Google Cloud Professional Cloud Security Engineer Practice Exam

When implementing cloud security measures, what aspect is crucial for monitoring and auditing network activity?

1. Conducting regular software updates

2. Utilizing third-party security tools exclusively

3. Monitoring traffic using Packet Mirroring

4. Only relying on native Google Cloud logging features

The correct answer is: Monitoring traffic using Packet Mirroring

Monitoring traffic using Packet Mirroring is essential for ensuring comprehensive visibility into network activity within a cloud environment. Packet Mirroring allows organizations to capture and analyze network packets being sent to and from virtual machine (VM) instances. This capability is crucial in identifying potential security threats, unusual traffic patterns, or unauthorized access attempts in real time. By implementing Packet Mirroring, security engineers can gain insights into both inbound and outbound traffic, enabling more effective network traffic analysis and incident response. It enhances the ability to perform deep packet inspection and forensic analysis, facilitating a better understanding of network behavior and helping identify vulnerabilities or breaches promptly. Furthermore, while other measures like regular software updates, third-party security tools, and native logging features are important for a holistic security strategy, they do not provide the same level of detailed network traffic visibility that Packet Mirroring offers. Regular updates help maintain software security, third-party tools can complement existing security measures, and native logging features are helpful for audit trails; however, they do not specifically focus on real-time monitoring of packet data on the network level, which is vital for proactive security management in the cloud.