Security-Operations-Engineer Google Cloud Certified - Professional Security Operations Engineer (PSOE) Exam Question and Answers

The most reliable, automated, and low-maintenance solution is to use the native Google Security Operations (SecOps) SOAR capabilities. A playbook block is a reusable, automated workflow that can be attached to other playbooks, such as the standard case closure playbook.

This block would be configured with a conditional action. This action would check a case field (e.g., case.escalation_status == "escalated"). If the condition is true, the playbook automatically proceeds down the "Yes" branch, which would use an integration action (like "Send Email" for Gmail or Outlook) to send the case details to the director. After the email action, it would proceed to the "Close Case" action. If the condition is false (the case was not escalated), the playbook would proceed down the "No" branch, which would skip the email step and immediately close the case.

This method ensures the process is "reliably sent" and "automatic," as it's built directly into the case management logic. Options C and D are incorrect because they rely on manual analyst actions, which are not reliable and violate the "automatic" requirement. Option A is a custom, external solution that adds unnecessary complexity and maintenance overhead compared to the native SOAR playbook functionality.

(Reference: Google Cloud documentation, "Google SecOps SOAR Playbooks overview"; "Playbook blocks"; "Using conditional logic in playbooks")

The key requirement is to *automate* the extraction of data to *minimize analyst effort*. This is a core function of Google Security Operations SOAR (formerly Siemplify). The **Siemplify integration** provides the foundational playbook actions for case management and entity manipulation.

The **`Create Entity`** action is designed to programmatically add new entities (like users, IPs, or domains) to the active case. To make this action automatic, the playbook developer must use the **Expression Builder**. The Expression Builder is the tool used to parse the JSON output from a previous action (the UDM query) and dynamically map the results (the list of usernames) into the parameters of a subsequent action.

By using the Expression Builder to configure the `Entities Identifier` parameter of the `Create Entity` action, the playbook automatically extracts all `principal.user.userid` fields from the UDM query results and adds them to the case. These new entities can then be automatically passed to the next playbook step, such as "Reset Password."

Options A and C are incorrect because they are **manual** actions. They require an analyst to intervene, which does *not* minimize effort. Option D is incorrect as it creates multiple, unnecessary cases, flooding the queue instead of enriching the single, original phishing case.

*(Reference: Google Cloud documentation, "Google SecOps SOAR Playbooks overview"; "Using the Expression Builder"; "Marketplace and Integrations")*

***

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation

The correct solution is Option D. The goal is to exclude events (i.e., stop false positives) when the principal.ip field contains any IP from the trusted 192.168.2.0/24 subnet.

The principal.ip field in UDM is a repeated field, meaning it can hold an array of values (e.g., ["1.2.3.4", "192.168.2.5"]). YARA-L provides the any and all quantifiers to handle repeated fields.9

any $e.principal.ip: This checks if at least one IP in the array meets the condition.

all $e.principal.ip: This checks if every IP in the array meets the condition.

The function net.ip_in_range_cidr(...) returns true if an IP is in the specified range.

Therefore, the logic we need is: "do not trigger this rule if any of the IPs in the principal.ip field are in the 192.168.2.0/24 range."

This translates directly to the YARA-L syntax: not net.ip_in_range_cidr(any $e.principal.ip, "192.168.2.0/24")

Option B would only find events from that subnet.

Option A would only find events where all associated IPs are in that subnet.

Option C is the logical inverse of A and would incorrectly filter out events that might be malicious (e.g., ["1.2.3.4", "192.168.2.5"] would not be excluded because all IPs are not in the range).

Exact Extract from Google Security Operations Documents:

YARA-L 2.0 language syntax > Repeated fields and boolean expressions: When a boolean expression, such as a function call, is applied to a repeated field, you can use the any or all keywords to specify how the expression should be evaluated.10

any : The expression evaluates to true if it is true for at least one of the values in the repeated field.

all : The expression evaluates to true only if it is true for all of the values in the repeated field.

Functions > net.ip_in_range_cidr: The net.ip_in_range_cidr function is useful to bind rules to specific parts of the network.11 To exclude all private netblocks as defined in RFC1918, you can add a not to the start of the criteria:

and not (net.ip_in_range_cidr(any $e.principal.ip, "10.0.0.0/8") or net.ip_in_range_cidr(any $e.principal.ip, "172.16.0.0/12") or net.ip_in_range_cidr(any $e.principal.ip, "192.168.0.0/16"))

This YARA-L rule is designed to correlate a real-time event (a DNS query, $dns) with known-bad indicators stored in the Google SecOps entity graph ($ioc). The code must correctly filter the entity graph to find the specific indicators from the custom MISP feed.

Two filters are required:

$ioc.graph.metadata.entity_type = "DOMAIN_NAME": This line is essential to filter the entity graph for IoCs that are domains. The rule is trying to match a DNS query ($dns_query) to a known C2 domain, so the entity type must be DOMAIN_NAME.

$ioc.graph.metadata.source_type = "ENTITY_CONTEXT": This is the key differentiator. The Google SecOps entity graph has multiple context sources. GLOBAL_CONTEXT (Option B) is for threat intelligence provided by Google (e.g., Google Threat Intelligence, Mandiant). DERIVED_CONTEXT (Option C) is for context inferred from UDM events. The prompt explicitly states the IoC feed is the organization's own "threat intelligence feed... ingested... with... MISP." This type of customer-provided, third-party intelligence is classified as ENTITY_CONTEXT. Adding this line ensures the rule only uses the custom MISP feed for its IoC data, as intended.

The other lines in the $ioc block, such as product_name = "MISP", further refine this ENTITY_CONTEXT search.

(Reference: Google Cloud documentation, "YARA-L 2.0 language syntax"; "Context-aware detections with entity graph"; "Populate the entity graph")

Comprehensive and Detailed 150 to 250 words of Explanation From Exact Extract Google Security Operations Engineer documents:

To determine if isolated events are part of a "coordinated attack," an analyst needs to pivot on the Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) such as Source IP, User Agent, or ASN to see if they appear across other accounts or timelines. UDM Search is the primary tool for this rapid ad-hoc investigation.

The documentation on UDM Search states it allows analysts to "search through all of your security data" to find specific events. By extracting the IOCs (e.g., the source IP of the bad login) and running a UDM search, you can instantly see if that same IP has targeted other users, which would confirm a coordinated password spraying or brute force campaign.

Option B suggests using a Dashboard. While dashboards provide high-level visibility, they are generally pre-aggregated views and are less effective than UDM Search for the specific, granular "rapid pivoting" required to link specific disparate login attempts to a single coordinated actor in real-time. Options C and D are remediation/prevention steps, not investigation steps.

The correct answer is A. The most effective and reliable method for a security engineer to "find reliable IoCs and malware behaviors" is to use Google Threat Intelligence (GTI). When a known indicator like a file hash is identified, the primary workflow is threat enrichment. Google Threat Intelligence, which is a core component of the Google SecOps platform and incorporates intelligence from Mandiant and VirusTotal, is the dedicated tool for this. Searching the hash in GTI provides a comprehensive report on the malware variant, including all associated reliable IoCs (e.g., C2 domains, IP addresses, related file hashes) and malware behaviors (TTPs, attribution, and context). This directly fulfills the user's need.

In contrast, Option D (UDM search) is the subsequent step. A UDM search is used to hunt for indicators within your own organization's logs. An engineer would first use GTI to gather the full list of IoCs and behaviors, and then use UDM search to hunt for all of those indicators across their environment. Option B (Web Search) is unreliable for professional operations, and Option C (manual analysis) is too slow for a "common malware variant" and the need to act "quickly."

(Reference: Google Cloud documentation, "Google Threat Intelligence overview"; "Investigating threats using Google Threat Intelligence"; "View IOCs using Applied Threat Intelligence")

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation

The correct solution is Option D. This approach correctly uses the integrated Google Cloud-native tools for both monitoring and alerting.

Google Security Operations (SecOps) automatically streams all ingestion metrics to Google Cloud Monitoring. This includes metrics for throughput (e.g., chronicle.googleapis.com/ingestion/event_count, chronicle.googleapis.com/ingestion/byte_count), parsing errors (e.g., chronicle.googleapis.com/ingestion/parse_error_count), and the health of collection agents (e.g., chronicle.googleapis.com/ingestion/last_seen_timestamp).

Receive a notification (15 minutes): The Data Ingestion and Health dashboard (Option A) is for visualization, and its "reports" are scheduled summaries, not real-time alerts. The only way to get a 15-minute notification is to use Cloud Monitoring. An alerting policy can be configured to trigger when a "metric absence" is detected for a specific collection agent's last_seen_timestamp, fulfilling the "silent source" requirement.

Visualize metrics: Cloud Monitoring also provides a powerful dashboarding service. A Cloud Monitoring dashboard can be built to graph all the necessary metrics—throughput, parsing errors, and agent status—in one place.

Option C is incorrect because it suggests using the Bindplane Observability Pipeline, which is a separate product. Option B is incorrect as Risk Analytics is for threat detection (UEBA), not platform health.

Exact Extract from Google Security Operations Documents:

Use Cloud Monitoring for ingestion insights: Google SecOps uses Cloud Monitoring to send the ingestion notifications. Use this feature for ingestion notifications and ingestion volume viewing.

Set up a sample policy to detect silent Google SecOps collection agents:

In the Google Cloud console, select Monitoring.

Click Create Policy.

On the Select a metric page, select Chronicle Collector > Ingestion > Total ingested log count.

In the Transform data section, set the Time series group by to collector_id.

Click Next.

Select Metric absence and set the Trigger absence time (e.g., 15 minutes).

In the Notifications and name section, select a notification channel.

You can also create custom dashboards in Cloud Monitoring to visualize any of the exported metrics, such as Total ingested log size or Total record count (for parsing).

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation

The correct solution is Option B. This question tests the advanced detection capabilities of YARA-L when using the Applied Threat Intelligence (ATI) Fusion Feed.

The key requirement is to find an IP that not only matches but has a documented relationship to APT41. The ATI Fusion Feed is not just a flat list of IOCs; it is a context-rich graph of indicators, malware, threat actors, and their relationships, managed by Google's threat intelligence teams.10

Option A is incorrect because it describes a manual, static list (data table) and cannot query the relationships in the live feed.

Option C is incorrect because it is too generic ("high confidence score," "any feed"). The requirement is specific to the ATI Fusion Feed and APT41.

Option D is incorrect because it describes a post-detection SOAR action. The question explicitly asks how to configure the YARA-L detection rule itself to perform this correlation.

Option B is the only one that describes the correct YARA-L 2.0 methodology. The rule must first define the live event (network connection). Then, it must define the context source (the ATI Fusion Feed). In the events section of the rule, a join is established between the event's external IP field and the IP indicator in the Fusion Feed. Finally, the rule filters the joined context data, looking for attributes such as threat.threat_actor.name = "APT41" or other related_indicators that link back to the specified threat group.

Exact Extract from Google Security Operations Documents:

Applied Threat Intelligence Fusion Feed overview: The Applied Threat Intelligence (ATI) Fusion Feed is a collection of Indicators of Compromise (IoCs), including hashes, IPs, domains, and URLs, that are associated with known threat actors, malware strains, active campaigns, and finished intelligence reporti11ng.12

Write YARA-L rules with the ATI Fusion Feed: Writing YARA-L rules that use the ATI Fusion Feed follows a similar process to writing YARA-L rules that use other context entity sources.13 To write a rule, you filter the selected context entity graph (in this case, Fusion Feed).14

You can join a field from the context entity and UDM event field. In the following example, the placeholder variable ioc is used to do a transitive join between the context entity and the event.

Because this rule can match a large number of events, it is recommended that you refine the rule to match on context entities that have specific intelligence. This allows you to filter for explicit associations, such as a specific threat group or an indicator's presence in a compromised environment.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation

The correct answer is Option C. The prompt specifies two critical, simultaneous requirements: immediate containment and preservation of forensic data.

Immediate Containment: The server is actively scanning the network, so it must be taken offline to prevent lateral movement and further compromise.

Forensic Preservation: The suspicion of persistence mechanisms means a full investigation is required. This investigation relies on volatile data (running processes, memory, active network connections) that must not be destroyed.

Option C is the only action that satisfies both requirements. Using a Google SecOps SOAR playbook to trigger the EDR integration's "quarantine" action instructs the EDR agent on the server to block all its network connections. This immediately contains the threat. However, the server itself remains running, which preserves all volatile forensic data for the investigation.

Option B (reboot) is incorrect because it is an eradication step that would destroy all volatile forensic evidence. Options A and D are incomplete containment or investigation steps that do not fully isolate the compromised host.

Exact Extract from Google Security Operations Documents:

Incident Response and Containment: When a critical asset is compromised, the first priority is containment. Google SecOps SOAR playbooks integrate with Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) tools to automate this step.

EDR Integration Actions: The most common containment action is "Quarantine Host" or "Isolate Asset." This action instructs the EDR agent on the endpoint to block all network communications, effectively isolating it from the rest of the network. This step immediately stops the threat from spreading or communicating with a C2 server. A key benefit of this approach, as opposed to a shutdown or reboot, is that the host remains powered on, which preserves volatile memory and process data for forensic investigation.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation

The correct solution is Option D. The problem is that a known, trusted principal (the backup tool's service account) is performing a legitimate action (storage.objects.list) that happens to look like the suspicious behavior the rule is designed to catch.

The most precise and effective way to reduce these false positives without weakening the rule's ability to catch malicious actors is to create an exception for the trusted principal.

By adding principal.user.email != "backup-bot@fcobaa.com" (or the equivalent principal.user.userid) to the events or condition section of the YARA-L rule, the rule will now only evaluate events where the actor is not the known-good backup bot.

Option A is incorrect because it just lowers the priority of the false positive; it doesn't stop it from being generated.

Option B is incorrect because the legitimate tool might also perform repeated calls, leading to the same false positive.

Option C is incorrect because api.service_name = "storage.googleapis.com" is less specific than api.operation = "storage.objects.list" and would likely increase the number of false positives by triggering on any storage API call.

Exact Extract from Google Security Operations Documents:

Reduce false positives: When a detection rule generates false positives due to known-benign activity (e.g., from an administrative script or automation tool), the best practice is to add a not condition to the rule to exclude the trusted entity.8

You can filter on UDM fields to create exceptions. For example, to prevent a rule from firing on activity from a specific service account, you can add a condition to the events section such as:

and $e.principal.user.userid != "trusted-service-account@project.iam.gserviceaccount.com"

This technique, often called "allow-listing" or "suppression," improves the rule's accuracy by focusing only on unknown or untrusted principals.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation

The key requirement is to programmatically build a data structure to query the connections (i.e., a graph) between resources. Security Command Center (SCC) Enterprise is built upon the data provided by Cloud Asset Inventory (CAI).1

Cloud Asset Inventory provides two primary types of data: resources (the "nodes" of a graph) and relationships (the "edges" of a graph).2

Option B is incorrect because it focuses on the resource table. While the resource table contains the assets themselves, it is the relationship table that specifically stores the connections between them (e.g., a compute.googleapis.com/Instance is ATTACHED_TO a compute.googleapis.com/Network).

Option A (attack path simulation) is a feature that consumes this graph data; it is not the method used to build the data structure for programmatic querying.

Option C (Bash script) is a manual, inefficient, and incomplete method that would fail to capture the complex relationships that CAI tracks automatically.

Option D is the correct solution. The Cloud Asset Inventory relationship table is the precise source for all resource connections. To effectively query these connections as an entity data structure (a graph), the ideal destination is a graph database. Spanner Graph is Google Cloud's managed graph database service, designed specifically for storing and querying highly interconnected data, making it the perfect tool for analyzing resource relationships and potential attack paths.3

Exact Extract from Google Security Operations Documents:

Relationships in Cloud Asset Inventory: Cloud Asset Inventory (CAI) provides relationship data, which allows you to understand the connections between your Google Cloud resources.4 CAI models relationships as a graph. You can export this relationship data for analysis. The relationship service stores information about the relationships between resources. For example, a Compute Engine instance might have a relationship with a persistent disk, or an IAM policy binding might have a relationship with a project.

Spanner Graph: Spanner Graph is a graph database built on Cloud Spanner that lets you store and query your graph data at scale.5 It is suitable for use cases that involve complex relationships, such as security analysis, fraud detection, and recommendation engines. By ingesting the Cloud Asset Inventory relationship table into Spanner Graph, you can programmatically execute graph queries to explore connections, identify high-risk assets, and model potential lateral movement paths.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation

The correct solution is Option A. The key requirement is to "improve" the previous manual "watchlist" process.

In Google Security Operations, "data tables" (mentioned in options C and D) are the modern equivalent of watchlists or reference lists.1 Using a data table would replicate the old, static process and would not be an improvement.

The superior method in Google SecOps is to ingest this data as Entity Context. This is a core feature where context data (like user information from AD or asset data from a CMDB) is ingested via a feed or the Context API. Google SecOps then uses this data to automatically enrich all incoming security events (UDM) in real-time.

When a log for john.doe is ingested, it is automatically enriched with the context data from AD, such as "John Doe," "Marketing Department," "Manager: Jane Smith," etc. This enriched information is then available for detection, hunting, and investigation. This is a significant improvement because it provides continuous, automatic enrichment at ingestion, rather than requiring a manual update of a static table or only enriching after an alert is generated (Option B).

Exact Extract from Google Security Operations Documents:

UDM enrichment and aliasing overview: Google Security Operations (SecOps) supports aliasing and enrichment for assets and users.2 Aliasing enables enrichment.3 For example, using aliasing, you can find the job title and employment status associated with a user ID.4

How aliasing works: User aliasing uses the USER_CONTEXT event type for aliasing.5 This contextual data is stored as entities in the Entity Graph.6 When new Unified Data Model (UDM) events are ingested, enrichment uses this aliasing data to add context to the UDM event.7 For example, a UDM event might include principal.user.userid = "jdoe". 8The enrichment process populates the principal.user noun with the entity data, such as user.user_display_name = "John Doe" and user.department = "Marketing".

This is the recommended method for ingesting organizational context from sources like Microsoft Windows Active Directory, as it makes the contextual data available for all subsequent detection, search, and investigation activities.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation

The correct solution is Option B. This question requires a low-latency (5 minutes) notification for a silent source.

The other options are incorrect for two main reasons:

Dashboards vs. Notifications: Options C and D are incorrect because dashboards (both in Looker and Google SecOps) are for visualization, not active, real-time alerting. They show you the status when you look at them but do not proactively notify you of a failure.

Metric-Absence vs. Metric-Value: Google SecOps streams all its ingestion health metrics to Google Cloud Monitoring, which is the correct tool for real-time alerting. However, Option A is monitoring the "total ingested log count." This metric would require a threshold (e.g., count < 1), which can be problematic. The specific and most reliable method to detect a "silent source" (one that has stopped sending data entirely) is to use a metric-absence condition. This type of policy in Cloud Monitoring triggers only when the platform stops receiving data for a specific metric (grouped by collector_id) for a defined duration (e.g., five minutes).

Exact Extract from Google Security Operations Documents:

Use Cloud Monitoring for ingestion insights: Google SecOps uses Cloud Monitoring to send the ingestion notifications. Use this feature for ingestion notifications and ingestion volume viewing... You can integrate email notifications into existing workflows.

Set up a sample policy to detect silent Google SecOps collection agents:

In the Google Cloud console, select Monitoring.

Click Create Policy.

Select a metric, such as chronicle.googleapis.com/ingestion/log_count.

In the Transform data section, set the Time series group by to collector_id.

Click Next.

Select Metric absence and do the following:

Set Alert trigger to Any time series violates.

Set Trigger absence time to a time (e.g., 5 minutes).

In the Notifications and name section, select a notification channel.

This question is a balance between enabling detection and managing cost. Event Threat Detection (ETD) identifies threats by analyzing logs, and the specific detection for data exfiltration requires Data Access audit logs.

Data Access audit logs are disabled by default because they are high-volume and can be expensive. The key requirement is to "minimize Cloud Logging costs" while still enabling the detection for specific sensitive resources.

Data exfiltration is a "data read" operation. Therefore, to meet the requirements, the organization only needs to enable "data read" audit logs. Enabling "data write" logs (Option B) is unnecessary for this detection and would add needless cost. Enabling logs for all resources (Option C) would be prohibitively expensive and violates the "minimize cost" constraint. While ETD does use VPC Flow Logs (Option D) for many network-based detections, they do not provide the resource-level detail (i.e., which bucket or dataset was accessed) required for this specific data exfiltration finding. Therefore, enabling "data read" logs only for the sensitive resources is the most precise, cost-effective solution.

(Reference: Google Cloud documentation, "Event Threat Detection overview"; "Enable Event Threat Detection"; "Cloud Logging - Data Access audit logs")

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation

The correct actions are C and D, as they represent the standard, parallel process for incident response: technical investigation and procedural/communicative response.

Technical Investigation (Option D): The immediate priority is to understand the alert. An analyst must review the Container Threat Detection finding in Security Command Center (SCC) to understand what was detected. This is followed by investigating the affected pod, its container, the node it's running on, and any associated service accounts to determine the initial blast radius and gather forensic data. Researching the binary and related TTPs (Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures) helps contextualize the attack.

Procedural Response (Option C): Concurrently, the organizational response plan must be activated. This involves notifying the business-critical workload owner (stakeholder communication), initiating the formal, documented incident response playbook, and escalating to specialized teams, like threat hunting, for deeper root cause analysis that goes beyond the initial triage.

Option A is incorrect because deleting the pod immediately is a premature remediation step that destroys critical forensic evidence. Option B is incorrect because "keeping the cluster and pod running" without any containment is reckless and could allow an attacker to pivot. Option E is incorrect because an unauthorized binary execution in a critical workload is a high-severity event, not a low-severity finding to be silenced.

Exact Extract from Google Security Operations Documents:

Responding to Container Threat Detection findings: When a Container Threat Detection finding is generated, it indicates a potential security issue that requires investigation. The first step is to review the finding details in Security Command Center (SCC) to understand the nature of the threat, such as K8S_BINARY_EXECUTED.

The recommended workflow involves:

Investigate: Examine the affected Kubernetes resources, such as the Pod, Container, and Node. Use tools like kubectl to inspect the pod configuration, running processes, and network connections. Research the associated attack and response methods to understand the threat actor's TTPs.

Respond: Follow the organization's incident response playbook. This includes notifying the workload owner and relevant stakeholders. Contain the threat by isolating the pod or node, but avoid deleting resources immediately to preserve evidence for forensic analysis.

Escalate: For complex incidents, engage the threat hunting or forensics team to conduct a thorough investigation, identify the root cause, and determine the full scope of the compromise.