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    PracticeGCP Professional Cloud ArchitectGCP Professional Cloud Architect Practice Exam 4Question 13
    Medium1 markMultiple Choice
    Domain 2: Managing and Provisioning a Solution InfrastructureCloud StorageLifecycle PoliciesRansomware
    This question is part of a case study — click to read the full scenario(Case 11)

    CASE STUDY: HealthData Corp

    Overview: Healthcare SaaS managing 10PB of sensitive patient records and imaging.
    Business: Strict HIPAA/SOC 2 compliance, ransomware protection, secure sharing of anonymized data with researchers, robust DR.
    Executives:

    • CEO: "Trust is our product. Zero tolerance for breaches."
    • CFO: "Storage costs growing exponentially. Need lifecycle management."
    • CISO: "Zero-trust architecture, end-to-end encryption."
      Tech: RPO 15m, RTO 2h for core DB. All data CMEK encrypted. Strict access controls, audit logging. Prevent data exfiltration.
      Constraints: Images retained 7 years but rarely accessed after 90 days. Researchers use external identities. No public IPs on compute.

    How should you design the network security architecture to prevent data exfiltration, even if an employee's credentials are compromised?

    View full case study page →

    GCP PCA · Question 13 · Domain 2: Managing and Provisioning a Solution Infrastructure

    CASE STUDY: HealthData Corp

    Overview: Healthcare SaaS managing 10PB of sensitive patient records and imaging.
    Business: Strict HIPAA/SOC 2 compliance, ransomware protection, secure sharing of anonymized data with researchers, robust DR.
    Executives:

    • CEO: "Trust is our product. Zero tolerance for breaches."
    • CFO: "Storage costs growing exponentially. Need lifecycle management."
    • CISO: "Zero-trust architecture, end-to-end encryption."
      Tech: RPO 15m, RTO 2h for core DB. All data CMEK encrypted. Strict access controls, audit logging. Prevent data exfiltration.
      Constraints: Images retained 7 years but rarely accessed after 90 days. Researchers use external identities. No public IPs on compute.

    To address the CFO's cost concerns and the ransomware protection requirement, how should you configure the Cloud Storage buckets for medical imaging?

    Answer options:

    A.

    Use Standard Storage for all 7 years to ensure fast access, and take daily snapshots of the bucket.

    B.

    Enable Object Versioning for ransomware protection, and create a Lifecycle Rule to move objects to Archive storage after 90 days.

    C.

    Store all data in Coldline storage immediately, and use Bucket Lock to prevent deletion.

    D.

    Use Persistent Disks attached to Compute Engine instances and use snapshot schedules.

    How to approach this question

    Combine the feature that prevents accidental/malicious overwrites (Versioning) with the feature that reduces costs over time (Lifecycle policies).

    Full Answer

    B.Enable Object Versioning for ransomware protection, and create a Lifecycle Rule to move objects to Archive storage after 90 days.✓ Correct
    Enable Object Versioning for ransomware protection, and create a Lifecycle Rule to move objects to Archive storage after 90 days.
    Cloud Storage Object Versioning protects against ransomware by keeping a history of object modifications; if a file is maliciously encrypted, you can simply restore the previous version. To optimize costs for 10PB of data that is rarely accessed after 90 days, a Cloud Storage Lifecycle Policy should automatically transition objects from Standard to Archive storage class.

    Common mistakes

    Applying Coldline/Archive immediately (C). This incurs massive retrieval costs during the first 90 days when the data is actively used.
    Question 12All questionsQuestion 14

    Practice the full GCP Professional Cloud Architect Practice Exam 4

    50 questions · hints · full answers · grading

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