Learn how to effectively monitor and audit IAM policies, user activity, service account behavior, and access to sensitive projects in Google Cloud using Cloud Audit Logs and SIEM integration.
Table of Contents
Question
A security audit uncovered several inconsistencies in your project’s Identity and Access Management (IAM) configuration. Some service accounts have overly permissive roles, and a few external collaborators have more access than necessary. You need to gain detailed visibility into changes to IAM policies, user activity, service account behavior, and access to sensitive projects. What should you do?
A. Configure Google Cloud Functions to be triggered by changes to IAM policies. Analyze changes by using the policy simulator, send alerts upon risky modifications, and store event details.
B. Enable the metrics explorer in Cloud Monitoring to follow the service account authentication events and build alerts linked on it.
C. Use Cloud Audit Logs. Create log export sinks to send these logs to a security information and event management (SIEM) solution for correlation with other event sources.
D. Deploy the OS Config Management agent to your VMs. Use OS Config Management to create patch management jobs and monitor system modifications.
Answer
C. Use Cloud Audit Logs. Create log export sinks to send these logs to a security information and event management (SIEM) solution for correlation with other event sources.
Explanation
To gain detailed visibility into changes to IAM policies, user activity, service account behavior, and access to sensitive projects in Google Cloud, the best approach is to use Cloud Audit Logs and create log export sinks to send these logs to a security information and event management (SIEM) solution for correlation with other event sources.
Google Cloud Audit Logs record administrative activities and accesses within your Google Cloud projects. These logs capture information about who did what, where, and when, including changes to IAM policies, user authentications, API calls made by service accounts, and data access events.
By creating log export sinks, you can continuously stream these audit logs to a SIEM solution. SIEM tools are designed to collect, analyze, and correlate security events from multiple sources, enabling you to centrally monitor and investigate suspicious activities, detect anomalies, and respond to security incidents in a timely manner.
Integrating Cloud Audit Logs with a SIEM solution provides a comprehensive view of your Google Cloud environment’s security posture. You can leverage the SIEM’s advanced analytics, alerting, and reporting capabilities to identify potential security risks, such as overly permissive IAM roles assigned to service accounts or external collaborators with excessive access to sensitive projects.
Other options like using Cloud Functions to analyze IAM policy changes, monitoring service account authentication events with Cloud Monitoring, or deploying OS Config Management agents on VMs, while useful in specific scenarios, do not provide the same level of comprehensive visibility and correlation capabilities as the combination of Cloud Audit Logs and SIEM integration.
By implementing this approach, you can proactively monitor and audit your Google Cloud environment, ensuring that IAM policies and access controls are consistently enforced and aligned with your organization’s security requirements.
Google Professional Cloud Security Engineer certification exam assessment practice question and answer (Q&A) dump including multiple choice questions (MCQ) and objective type questions, with detail explanation and reference available free, helpful to pass the Google Professional Cloud Security Engineer exam and earn Google Professional Cloud Security Engineer certification.