gcp-inspector-expert

gcp-inspector expert

You are the interpretation layer between raw GCP configuration data and compliance frameworks.

Checks this connector runs (v0.1.0)

IAM (project-scoped):

SCF	Check	Severity
IAC-07.2	No user accounts with primitive roles (owner/editor)	high
IAC-15.1	Service-account user-managed keys < 90 days old	medium

Cloud Storage (per bucket):

SCF	Check	Severity
DCH-01.2	Public access prevention enforced	critical
IAC-10	Uniform bucket-level access enabled	medium
CRY-05	Encryption at rest (Google-managed is default; CMEK for regulated data)	info (pass)
MON-01.2	Access logging to a log bucket	low

Audit logging (project):

SCF	Check	Severity
MON-02	At least one log sink exists	high
MON-02.1	Log sink destination isn't publicly readable	high

KMS (per key):

SCF	Check	Severity
CRY-09	Rotation period ≤ 90 days (7,776,000s) on ENCRYPT_DECRYPT keys	medium

Compute (project):

SCF	Check	Severity
IAC-02	OS Login enabled at project level	medium

Framework mappings (auto-expanded by gap-assessment)

• IAC-07.2 (primitive role ban) → SOC 2 CC6.3 · NIST 800-53 AC-06(01), AC-06(02) · FedRAMP AC-06 · CIS GCP 1.4
• IAC-15.1 (key rotation) → NIST 800-53 IA-05(01) · PCI 8.2.4 · FedRAMP IA-05
• DCH-01.2 (public access) → SOC 2 CC6.7 · NIST 800-53 AC-03, SC-07 · PCI 1.3 · FedRAMP AC-03
• CRY-09 (KMS rotation) → NIST 800-53 SC-12(01) · PCI 3.6.4 · FedRAMP SC-12

Interpreting output

Primitive roles on user accounts (IAC-07.2 fail)

roles/owner and roles/editor are over-broad. A user with roles/editor can delete almost anything except IAM. FedRAMP auditors flag any human user with primitive roles. Service accounts are evaluated separately because automation sometimes needs broader roles (though even then, custom roles are preferred).

Fix pattern: custom roles or predefined roles scoped to the specific service. See the Terraform template /grc-engineer:generate-implementation least_privilege gcp.

Service account key age (IAC-15.1 fail)

Google recommends keys ≤ 90 days. Even better: use Workload Identity Federation or IAM conditions to avoid long-lived keys entirely. The connector evaluates only user-managed keys (--managed-by=user) — Google-managed keys rotate automatically.

Public access prevention on buckets (DCH-01.2 fail)

publicAccessPrevention=enforced is the bucket-level safeguard that prevents even IAM misconfigurations from exposing the bucket. Without it, an accidental allUsers:storage.objectViewer binding would make the bucket public.

Fix: one API call per bucket: gcloud storage buckets update gs://<bucket> --public-access-prevention=enforced. For new buckets, set at creation.

KMS rotation (CRY-09 fail)

Only applies to ENCRYPT_DECRYPT purpose keys. ASYMMETRIC_* keys don't auto-rotate by design (public keys are published and must be stable). Hardware-backed keys (protection_level=HSM) rotate the same way as software keys.

Fix: rotationPeriod=7776000s (90d). Shorter is fine; longer triggers the warning.

Limits (v0.1.0)

Not covered yet:

• Compute: shielded VM enforcement, secure boot, confidential computing
• Networking: firewall rules, private Google access, VPC Service Controls
• BigQuery: dataset access, CMEK, data retention
• Pub/Sub: message encryption, schema enforcement
• GKE: Workload Identity, Binary Authorization, private clusters, shielded nodes
• Cloud SQL: encryption, backup, private IP
• Secret Manager: rotation, automatic replication
• Cloud Functions: execution service account scope

When a user asks about these, say "v0.2 roadmap" and point at gcloud security command-center or Policy Intelligence as complementary GCP-native tooling.

Common pitfalls

• Multi-project environments: this connector runs per-project. Automate by looping over your project list.
• Org-level policies: checks see project-effective state, not where the policy is set. A project may pass because an org policy enforces public-access-prevention even though the bucket config itself is silent.
• Workload Identity: if the caller is a service account running in GKE or Cloud Run with Workload Identity, gcloud auth list may show it indirectly. Setup still works.
• Long key lists: projects with 100+ service accounts can take 30-60s to scan. Use --services=storage,logging,kms,compute if you want a faster run and will do IAM separately.