and Google's internal API services.

References

Google Cloud VPC Documentation - Overview

Configuring Private Google Access

Compute Engine Network Overview

https://cloud.google.com/logging/docs/export/aggregated_sinks#supported-destinations

You can use aggregated sinks to route logs within or between the same organizations and folders to the following destinations: - Another Cloud Logging bucket: Log entries held in Cloud Logging log buckets.

Disable service account key creation You can use the iam.disableServiceAccountKeyCreation boolean constraint to disable the creation of new external service account keys. This allows you to control the use of unmanaged long-term credentials for service accounts. When this constraint is set, user-managed credentials cannot be created for service accounts in projects affected by the constraint. https://cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/organization-policy/restricting-service-accounts#example_policy_boolean_constraint

Web Security Scanner is designed to scan your web applications deployed on Google Cloud for common vulnerabilities, including cross-site scripting (XSS). It can authenticate using Google accounts and can be scheduled to run scans regularly.

Steps:

Enable Web Security Scanner: In the Google Cloud Console, enable Web Security Scanner for your project.

Configure Scan: Set up the scan configuration, specifying the target URLs, authentication details (Google accounts), and scan frequency (at least once per week).

Run and Monitor Scans: Run the scans and monitor the results for vulnerabilities, addressing any issues found.

References:

Web Security Scanner documentation

To prevent developers from creating user-managed service account keys and reduce the risk of key mismanagement, you should enable an organization policy that specifically prohibits the creation of these keys.

Enable an organization policy to prevent service account keys from being created (C):

Google Cloud provides the capability to enforce organizational policies that restrict various actions, including the creation of service account keys. By enabling this policy, you ensure that developers cannot create new user-managed service account keys, thus minimizing the risk of key mismanagement and potential security breaches.

References

Service Accounts documentation

Organization Policy Service documentation

To enable developer teams to deploy new applications without the extensive overhead of network and security reviews, it’s recommended to mandate the use of infrastructure as code (IaC) and enforce policies through static analysis in CI/CD pipelines. This approach ensures that security and compliance policies are checked automatically during the development process.

Step-by-Step:

Adopt IaC: Use tools like Terraform or Google Cloud Deployment Manager to manage infrastructure as code.

CI/CD Pipeline Integration: Integrate static analysis tools such as TFLint or Checkov in the CI/CD pipeline to enforce security policies.

Policy Definition: Define security policies and best practices that need to be adhered to in the code.

Automated Checks: Configure automated checks in the CI/CD pipeline to review code against these policies before deployment.

Monitor and Audit: Continuously monitor and audit deployed applications to ensure ongoing compliance.

References:

Infrastructure as Code on Google Cloud

Static Analysis for Terraform

Checkov for IaC

Objective: Encrypt data using envelope encryption.

Solution: Follow the envelope encryption process.

Steps:

Step 1: Generate a Data Encryption Key (DEK) locally. The DEK is used to encrypt the actual data.

Step 2: Encrypt the data using the DEK.

Step 3: Use a Key Encryption Key (KEK) to wrap the DEK. The KEK is used to encrypt the DEK.

Step 4: Store the encrypted data and the wrapped DEK. This ensures that the data can be securely decrypted in the future using the KEK to unwrap the DEK.

Envelope encryption enhances security by adding an additional layer of encryption to the data encryption key, which is particularly useful for managing large volumes of encrypted data.

References:

Envelope Encryption Overview

Google Cloud Key Management Service Documentation

https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/packet-mirroring

Packet Mirroring clones the traffic of specified instances in your Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) network and forwards it for examination. Packet Mirroring captures all traffic and packet data, including payloads and headers.

Challenge:

Ensuring secure access to Google Cloud resources from GitHub Actions CI/CD pipelines without directly managing service account keys.

Workload Identity Federation:

Allows for the delegation of access to Google Cloud resources based on federated identities, such as those from GitHub.

Benefits:

This approach eliminates the need to manage service account keys, reducing the risk of key leakage.

It leverages GitHub's identity provider capabilities to authenticate and authorize access.

Steps to Configure Workload Identity Federation:

Step 1: Create a workload identity pool in Google Cloud.

Step 2: Add GitHub as an identity provider within the pool.

Step 3: Configure the necessary permissions and bindings for the identity pool to allow GitHub Actions to access Google Cloud resources.

Step 4: Update the GitHub Actions workflow to use the identity federation for authentication.

References:

Workload Identity Federation

Configuring Workload Identity Federation with GitHub

Provision a Cloud NAT Instance:

Cloud NAT (Network Address Translation) allows instances without external IP addresses to access the internet securely.

In the Google Cloud Console, navigate to the VPC Network section and select Cloud NAT.

Create a new Cloud NAT configuration, specifying the VPC and region where your Compute Engine VMs are deployed.

Configure Cloud NAT:

Ensure that the Cloud NAT instance is configured to provide outbound internet connectivity for the VMs in your specified subnet.

This setup allows the VMs to access the internet for package updates and external installations without requiring public IP addresses.

Enable Private Google Access:

Private Google Access allows VMs in a subnet to reach Google APIs and services using internal IP addresses.

In the Google Cloud Console, navigate to the VPC Network section and select Subnets.

Edit the subnet used by your Compute Engine VMs and enable Private Google Access.

Update DevOps Scripts:

Ensure that your DevOps scripts are updated to work with the new network configuration.

Test the build process to confirm that the VMs can access necessary resources and complete the build pipeline successfully.

References:

Cloud NAT Documentation

Private Google Access

To identify all principals who can change firewall rules, you need to determine which users or service accounts have permissions that allow them to modify firewall rules in your Google Cloud project. The correct permissions to check for this are compute.firewalls.create and compute.firewalls.delete. These permissions enable a user to create and delete firewall rules, respectively.

The Policy Analyzer tool in Google Cloud allows you to query and analyze IAM policies to identify which principals have specific permissions. By using Policy Analyzer, you can effectively identify all principals with the compute.firewalls.create and compute.firewalls.delete permissions.

Open Policy Analyzer: Go to the Google Cloud Console, navigate to IAM & Admin, and select Policy Analyzer.

Set Up Query: Create a new query specifying the permissions compute.firewalls.create and compute.firewalls.delete.

Run Query: Execute the query to retrieve a list of principals who have these permissions.

Review Results: Analyze the results to identify all users and service accounts with the capability to modify firewall rules.

This method ensures you have a comprehensive list of all principals who can change firewall rules, enhancing your audit and security posture.

References:

Google Cloud Policy Analyzer Documentation

Google Cloud IAM Documentation

https://cloud.google.com/architecture/framework/security/data-residency-sovereignty#manage_your_operational_sovereignty

To ensure compliance with GDPR and implement data residency and operational sovereignty in the EU, the following steps can be taken:

Limit Physical Location of Resources: Use the Organization Policy Service to enforce the resource locations constraint. This ensures that all new resources are created within the specified regions (EU in this case).

Configure Organization Policy: Set up an organization policy that restricts the locations where new resources can be created. This is done through the Google Cloud Console or via the gcloud command-line tool.

Example:

gcloud resource-manager org-policies allow constraints/gcp.resourceLocations [europe-west1,europe-west2] --organization=YOUR_ORG_ID

Key Access Justifications (KAJ): Use Key Access Justifications to limit Google personnel's access to encryption keys based on attributes like their geographic location or citizenship.

Set Up KAJ: Implement KAJ policies to ensure that only authorized personnel within the EU can access encryption keys.

References

Organization Policy Service

Key Access Justifications

To access a user's Google Drive on their behalf without relying on the user's credentials and following Google-recommended practices, you should use a service account with domain-wide delegation.

Create a Service Account:

Go to the Cloud Console, navigate to IAM & Admin > Service Accounts.

Click "Create Service Account" and provide necessary details.

Grant Domain-Wide Delegation:

Edit the service account to enable "G Suite Domain-wide Delegation".

Download the JSON key file.

Configure API Access in G Suite:

Go to the Google Admin Console.

Navigate to Security > API Controls > Domain-wide Delegation.

Add a new API client and use the client ID from the service account.

Authorize the necessary API scopes (e.g., https://www.googleapis.com/auth/drive).

Implement in Application:

Use the Google API Client Library for the desired language.

Load the service account credentials and perform user impersonation to access Google Drive.

References:

Domain-wide Delegation of Authority

Using OAuth 2.0 for Server to Server Applications

To ensure end-user access is only allowed if the traffic originates from a specific known good CIDR and to utilize GCP's native SYN flood protection, you can use the following product:

VPC Firewall Rules: By configuring VPC firewall rules, you can control traffic to and from your instances based on IP address, protocol, and port. You can set rules to only allow traffic from a specific CIDR block, ensuring that only authorized traffic can reach your application.

Additionally, Google Cloud Platform provides built-in protections against SYN flood attacks, which are a type of DDoS attack. These protections are part of the underlying infrastructure and do not require additional configuration.

Using VPC firewall rules will help you comply with the internal requirement of allowing access only from a specific CIDR and provide the necessary SYN flood DDoS protection.

References

Google Cloud VPC Firewall Rules

Google Cloud DDoS Protection

De-identifying sensitive data Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP) can de-identify sensitive data in text content, including text stored in container structures such as tables. De-identification is the process of removing identifying information from data. The API detects sensitive data such as personally identifiable information (PII), and then uses a de-identification transformation to mask, delete, or otherwise obscure the data. For example, de-identification techniques can include any of the following: Masking sensitive data by partially or fully replacing characters with a symbol, such as an asterisk (*) or hash (#). Replacing each instance of sensitive data with a token, or surrogate, string. Encrypting and replacing sensitive data using a randomly generated or pre-determined key. When you de-identify data using the CryptoReplaceFfxFpeConfig or CryptoDeterministicConfig infoType transformations, you can re-identify that data, as long as you have the CryptoKey used to originally de-identify the data. https://cloud.google.com/dlp/docs/deidentify-sensitive-data

Encrypt non-sensitive data with Google default encryption:

Google Cloud automatically encrypts data at rest using AES-256 by default. This minimizes key management complexity for non-sensitive data as it is handled entirely by Google.

No additional setup is required for default encryption, ensuring low latency access to the encrypted data.

Encrypt sensitive data with Cloud Key Management Service (Cloud KMS):

Cloud KMS allows you to create and manage cryptographic keys in a centralized cloud service.

To meet the requirement of scheduling key rotation, configure Cloud KMS to automatically rotate keys on a regular schedule (e.g., every 90 days).

Control the region where the keys are stored by selecting the appropriate key ring location during key creation. This ensures compliance with data residency requirements.

Cloud KMS provides low-latency access to keys, ensuring minimal impact on data access performance.

References:

Cloud Key Management Service Documentation

Encryption at Rest in Google Cloud

Use the org policy constraint "Google Cloud Platform - Resource Location Restriction" on your Google Cloud organization node: This organizational policy constraint allows you to restrict the locations where your resources can be created. By setting this constraint to allow only Europe regions, you can ensure compliance with GDPR and other regional regulations.

Implementation: To implement this, you need to configure the organization policy with the constraint constraints/gcp.resourceLocations. You can specify allowed regions such as europe-west1 and europe-west4 to ensure resources are only created in these locations.

References

Resource Location Restriction documentation

GDPR compliance on Google Cloud

"In order to be able to keep using the existing identity management system, identities need to be synchronized between AD and GCP IAM. To do so google provides a tool called Cloud Directory Sync. This tool will read all identities in AD and replicate those within GCP. Once the identities have been replicated then it's possible to apply IAM permissions on the groups. After that you will configure SAML so google can act as a service provider and either you ADFS or other third party tools like Ping or Okta will act as the identity provider. This way you effectively delegate the authentication from Google to something that is under your control."

"However, even though it is possible to uses tags for target filtering in this manner, we recommend that you use service accounts where possible. Target tags are not access-controlled and can be changed by someone with the instanceAdmin role while VMs are in service. Service accounts are access-controlled, meaning that a specific user must be explicitly authorized to use a service account. There can only be one service account per instance, whereas there can be multiple tags. Also, service accounts assigned to a VM can only be changed when the VM is stopped"

To minimize the attack surface of the container for an internet-facing application running on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), the best practice is to build small containers using small base images. This approach helps in the following ways:

Reduce Vulnerabilities: Smaller base images contain fewer packages and dependencies, which minimizes the potential vulnerabilities that an attacker could exploit.

Improved Security: Using minimal base images such as distroless or Alpine Linux ensures that only the necessary components are included, reducing the attack surface significantly.

Easier Maintenance: Small containers are easier to maintain and update, ensuring that security patches can be applied quickly without dealing with unnecessary components.

Steps to Implement:

Choose a Minimal Base Image:

Use base images like gcr.io/distroless/base or alpine.

FROM gcr.io/distroless/base COPY myapp /myapp CMD ["/myapp"]

Optimize Container Image:

Remove unnecessary tools and libraries.

Use multi-stage builds to keep the final image small.

Regularly Update Base Images:

Keep the base images up-to-date with the latest security patches.

References:

Distroless Images

Best Practices for Building Containers

To ensure user-uploaded comments and product reviews do not include sensitive data before publication, use the Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP) API.

Enable DLP API:

Go to the Cloud Console and navigate to APIs & Services > Library.

Search for "Data Loss Prevention API" and enable it.

Configure DLP API:

Create an inspection template specifying the types of sensitive data to detect.

Set up de-identification templates if you want to redact or mask sensitive data.

Implement DLP in Application:

Use the Google Cloud DLP Client Library for the desired programming language.

Send the text data to the DLP API for inspection before saving or publishing.

from google.cloud import dlp_v2 dlp_client = dlp_v2.DlpServiceClient() parent = f"projects/{project_id}" item = {"value": "User comment text here"} inspect_config = {"info_types": [{"name": "PERSON_NAME"}, {"name": "CREDIT_CARD_NUMBER"}]} response = dlp_client.inspect_content(parent=parent, inspect_config=inspect_config, item=item)

References:

Cloud Data Loss Prevention API Documentation

DLP API Client Libraries

When dealing with VPC Service Controls (VPC SC), it's important to ensure that only authorized resources can access sensitive data and services. To allow a resource in Project B to access Pub/Sub in Project A without compromising security, you should configure an ingress policy for the service perimeter in Project A.

Identify the Service Account: Determine the service account in Project B that requires access to the Pub/Sub topic in Project A.

Configure Ingress Policy:

Go to the Google Cloud Console.

Navigate to Security > VPC Service Controls.

Select the service perimeter for Project A.

Add an ingress rule specifying the service account from Project B and allowing it access to the necessary Pub/Sub resources.

Define Conditions: Ensure that the ingress policy adheres to the principle of least privilege, granting only the necessary permissions to collect messages from the Pub/Sub topic.

Save and Apply: Save the policy and apply the changes to enforce the new access controls.

This approach maintains the security boundaries set by VPC SC while enabling the required access from Project B to Project A.

References:

VPC Service Controls Documentation

Configuring Ingress Policies

This approach allows you to expose the web interface securely by using Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP), which provides authentication and authorization with Google credentials. The HTTP Load Balancer can distribute traffic to the VMs in the managed group, and the VPC firewall rule ensures that access is allowed from the IAP network range.

Understand Organization Policies:

Organization policies allow you to enforce restrictions on Google Cloud resources to adhere to your organization’s security and compliance requirements.

Policies can be set at the organization, folder, or project level, with project-level policies able to override higher-level policies unless explicitly prevented.

Identify the Policy Constraint:

The specific constraint in question is likely constraints/compute.vmExternalIpAccess, which controls whether VMs can have external IP addresses.

Check Policy Overwrites:

Navigate to the Organization Policies page in the Google Cloud Console.

Check the policy settings at the project level under the affected folder to see if there is an override in place with an 'allow' value.

This override would permit the creation of VMs with external IP addresses despite the higher-level restriction.

Resolve the Policy Conflict:

If an override is found, remove or modify the project-level policy to align with the organizational policy denying external IP addresses.

Communicate with project administrators to ensure they understand and comply with the overarching security policies.

References:

Organization Policy Best Practices

Managing Policy Constraints

To manage user accounts and ensure they comply with corporate policies, using Google Cloud Directory Sync (GCDS) allows synchronization between your local identity system and Cloud Identity. The Transfer Tool for Unmanaged Users (TTUU) helps identify and manage conflicting accounts by allowing users to transfer their personal accounts to managed accounts.

Steps:

Synchronize Identities: Use GCDS to sync users from your local identity management system to Cloud Identity, ensuring that all corporate user accounts are managed.

Identify Conflicting Accounts: Use TTUU to find users who have personal Google accounts using corporate email addresses.

Manage Conflicting Accounts: Request users to transfer their personal accounts to managed accounts using TTUU, ensuring all accounts are under corporate control.

References:

Google Cloud Directory Sync

Transfer Tool for Unmanaged Users

Objective: Prevent users from creating projects while allowing only the DevOps team to create projects.

Solution: Modify IAM roles and permissions.

Steps:

Step 1: Open the Google Cloud Console.

Step 2: Navigate to the IAM & Admin page.

Step 3: At the organizational level, find and remove all users from the Project Creator role.

Step 4: Create or identify a group for the DevOps team.

Step 5: Assign the Project Creator role to the DevOps team group at the organizational level.

By removing all users from the Project Creator role and granting it only to the DevOps team, you ensure that only the designated team can create projects.

References:

GCP IAM Documentation

Project Creator Role

To connect Compute Engine instances within a Google Cloud Platform project to workloads running in a dedicated server room that can only be accessed from within the private company network, you can use the following approaches:

Cloud VPN: Cloud VPN securely connects your on-premises network to your Google Cloud Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) network through an IPsec VPN connection. This enables secure communication between your GCP instances and your on-premises workloads over the internet.

Cloud Interconnect: Cloud Interconnect provides direct physical connections between your on-premises network and Google's network. It offers higher bandwidth and lower latency compared to Cloud VPN, making it suitable for workloads that require fast and reliable connectivity.

Both Cloud VPN and Cloud Interconnect allow you to securely connect your on-premises environments to Google Cloud, ensuring that the workloads remain within the private company network.

References

Cloud VPN Overview

Cloud Interconnect Overview

Objective: Store and retrieve sensitive configuration data for an application running on Compute Engine.

Solution: Use Secret Manager to securely store and manage access to sensitive configuration data.

Steps:

Step 1: Open the Google Cloud Console.

Step 2: Navigate to the Secret Manager section.

Step 3: Create a new secret and add the sensitive configuration data.

Step 4: Set appropriate IAM policies to control access to the secret.

Step 5: Update the application to retrieve the secret from Secret Manager using the appropriate client libraries or APIs.

Secret Manager provides a secure and centralized way to manage sensitive information, with fine-grained access control and audit logging capabilities.

References:

Secret Manager Documentation

Storing and Accessing Secrets

A. Create a Cloud Build pipeline that will monitor changes to your container templates in a Cloud Source Repositories repository. Add a step to analyze Container Analysis results before allowing the build to continue:

Use Cloud Build to automate your CI/CD pipeline.

Integrate Container Analysis to scan container images for vulnerabilities during the build process.

If vulnerabilities are found, configure the build to fail, preventing deployment of insecure containers.

E. In your CI/CD pipeline, add an attestation on your container image when no vulnerabilities have been found. Use a Binary Authorization policy to block deployments of containers with no attestation in your cluster:

Use Binary Authorization to enforce deploy-time security policies.

Configure your CI/CD pipeline to generate attestations for container images that pass vulnerability scans.

Binary Authorization will then block deployments of any containers without valid attestations, ensuring only secure images are deployed.

References:

Cloud Build Overview

Container Analysis

Binary Authorization

To provide users with SSO-based access to selected cloud apps, Cloud Identity as your IdP supports the OpenID Connect (OIDC) and Security Assertion Markup Language 2.0 (SAML) protocols. https://cloud.google.com/identity/solutions/enable-sso

When configuring SAML-based Single Sign-On (SSO) in an organization that's using Active Directory, the general steps would involve setting up a SAML profile, specifying the necessary URLs for sign-in and sign-out processes, uploading an X.509 certificate for secure communication, and setting up the Entity ID and Assertion Consumer Service (ACS) URL in the Identity Provider (which in this case would be Active Directory).

To fulfill the requirements of preserving logs for 12 years and ensuring data residency within European boundaries, the best approach is to use Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) with a custom log bucket configured in the desired region.

Configure Cloud Logging Agent:

Install and configure the Cloud Logging agent on your Compute Engine instances. This agent collects logs from your application and system and sends them to Google Cloud's operations suite.

Create a Custom Log Bucket:

In the Cloud Logging interface, create a custom log bucket in the EUROPE-WEST1 region. This bucket will store your logs and can be configured with a custom retention period.

Set Custom Retention Policy:

Configure the retention policy for the custom log bucket to 12 years. This ensures that all logs are preserved for the required duration.

Ship Logs to the Custom Log Bucket:

Modify the logging configuration to direct logs from the Cloud Logging agent to the custom log bucket. This can be done through the logging configuration settings in the Cloud Console or by updating the agent configuration files.

This solution minimizes overhead by using managed services and ensures cost-effectiveness by leveraging Cloud Logging's built-in capabilities for log storage and retention management.

References

Cloud Logging Documentation

Creating and Managing Logs Buckets

For a client concerned about the control of their encryption keys and not wanting to store these keys within the same cloud service provider (CSP) as the data, the following solutions are suitable:

Customer-supplied encryption keys (A):

With customer-supplied encryption keys, clients manage their own encryption keys outside of Google Cloud and supply them to encrypt and decrypt data. This ensures that the keys are not stored in Google Cloud, providing full control over the key management process.

Cloud External Key Manager (D):

Cloud External Key Manager (EKM) allows clients to integrate an external key management system (KMS) with Google Cloud services. This setup enables the client to keep their encryption keys outside Google Cloud while still allowing the data to be encrypted and decrypted within Google Cloud services. This method offers an additional layer of security and control over the encryption keys.

These options provide robust solutions for clients requiring external key management and enhanced control over their encryption processes.

References

Customer-Supplied Encryption Keys

Cloud External Key Manager

To ensure that PII data is separated from non-PII data, using Cloud Pub/Sub and Cloud Functions to trigger a scan by the Data Loss Prevention (DLP) API is an effective approach. This method allows for automated detection and handling of PII.

Steps:

Set Up Cloud Pub/Sub: Configure a Cloud Pub/Sub topic to receive notifications whenever a file is uploaded to the shared Cloud Storage bucket.

Deploy Cloud Functions: Create a Cloud Function that is triggered by the Pub/Sub topic. This function will invoke the DLP API to scan the uploaded file for PII.

Move Detected PII Files: If the scan detects PII, the Cloud Function will move the file to a secure Cloud Storage bucket accessible only by the administrator.

Set Permissions: Ensure that appropriate permissions are set on the Cloud Storage buckets to restrict access to files containing PII.

References:

Google Cloud: Data Loss Prevention

Cloud Functions documentation