Cloud security starts with a solid foundation. In this article we explain Google Cloud’s shared responsibility model, survey Google Cloud security tools, list best practices for a secure cloud infrastructure, and mention key Google Cloud Next ’25 security announcements.
Google Cloud’s Shared Responsibility Model
Google Cloud’s shared responsibility model splits security tasks between Google and the customer. Google secures the underlying cloud (hardware, networks, and managed services) while you secure your apps, data, and configurations.
In practice, that means Google handles physical infrastructure, virtualization, and default platform protections, while you handle things like firewall rules, secure networking, IAM roles, data encryption, and secure application code.
Understanding these boundaries is critical, and if you forget your side (for example, by misconfiguring a database or leaving a storage bucket open), attackers will exploit it.
Google Cloud’s Native Security Tools
Google Cloud provides many built-in tools to help lock down your environment and meet compliance needs. Here’s a breakdown of some of the key security tools:
- IAM (Identity and Access Management): Lets you grant fine-grained permissions to users and service accounts. Use IAM predefined roles; avoid using basic roles such as "Viewer, Editor, and Owner" that grant too elevated access over cloud resources. Create custom roles when needed so no one has more rights than necessary.
- Security Command Center & Chronicle: A unified security dashboard for your cloud resources. The Security Command Center detects misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, and threats across your projects. Chronicle SIEM ingests logs and looks for risky patterns in real time. Together they provide end-to-end cloud threat detection and alert on potential attacks.
- Google Cloud DLP (Data Loss Prevention): A managed service that helps you discover, classify, and protect sensitive data across Google Cloud and beyond. It also enables fine-grained data inspection across structured and unstructured sources, helping organizations meet compliance requirements with precision.
- Cloud Armor: A DDoS and web application firewall. Cloud Armor automatically blocks common threats (like DDoS, SQL injection, and XSS attacks) against your public apps and APIs.
- Cloud KMS (Key Management Service): A managed key vault. KMS lets you generate, rotate, and manage encryption keys or import your own keys, so you retain control over cryptographic materials.
- VPC Service Controls: Virtual service perimeters to stop data leakage. You can define perimeters around sensitive services (like BigQuery or Cloud Storage) so data can’t be exfiltrated to the public internet or unauthorized networks.
- Cloud Audit Logs: Records of every admin action and data access event. Audit logs give you transparency on “who did what, when, and where” in your Google Cloud projects. These logs are critical for compliance reporting and forensic investigation.
- Cloud IDS (Intrusion Detection): Monitors network traffic for malicious activity. Cloud IDS analyzes packets and alerts on malware or intrusion attempts in your VPCs.
By combining tools like IAM roles, firewall rules, audit logging, monitoring, etc., you get multiple layers of defense. Google’s built-in encryption (256-bit AES at rest and TLS in transit) and guardrails (public access restrictions) add more protection. And by plugging into Google Cloud’s threat intelligence (Security Command Center, IDS, Chronicle), you gain advanced cloud threat detection capabilities.
8 Google Cloud Security Must-Dos & Best Practices
- Train your team and stay informed: Security is a moving target. Make sure your team stays sharp. Phishing or careless mistakes often open breaches, and attack methods evolve quickly, so regular security training keeps everyone aware of new threats.
- Understand and use the shared responsibility model: Clarify who does what. Google takes care of infrastructure, but you must lock down your apps and data. For example, Google Cloud automatically patches servers, but you must patch your OS images. Know which services are fully managed (fewer worries) versus self-managed, and use Google Cloud’s guidance on responsibilities.
- Segment your network (secure your VPC): Don’t put everything on one flat network. Use separate VPCs or subnets for critical systems, and apply strict firewall rules. For instance, avoid public IPs on databases and only allow access from specific addresses. VPC Service Controls can further isolate sensitive data from the internet. Setting up tight firewall rules and avoiding public IPs keeps attackers at bay.
- Encrypt data at rest and in transit: Use Google’s default encryption and manage your own keys where needed. Google Cloud encrypts all data on disk (AES-256) and in transit by default. To strengthen this, use Cloud KMS to manage keys and consider additional layers (per-file or per-database keys). Regularly rotate keys and audit key usage. This ensures that stolen data is unusable without your keys.
- Enforce strong authentication and least privilege: Protect identities aggressively. Require multifactor authentication (MFA) for all user accounts. Google Cloud offers MFA via phone, SMS, or authenticator apps. Use context-aware access to restrict logins from unmanaged devices or risky locations. Always follow the principle of least privilege in IAM: grant only the permissions each role absolutely needs. Lock down service account keys (use short-lived tokens or workload identity federation) so automated jobs don’t become attack vectors.
- Continuously monitor and audit logs: Turn on comprehensive logging and review it often. Cloud Audit Logs, Cloud Monitoring, and Logging give you near-real-time visibility. Set up log-based metrics and alerts (for example, on unusual access patterns). Regular audits (automated or manual) will reveal misconfigurations or suspicious activity early. BBI’s practice is to review build and deployment logs automatically and alert teams on failures, ensuring nothing slips through.
- DevOps and IaC best practices. Treat your infrastructure code like application code. Use version control (Git, Bitbucket) so all changes are tracked and reviewed. Have engineers review pull requests to catch errors and security issues early. Automate deployments with CI/CD pipelines (e.g. Bamboo) in separate dev/test/prod environments. Give each environment its own service account with minimal permissions, storing its keys securely (for example, in encrypted CI/CD secrets). This way, even if one part is compromised, the rest stay locked down. Use Terraform or Deployment Manager for consistent infrastructure-as-code. Secure your Terraform state files by keeping them in a restricted GCS bucket with access only for your CI service account.
- Plan for incident response: Despite best efforts, assume breaches happen. Have a documented incident response plan that defines who does what when an attack is detected. Know how to isolate resources (shut off the network or revoke keys), and have backups ready. Practice drills so your team can execute the plan under pressure. A well-prepared response will minimize damage and downtime if something goes wrong.
By following these Google Cloud security best practices, you greatly reduce risk, create a secure cloud infrastructure, and keep your data pipelines intact.
Key Google Cloud Next ’25 security announcements
Image Source: Google Cloud Next ‘25
Google Cloud continually adds new protections. At Next ’25, Google Cloud unveiled Google Unified Security, a converged platform with AI-powered threat detection, virtual red teaming, and Mandiant expertise, all on one global data fabric. New AI agents will soon triage alerts and analyze code for malware automatically.
For data protection, Google Cloud added a Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) tool (preview) to discover and classify sensitive data and a new Compliance Manager for end-to-end audit workflows.
Identity is getting tighter too: unified IAM allow/deny policies and workload identity with mTLS are coming in Q2. On the network side, expect DNS Armor (AI threat defense for DNS queries) and new Cloud Armor Enterprise features for centralized policies, plus Layer-7 firewalls (NGFW) to block unsafe web traffic.
BBI’s Google Cloud Expertise:
At BBI, our strength lies in transforming complex business goals into actionable, cloud-native solutions. We’ve partnered with Google Cloud to modernize infrastructure, improve operational agility, and unlock deeper insights for our customers.
For a retailing giant, BBI migrated their on-prem Teradata systems to Google Cloud, modernized data pipelines using BigQuery, and reduced deployment times by 66% through Terraform automation. By implementing CI/CD pipelines and SLA-driven SRE practices, we helped build a resilient, scalable retail data platform with 99.9% platform availability and cut resolution times by 70%.
BBI’s Google Cloud team brings deep expertise across data modernization, AI integration, and platform scalability. Our clients benefit from our technical execution, strategic guidance, and continuous innovation, delivered by a partner who understands the importance of uptime, speed, and scalability.
Talk to Us:
At BBI, our partnership with Google Cloud has already brought meaningful change to several customers across financial services, retail, and healthcare.
With expanded capabilities in GenAI, infrastructure, security, and data connectivity, we’re more equipped than ever to help clients achieve faster outcomes at lower operational complexity.
If you’d like to learn more about how BBI can tailor Google Cloud’s latest offerings to your organization, contact us. Whether it's a quick consultation or a deep-dive demo, we’re ready when you are.
