Businesses that operate in complex cloud environments, large fleets, or sophisticated security operations all require visibility into their cloud assets in order to keep their teams nimble and their data secure. Cloud Asset Inventory (CAI) helps these teams understand their Google Cloud  and Anthos environments by providing complete visibility, real-time monitoring, and powerful asset analysis capabilities. Today, Cloud Asset Inventory gets four new capabilities that help you understand your environment more clearly and easily than ever before.

New user interface eases asset and insight discovery 

Cloud Asset Inventory console preview is now publicly available for GCP and Anthos customers. This preview provides insights into your cloud footprint, history and details of resource usage with powerful filtering and search capabilities. For example, you can view your global distribution of resources and policies, how your GCE VM footprint has been changing over time, as well as full metadata and change history for all your assets. The CAI console can be filtered at the organization, folder, or project-level, so each user can view the resources they have permissions for down to project level granularity.

Asset discovery and Datadog integration

A new asset list service in CAI provides quick and comprehensive asset discovery, including asset history, without needing to export the data to a storage destination. Datadog, a leading multi-cloud monitoring and security service provider, relies on deep integration with CAI for service and asset discovery. Datadog has been piloting and taking full advantage of the newly released asset list service. Datadog Product Manager, Steve Harrington, commented: 

“Google’s new Cloud Asset Inventory API provides us with an immensely valuable, single source of truth for determining the resources present in a given GCP environment. Along with its rich metadata, this enables us to enhance multiple aspects of our integration with GCP, including streamlined metric collection and ingestion of custom labels. We plan to continue building around Cloud Asset Inventory in the future to improve existing features, and are envisioning ways it could help us provide entirely new insights to our customers.”

Answer “who can access what resources?”

Determining authoritative answers to security-related questions like “Who can read data from my storage bucket that contains PII?” or “Does a terminated employee still have any remaining access to my system?” can be difficult and time consuming. This is why access management and identity certification is one of the top security priorities for enterprises running workloads in the cloud. To help alleviate this challenge, the new Policy Analyzer capability in CAI thoroughly analyzes the relationship between IAM policies and resources. The analysis includes powerful and efficient group expansion, service account impersonation, conditional access analysis, resource expansion, and more. You can even export the results to a BigQuery table or Cloud Storage bucket for further analysis and record keeping. CAI’s enhanced UI makes it even easier for you to build your own flexible queries and quickly get to a comprehensive answer.

Create asset posture visibility 

Cloud Asset Inventory now provides seven types of Asset Insights through the Active Assist platform. These new asset insights help proactively detect anomalies within your organization’s IAM policies, which may be opportunities to improve your security posture. The insights can be aggregated at the Organization, Folder or Project level. 

The seven new Asset Insights include: 

• External members in IAM policies. 
• External users that impersonate your service accounts.
• External members as policy editors.
• External users who can view cloud storage buckets.
• Terminated users/groups that are still in IAM policies
• IAM policies containing all users or all authenticated users.
• Projects with only terminated users as owners.

As a Google Cloud customer you can get started and use all the recently released capabilities and features immediately; check out our documentation to see how. We’d love to hear your feedback; email us with any questions or concerns!

For more than a decade, Google has applied a Zero Trust approach to most aspects of our operations. Zero Trust’s core tenet–that implicit trust in any single component of a complex, interconnected system can create serious security risks–is fundamental to how we operate and build our security architecture.

Early in our security journey, we realized that despite our best efforts user credentials would periodically fall into the hands of malicious actors. This is why we developed the BeyondCorp framework. We needed additional layers of defense against unauthorized access that would not impede user productivity. We also understood that software that interacts with the larger world should not have a perimeter-based trust model. These realizations led to the layered protection in our BeyondProd framework, which extends the Zero Trust paradigm to our production workloads.

Earlier this year, the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a Federal Strategy to Move the U.S. Government Towards a Zero Trust Architecture. This marks an important step for the U.S. government’s efforts to modernize under Executive Order 14028 on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity. In parallel, guidance from the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) has also called for the move to a Zero Trust approach to security and outlined in 2021 its report on Zero Trust architecture design principles.

Adopting a Zero Trust approach can help organizations inside and outside the public sector stay ahead of both regulatory requirements and security threats, but it requires thoughtful planning and execution. Our goal is to bring the best practices for Zero Trust together in one place, leveraging the experiences and knowledge of our existing customers, and Google’s own experience with implementing Zero Trust.

How Google Cloud can help government agencies move toward Zero Trust

Agencies can rely on Google Zero Trust capabilities for remote access, secure collaboration, and boundary security. To better serve the Zero Trust needs of our customers, we introduced BeyondCorp Enterprise in January 2021, a solution that provides Zero Trust secure access to resources and applications in the cloud and on-premises. BeyondCorp Enterprise was built based on years of Google’s own innovation as we implemented Zero Trust globally for ourselves. It leverages the Chrome browser and Google’s global network, and it offers integrated real-time threat and data protection.

Here are five ways BeyondCorp Enterprise can be applied to help organizations adopt the Zero Trust cybersecurity principles set forth in the recent White House memorandum (M-22-09) and other global government guidance for Zero Trust.

1. Enable enterprise applications to be used over the public internet: It’s no secret that VPN usage poses daily burdens and long-term challenges for IT and cybersecurity managers, as well as end-users. BeyondCorp Enterprise provides users with seamless and secure access to web applications (including SaaS apps and apps hosted on any cloud), plus central management controls and threat and data protection capabilities, all built-in to the Chrome browser. Through BeyondCorp Enterprise, end-users can access applications simply and still benefit from enterprise-grade security, without sacrificing their productivity or user experience.
2. Leverage phishing-resistant MFA to access secure resources: Many cyberattacks start with phishing messages that lead users to infected websites and attempt to steal credentials. The use of phishing-resistant MFA, as recommended by M-22-09, can protect personnel from sophisticated online attacks. BeyondCorp Enterprise supports strong phishing-resistant authentication, by allowing factors such as Titan Security Keys to be used as attributes in access policies that are enforced at the application layer. Organizations can customize how to incorporate phishing-resistant MFA methods into their access policies for individual applications and resources. Phishing protection is also built into the Chrome browser, powered by Google Safe Browsing, and these capabilities block access to malicious content, detect phishing sites, prevent malware transfers, and generate reports of unsafe activity, adding even more protection against bad actors.

3. Use context-aware authorization: The U.S. federal strategy states that a Zero Trust architecture should incorporate more granularly and dynamically defined permissions and that every request for access should be evaluated to determine whether it is appropriate. With context-aware authorization, organizations can build and customize access policies to include different contextual signals about a user including their role, their location, and even the time of day. Every interaction between a user and a BeyondCorp-protected resource is evaluated in real-time against the resource’s access policy to ensure users are and remain authorized to access it, with continuous authorization for all interactions at a per request level.
4. Incorporate device-level signal into authentication: At Google, we believe that trust must be granted based on what is known about a user’s identity and their device. We are pleased that OMB similarly recommends that authentication incorporate at least one device-level signal alongside identity information. Since BeyondCorp Enterprise supports device-level attributes without requiring users to install agents, this can be done easily by leveraging the Endpoint Verification extension in the Chrome browser, where administrators can gather endpoint security posture information and easily construct and implement granular resource access policies. The ability to collect and utilize this information through an agentless approach is especially helpful for BeyondCorp Enterprise customers who support a workforce with bring-your-own-device policies or unmanaged devices.
5. Include the extended workforce in your Zero Trust strategy: A Zero Trust approach aimed to provide secure access to the right users, at the right time, and for the right purposes should be inclusive of all users, not just full-time staff. Government agencies rely on contractors and partners to carry out many important missions. Unfortunately, the extended workforce is often more vulnerable to attacks if they are given too much privileged access or if their security practices are not properly assessed before access is provisioned. At the same time, federal administrators can’t always manage third-party devices or software directly, which can make secure access challenging.

BeyondCorp Enterprise supports a feature called protected profiles, an ideal solution for granting Zero Trust access to the extended workforce. It enables users to securely access resources from unmanaged devices and be protected by the same security capabilities without needing to install agents. Furthermore, administrators can gain visibility into risky activities and view any security events that are generated from within protected profiles.

Applying the NCSC Zero Trust principles on Google Cloud

Last year, the U.K. government’s NCSC launched its Zero Trust architecture design principles to help organizations securely adopt a Zero Trust architecture. To help private and public sector organizations in the U.K., the Google Cybersecurity Action Team (GCAT) released a detailed research paper that outlines how organizations can leverage Google Cloud technologies and services to align with these principles. This is a technical guide aimed at enterprise and security architects charged with developing and executing a Zero Trust strategy under the principles outlined by the NCSC, including:

• Know your architecture, including users, devices, services and data with Google Cloud Professional Services Organization (PSO) who can support discovery, planning and risk mitigation.
• Know your User, Service and Device identities including reference architectures for Cloud Identity.
• Assess your user behavior, device and service health by leveraging built in reporting from Google Cloud and Chronicle.
• Use policies to authorize requests with BeyondCorp Enterprise policy-based authorization.
• Authenticate & Authorize everywhere by reviewing the BeyondCorp and BeyondProd frameworks which combine to deliver ubiquitous authentication and authorization.
• Focus your monitoring on users, devices and services with device management and Cloud native monitoring capabilities.
• Don’t trust any network, including your own. Review details on Google’s Secure by Design infrastructure.
• Choose services designed for Zero Trust. Review how to protect modern and legacy applications with BeyondCorp.

For more detail on how we’re supporting the U.K.’s NCSC, please review our recent research paper for insight into their priorities, and where Google will be discussing Secure by Design principles and how to respond to security incidents.

Zero Trust assessment and planning services for organizations

Organizations that are managing complex environments while undergoing Zero Trust adoption could benefit strongly from experienced support and guidance. The Google Cybersecurity Action Team (GCAT) is committed to helping customers meet Zero Trust security and compliance requirements in the cloud through specialized consulting engagements and workshops for public sector customers. Read more about how growing cybersecurity requirements for U.S. federal government customers via executive orders and White House mandates are being supported through Google Cloud solutions.

GCAT’s multi-week Zero Trust Foundations engagement helps organizations build a strategy to achieve a Zero Trust security model across their operations. Zero Trust Foundations is co-delivered by Google Cloud’s Office of the CISO and our public sector Professional Services Organization. It can help focus and accelerate customers’ Zero Trust efforts by sharing lessons learned from Google’s own BeyondCorp zero-trust journey, and our global implementation of defense-in-depth best practices. Contact us today to learn more.

To learn more about ways Google Cloud can help organizations embarking on a Zero Trust journey, tune into our second annual Google Cloud Security Summit on May 17 and hear directly from customers who are already using our Zero Trust solutions to achieve their organization’s security goals.

About the Authors:
Jeanette Manfra is the former Assistant Director for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at the Department of Homeland Security. Dan Prieto is the former Director of the Defense Industrial Base Cybersecurity program at the Department of Defense. Both Dan and Jeanette also served in the White House on the staff of the National Security Council’s cybersecurity directorate.

Our quarterly Security Talks series brings together experts from Google Cloud Security teams and the industry to share information on our latest security products, innovations and best practices. Below is an introduction to Mandiant’s Security Talks presentation on Dec. 7, Mandiant Tales from the Front Lines: Activate Cyber Defenses Against Supply Chain Compromise.

The discovery in December 2020 of the SolarWinds supply chain compromise, a global computer intrusion campaign, caused organizations and security leaders to completely reassess their Cyber Threat Profiles, risk assessments, and defensive postures. It was a rare, watershed event that savvy security leaders and IT decision makers have been using to improve how security teams protect systems, networks, and data across industries and sectors, especially critical infrastructure. Two years later, we’re looking back at the security incident, what we’ve learned, and how it continues to drive change across security teams and organizations.

The SolarWinds compromise leveraged access to the software maker’s Orion business software in order to distribute a malicious update containing malware. Mandiant has since attributed this operation to APT29, a Russia-based espionage group assessed to be sponsored by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). This operation afforded APT29 with unparalleled access to an estimated 18,000 global organizations for follow-on targeting based on the attacker’s discretion and collection priorities.

While the security industry has yet to see anything that rivals the scale and scope of the SolarWinds compromise since it was discovered, a recent Google Cloud research report on software supply chain security found that there’s been a sharp increase in software supply chain attacks across nearly every sector.

Mandiant analysis identified supply chain compromise as the second-most prevalent initial infection vector in 2021. When the initial infection vector was identified, supply chain compromise accounted for 17% of intrusions in 2021 compared to less than 1% of intrusions in 2020. Further, 86% of supply chain compromise intrusions in 2021 were related to the SolarWinds breach.

Since 2020, Mandiant has also observed an increase in financially-motivated threat actors targeting the software supply chain. These actors compromised popular software packages and even mobile applications in order to deploy ransomware, cryptocurrency miners, and banking trojans. In one case, malicious code was inserted into a popular package, prompting the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) to issue an alert about the compromise.

Mitigation recommendations

The discovery of the SolarWinds incident resulted in increased global attention around supply chain compromise threats. Government authorities and technology organizations have responded with several initiatives, legislation, and studies seeking to reduce software supply chain and software dependency risk. Although these initiatives may make it more difficult for threat actors to conduct these operations, organizations should also take steps to mitigate supply chain threats.

Mandiant suggests that organizations contemplate applying multiple layers of security policies, plans, and solutions to maximize opportunities to provide early threat detection and prevent an anomaly or compromise stemming from the supply chain. This guidance is aligned with best practices Google Cloud has recommended for organizations to improve their software supply chain security.

Mandiant has also provided the following additional recommendations for organizations to consider more generally:

• Establish a vendor vetting process to evaluate vendor security practices before deploying hardware or software.
• Create a change control process and board for all enterprise hardware and software changes, which could include a centralized IT or IT security managed process for downloading, testing, and pushing updates to users.
• Use an advanced endpoint security solution, such as an endpoint detection and response (EDR), to detect malicious behavior when a tainted software package is downloaded and executed.
• Ensure proper logging and monitoring is in place between the software, hardware, and the internet.
• Implement the software and hardware using network segmentation with minimal access to the internet.
• Enact employee training programs and policies to encourage security best practices, including security audits of code in development.

Next steps

You can watch the Google Cloud Security Talks presentation on SolarWinds and the current state of supply chain threats here. You can learn more about Google Cloud’s solutions to help improve software supply chain security here, or for more general inquiries, please contact us or reach out to your sales representative to learn how we can assist.