Google Professional Security Operations Engineer Practice Exam

Google Professional Security Operations Engineer Practice Exam

The Google Cloud Certified Professional Security Operations Engineer Exam has been developed to analyze your skills with the ability to detect, monitor, analyze, investigate, and respond to security threats against workloads, endpoints, and infrastructure. Candidates are required to use Google Cloud resources to protect an enterprise environment and have proficiency in writing detection rules, log prioritization and ingestion, orchestration, and response automation. Further, this individual has experience leveraging posture and threat intelligence for detection and response.

Who should take the exam?

• Security Analysts and Engineers managing detection and response on Google Cloud.
• SOC Analysts and Incident Responders handling threats and incidents daily.
• Threat Hunters identifying vulnerabilities and anomalous behavior.
• Cloud Security Professionals using Google SecOps and SCC tools.
• System Admins or Security Architects moving into cloud security operations.

Skills Assessed

The Google Professional Security Operations Engineer exam assesses your skills to perform -

• Platform operations
• Data management
• Threat hunting
• Detection engineering
• Incident response
• Observability

Exam Details 

• Exam Duration: 2 hours
• Exam Language: English
• Exam format: 50-60 multiple-choice and multiple-select questions
• Exam Prerequisites: None
• Recommended experience: 3+ years of security industry experience, including 1+ years using Google Cloud security tooling
• Certification renewal: Candidates may renew their certification within the renewal eligibility period. 

Skills Required

• Detecting, analyzing, and responding to security threats across cloud environments.
• Using Google Security Operations (SecOps) and Security Command Center (SCC).
• Managing access control and permissions with IAM.
• Developing and tuning detection rules and alerts.
• Performing incident response and forensic investigations.
• Building and automating response playbooks.
• Ingesting, normalizing, and analyzing security logs.
• Creating dashboards and reports for visibility and metrics.
• Applying threat intelligence and indicators of compromise (IOCs).
• Monitoring system health using Cloud Monitoring and Looker Studio.
• Managing cloud security posture and compliance.

Knowledge Gained

• Deep understanding of Google Cloud’s security ecosystem and tools.
• Mastery of end-to-end detection and response workflows.
• Proficiency in proactive threat hunting and analytics.
• Ability to apply data-driven decision-making in security operations.
• Integration of Google Threat Intelligence (GTI) for real-time defense.
• Skills in automation and orchestration through Google SecOps SOAR.
• Insight into improving organizational security posture continuously.
• Knowledge of designing scalable, compliant, and resilient cloud security systems.
• Capability to correlate events, detect anomalies, and reduce false positives.
• Strategic understanding of aligning cloud security with business goals.

Course Outline

The Google Professional Security Operations Engineer Practice Exam

Domain 1: Understand Platform Operations (~14%)

1.1 Explain how to enhance Detection and Response

• Learn to prioritize telemetry sources (e.g., SCC, Google SecOps, GTI, Cloud IDS) to detect incidents or misconfigurations.
• Learn to integrate multiple security tools within the architecture to improve detection capabilities.
• Learn to justify tool usage with overlapping functionalities based on specific requirements.
• Learn to evaluate current tools to identify coverage gaps and mitigate threats.
• Learn to assess automation and cloud-based solutions to strengthen detection and response workflows.

1.2 Explain the process of configuring access

• Learn to configure user and service account authentication for tools such as SCC and Google SecOps.
• Learn to manage feature access through IAM roles and permissions.
• Learn to control data access by applying appropriate IAM policies.
• Learn to enable and analyze audit logs (e.g., Cloud Audit Logs, data access logs).
• Learn to configure API access for automation via service accounts or API keys.
• Learn to provision identities securely using Workforce Identity Federation.

Domain 2: Understand Data Management (~14%)

2.1 Explain the process of ingesting Logs for Security Tooling

• Learn to define data ingestion methods within SCC and Google SecOps.
• Learn to configure ingestion tools and features to collect relevant security logs.
• Learn to identify essential log sources for detection and response activities.
• Learn to evaluate and modify parsers for optimized data ingestion.
• Learn to apply data normalization techniques for consistent log processing.
• Learn to assign new labels and manage ingestion costs effectively.

2.2 Explain how to establish a Baseline for User, Asset, and Entity Context

• Learn to identify relevant threat intelligence applicable to the organization.
• Learn to differentiate between event and entity data sources (e.g., Cloud Audit Logs, Active Directory).
• Learn to match event and entity data using aliasing fields for enhanced enrichment.

Domain 3: Understand Threat Hunting (~19%)

3.1 Explain Performing Threat Hunting Across Environments

• Learn to develop queries to identify anomalies within environment logs.
• Learn to analyze user behavior to uncover unusual or suspicious activities.
• Learn to investigate networks, endpoints, and services to detect indicators of compromise (IOCs).
• Learn to collaborate with incident response teams to address active threats.
• Learn to formulate hypotheses based on posture, threat intelligence, and incident data.

3.2 Explain Leveraging Threat Intelligence for Threat Hunting

• Learn to search historical logs for IOCs and attack traces.
• Learn to identify new attack patterns using real-time threat intelligence and risk assessments.
• Learn to analyze entity risk scores to spot abnormal behavior.
• Learn to perform retrospective analysis of historical event data with enriched logs.
• Learn to conduct proactive searches for hidden or emerging threats using GTI and detection rules.

Domain 4: Understand Detection Engineering (~22%)

4.1 Explain the process of Developing and Implementing Detection Mechanisms

• Learn to correlate threat intelligence with user and asset activity.
• Learn to analyze events and logs to identify suspicious behaviors.
• Learn to design detection rules that utilize risk values to pinpoint threats.
• Learn to assign risk values to anomalous user or asset behavior using Google SecOps tools.
• Learn to create rules to identify changes in security posture or risk profiles.
• Learn to write YARA-L rules and build dashboards for uncovering low-prevalence threats.
• Learn to leverage entity and context data to enhance detection accuracy.
• Learn to configure SCC Event Threat Detection for custom IOC-based detectors.

4.2 Explain Applying Threat Intelligence in Detection

• Learn to score alerts based on the severity and relevance of IOCs.
• Learn to use updated IOCs to search within ingested telemetry.
• Learn to monitor alert frequency to minimize false positives.

Domain 5: Understand Incident Response (~21%)

5.1 Explain the process of containing and Investigating Incidents

• Learn to collect and analyze evidence, forensic images, and artifacts.
• Learn to monitor alerts and logs using tools such as SCC and Google SecOps.
• Learn to analyze the full incident scope through Logs Explorer, BigQuery, or Cloud Monitoring.
• Learn to collaborate with engineering teams for detection and long-term remediation.
• Learn to isolate compromised services to prevent lateral spread.
• Learn to perform forensic analysis on artifacts (e.g., IPs, hashes, URLs).
• Learn to conduct root cause analysis using SIEM and related tools.

5.2 Explain the process of building and Using Response Playbooks

• Learn to define and automate response steps based on incident types.
• Learn to prioritize enrichment actions aligned with threat profiles.
• Learn to integrate relevant systems and services into response playbooks.
• Learn to design new workflows addressing recent attack vectors.
• Learn to recommend and implement automation playbooks using Google SecOps SOAR.
• Learn to notify stakeholders and analysts promptly of active incidents.

5.3 Explain how to implement the Case Management Lifecycle

• Learn to assign cases to suitable response stages.
• Learn to establish efficient escalation workflows.
• Learn to evaluate the effectiveness of case handoffs across teams.

Domain 6: Understand Observability (~10%)

6.1 Explain the process of developing and Maintaining Dashboards and Reports

• Learn to identify critical metrics and security KPIs.
• Learn to design dashboards to visualize telemetry, detections, and alerts.
• Learn to generate and customize analytical reports using SecOps SOAR, SIEM, or Looker Studio.

6.2 Explain how to configure Health Monitoring and Alerting

• Learn to define essential metrics for system health and alerting.
• Learn to centralize monitoring dashboards for unified visibility.
• Learn to set alert thresholds and configure notifications via Cloud Monitoring.
• Learn to identify system health issues using Cloud Logging.
• Learn to implement silent source detection mechanisms for proactive monitoring.