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You're reading from  Official Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Security Engineer Exam Guide

Product typeBook
Published inAug 2023
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781835468869
Edition1st Edition
Concepts
Information Security
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Authors (2):
Ankush Chowdhary
Ankush Chowdhary
author image
Ankush Chowdhary

With an unwavering focus on technology spanning over two decades, Ankush remains genuinely dedicated to the ever-evolving realm of cybersecurity. Throughout his career, he has consistently upheld a deep commitment to assisting businesses on their journey towards modernization and embracing the digital age. His guidance has empowered numerous enterprises to prioritize and implement essential cybersecurity measures. He has had the privilege of being invited as a speaker at various global cybersecurity events, where he had the opportunity to share his insights and exert influence on key decision-makers concerning cloud security and policy matters. Driven by an authentic passion for education and mentorship, he derives immense satisfaction from guiding, teaching, and mentoring others within the intricate domain of cybersecurity. The intent behind writing this book has been a modest endeavor to achieve the same purpose.
Read more about Ankush Chowdhary

Prashant Kulkarni
Prashant Kulkarni
author image
Prashant Kulkarni

In his career, Prashant has worked directly with customers, helping them overcome different security challenges in various product areas. These experiences have made him passionate about continuous learning, especially in the fast-changing security landscape. Joining Google 4 years back, he expanded his knowledge of Cloud Security. He is thankful for the support of customers, the infosec community, and his peers that have sharpened his technical skills and improved his ability to explain complex security concepts in a user-friendly way. This book aims to share his experiences and insights, empowering readers to navigate the ever-evolving security landscape with confidence. In his free time, Prashant indulges in his passion for astronomy, marveling at the vastness and beauty of the universe.
Read more about Prashant Kulkarni

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3

Trust and Compliance

In this chapter, we will look at the very important aspects of trust and compliance. The first part of the chapter focuses on trust, including how Google enables security and privacy and provides customers with full transparency. We will walk through examples of how you can access transparency logs and how they are used. The last part of the chapter covers the different compliance standards and programs that Google Cloud is compliant with, and how you can gain access to compliance reports. We will look at ways to access compliance reports using Compliance Reports Manager.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

  • Security and data privacy
  • Building trust using access transparency and access approval
  • Understanding compliance on Google Cloud

Establishing and maintaining trust

Data privacy and the protection of customer data are critical in establishing trust. There is no shortcut to it: time and experience are the only two factors that help in maintaining and establishing trust. Translating that to the cloud means that customers don’t have the luxury of spending time testing whether a cloud service provider (CSP) can be trusted. Therefore, CSPs such as Google Cloud use compliance in order to demonstrate and establish trust.

Google creates trust by means of transparency. The Google Cloud Enterprise Privacy Commitments dictate how Google Cloud protects the privacy of its customers. Let’s take a look at the privacy principles that Google defines:

  • As a customer, you control and own your data. You define and control where you want to store your data (in terms of geographical location), and only you can decide where you want to move/copy your data to. Google does not have any control over copying or...

Access Transparency and Access Approval

Before we discuss the Access Transparency and Access Approval products, let’s understand why they are so important. We discussed in the previous section how transparency plays a key role in establishing trust, and it also helps Google to differentiate its security posture. At the time of writing, other major cloud service providers (CSPs) do not offer transparency logs. Customers who are highly regulated or have compliance requirements need to view and share logs of activities performed by their CSPs. Analysts such as Gartner have highlighted transparency logs as a key feature for CSPs.

Now that we have established the importance of transparency for CSPs, we will look at the product capability that Google offers. Google has two products for transparency: Access Transparency, which provides near real-time logs whenever Google administrators access your Google Cloud environment, and Access Approvals, where you can control administrative...

Security and privacy of data

Earlier in the chapter, we covered the data privacy principles adhered to by Google. In the previous chapter, we also covered how Google Cloud enforces the security of data by default, such as by encrypting data in transit by default. When you store your data on Google Cloud, you will read and write data; thus, there will be times when data will be out of Google-enforced security boundaries. Enforcing the encryption of data in transit ensures that data is secure.

When data is stored in any Google Cloud Storage products, the encryption of data at rest is enforced by default. This improves the security posture for any organization adopting Google Cloud, as you don’t have to manage the underlying encryption technology to manage the key lifecycle or encrypt data because these controls are fully managed by Google Cloud.

Google Cloud provides flexible options to help you align with Google privacy principles and control your data. You can choose the...

Third-party risk assessments

A third-party risk assessment or vendor risk assessment is often a requirement for many regulated customers who want assurance from Google Cloud about specific controls. An example of this would be a financial institution such as a bank that wants to host workloads on Google Cloud and needs Google Cloud to complete a vendor questionnaire. Google Cloud provides self-assessment questionnaires. These are complimentary documents that cover Google Cloud’s security controls and can help customers assess the security of their service. These self-assessments are available via Google Compliance Manager, which can be accessed here: https://packt.link/B15d7.

Some of the available assessments are as follows:

  • Google Cloud’s Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) STAR self-assessment is available here: https://packt.link/rnqoe.
  • The Standardized Information Gathering (SIG) core questionnaire can be accessed by customers to perform an initial assessment...

Compliance in the cloud

In this section, we will cover two topics: how you can access the compliance reports that are made available by Google Cloud, and some of the tools and capabilities that are available to achieve continuous compliance in the cloud.

Google products undergo compliance reviews by independent third parties, and the relevant compliance reports are made available to customers. There are two sets of compliance reports: one set can be downloaded from the Google Cloud website and is generally available to anyone; the other set can be requested by a Google Technical Account Manager (TAM) if the Google customer has a TAM assigned to their organization. You can find Google Cloud’s compliance reports here: https://packt.link/eaDuj. New Google Cloud products often have a delay of a few months before they are added to the compliance scope. Google has a scheduled review cycle, and new products are added based on that. Each product undergoes SOC 2 and ISO audits first...

Summary

In this chapter, we looked at how Google Cloud establishes trust using transparency and applies privacy principles backed up by independent audits and compliance. We also covered two key products that help customers establish trust: Access Transparency and Access Approval. In terms of ensuring the security and privacy of data, we covered the controls available, such as encryption and KMS. Furthermore, we looked at the importance of data residency and how Google Cloud provides capabilities, features, and products to support the localization of data. We covered third-party and vendor risk assessments and the support that Google Cloud extends in helping customers to be compliant with regulatory requirements. Finally, we covered aspects of compliance in the cloud such as how you can download Google Cloud compliance reports, standards, and an overview of achieving continuous compliance in the cloud.

In the next chapter, we will cover the resource hierarchy in Google Cloud.

...

Further reading

For more information on Google Cloud security, trust, and compliance, refer to the following links:

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Published in: Aug 2023Publisher: PacktISBN-13: 9781835468869
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Authors (2)

author image
Ankush Chowdhary

With an unwavering focus on technology spanning over two decades, Ankush remains genuinely dedicated to the ever-evolving realm of cybersecurity. Throughout his career, he has consistently upheld a deep commitment to assisting businesses on their journey towards modernization and embracing the digital age. His guidance has empowered numerous enterprises to prioritize and implement essential cybersecurity measures. He has had the privilege of being invited as a speaker at various global cybersecurity events, where he had the opportunity to share his insights and exert influence on key decision-makers concerning cloud security and policy matters. Driven by an authentic passion for education and mentorship, he derives immense satisfaction from guiding, teaching, and mentoring others within the intricate domain of cybersecurity. The intent behind writing this book has been a modest endeavor to achieve the same purpose.
Read more about Ankush Chowdhary

author image
Prashant Kulkarni

In his career, Prashant has worked directly with customers, helping them overcome different security challenges in various product areas. These experiences have made him passionate about continuous learning, especially in the fast-changing security landscape. Joining Google 4 years back, he expanded his knowledge of Cloud Security. He is thankful for the support of customers, the infosec community, and his peers that have sharpened his technical skills and improved his ability to explain complex security concepts in a user-friendly way. This book aims to share his experiences and insights, empowering readers to navigate the ever-evolving security landscape with confidence. In his free time, Prashant indulges in his passion for astronomy, marveling at the vastness and beauty of the universe.
Read more about Prashant Kulkarni

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