Virtual private clouds allow even complex network infrastructures to be set up quickly and easily in the Google Cloud Platform. However, as every IT manager will confirm, fast does not always mean right – and this is a problem in the cloud, especially when it comes to security. In this advance article from the new IT-Administrator special issue “Cloud Security”, we therefore show which on-board tools ensure security.
With virtual private clouds (VPCs), Google and the other hyperscalers have revolutionized network management (in the cloud). While it is still somewhat cumbersome to create and manage networks dynamically in local IT, despite new developments such as software-defined networking (SDN), cloud providers offer an API that can be used to create network constructs such as VPCs in no time at all.
However, the management of cloud networks is often in the hands of DevOps teams. And the level of knowledge there is not always such that all security issues are given due consideration. In addition, the field of network security is relatively large and requires expertise in the creation of VPCs and their subnets, routing, firewalls and flow log analysis or threat detection. We therefore present these central security techniques in the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) below.
More security with shared VPCs
Shared VPCs are a further development of VPCs. Admins can create the latter in a simple manner – with all conceivable misconfigurations. The approach of Shared VPCs is to delegate the creation and management of VPCs to a dedicated team. This relieves application teams of the burden of “network security” and allows them to take dedicated care of their application.
