- What is digital transformation?
- Using digital technology (like cloud) to change how an organization operates and delivers value — a continuous business change, not a one-time IT project.
- What is cloud computing?
- On-demand delivery of IT resources (compute, storage, networking) over the internet with pay-as-you-go pricing, instead of owning physical data centers.
- What does 'cloud native' mean?
- An application designed for the cloud from the start — using managed services, containers, microservices, and automatic scaling rather than lift-and-shift.
- What is a public cloud?
- Computing resources owned and operated by a provider (like Google) and shared over the internet by many customers.
- What is a private cloud?
- Cloud infrastructure dedicated to a single organization, often on-premises or in a hosted data center.
- What is a hybrid cloud?
- An environment that combines on-premises/private infrastructure with public cloud, with workloads moving between them.
- What is a multi-cloud strategy?
- Using services from more than one public cloud provider, to avoid lock-in or use the best service from each.
- What is total cost of ownership (TCO)?
- The full cost of running a workload — hardware, software, staff, power, and maintenance — used to compare on-premises vs. cloud.
- What is CapEx vs OpEx?
- Capital expenditure (CapEx) is large upfront spending on owned assets; operating expenditure (OpEx) is variable pay-as-you-go spending. Cloud shifts CapEx to OpEx.
- What are the main cloud service models?
- IaaS (infrastructure), PaaS (platform), and SaaS (software) — each shifts more management responsibility from the customer to the provider.
- What is IaaS?
- Infrastructure as a Service — the provider runs the hardware; you manage the OS and applications. Example: Compute Engine.
- What is PaaS?
- Platform as a Service — the provider manages infrastructure and runtime; you just deploy code. Example: App Engine, Cloud Run.
- What is SaaS?
- Software as a Service — fully managed applications delivered over the internet. Example: Google Workspace.
- What is Google Cloud?
- Google's suite of public cloud computing services — compute, storage, data, AI/ML, and networking — running on Google's global infrastructure.
- What is Google Workspace?
- Google's SaaS productivity suite (Gmail, Docs, Drive, Meet) used for collaboration — an example of software as a service.
- What is a Google Cloud Region?
- A specific geographic location where Google Cloud resources are hosted; each Region contains multiple zones.
- What is a Google Cloud zone?
- An isolated deployment area within a Region; spreading resources across zones increases availability.
- Why deploy across multiple zones or Regions?
- To increase availability and resilience — if one zone or Region fails, the workload keeps running elsewhere.
- What is the difference between migration and modernization?
- Migration moves a workload to the cloud (often as-is); modernization re-architects it to use cloud-native, managed services.
- What is 'lift and shift' (rehosting)?
- Moving an application to the cloud with little or no change — the fastest migration path but it doesn't gain cloud-native benefits.
- What is a managed service?
- A cloud service where the provider handles operational tasks (patching, scaling, backups) so you focus on your application.
- Why do organizations adopt cloud? (key drivers)
- Lower/variable cost, faster innovation and speed to market, elastic scalability, global reach, and offloading infrastructure management.
- What is scalability in the cloud?
- The ability to increase or decrease resources to match workload demand, instead of provisioning for peak.
- What is the role of culture in digital transformation?
- Success depends on people and process change — leadership buy-in, new skills, and a culture of experimentation — not just technology.
- What is a proof of concept (POC)?
- A small experiment to validate that a cloud solution works before committing to a full rollout.
- What is the value of Google's global network?
- Google's private fiber network delivers low-latency, high-throughput connectivity between Regions and to users worldwide.
- What is sustainability as a cloud benefit?
- Running on Google Cloud lets organizations reduce their carbon footprint; Google matches its energy use with renewable energy.
- What is vendor lock-in, and how does cloud address it?
- Dependence on one provider's proprietary services; open-source-based and portable services (e.g., GKE, BigQuery export) reduce lock-in risk.
- What is a workload?
- A specific application or service (and its resources) that runs to accomplish a business task.
- What is elasticity?
- Automatically acquiring resources when demand rises and releasing them when it falls, so you pay only for what you use.
- What business outcomes does digital transformation target?
- Better customer experience, faster innovation, operational efficiency, new revenue streams, and data-driven decisions.
- What is the difference between a Region and a zone?
- A Region is a geographic area; a zone is an isolated location inside a Region. Resources are placed in zones within Regions.
- What does 'pay-as-you-go' pricing mean?
- You pay only for the resources you actually consume, with no long-term commitment required.
- What is a cloud center of excellence (CCoE)?
- A cross-functional team that sets cloud best practices, governance, and standards to guide an organization's cloud adoption.
- What is the on-premises model?
- Running IT in your own data center — you buy, own, and maintain all hardware and software (high CapEx, full responsibility).
- What is the 'transformation cloud'?
- Google's framework for transformation across four areas: app/infrastructure modernization, data democratization, people connections, and trusted transactions.
- What are Google Cloud's five business benefits?
- Intelligence (data/AI), freedom (open, multicloud), collaboration (Workspace), trust (security), and sustainability.
- What is an open standard?
- A publicly available, widely agreed specification that promotes interoperability and avoids vendor lock-in.
- What is open source software?
- Software whose source code is freely available to use, modify, and share — e.g., Kubernetes and TensorFlow originated at Google.
- What is reliability in the cloud?
- The ability of a system to perform its function consistently and recover from failures.
- What is agility in the cloud?
- The ability to develop, test, and launch applications quickly by provisioning resources in minutes.
- What is latency?
- The delay before data transfer begins — lower latency means faster response. Choosing a nearby Region reduces it.
- What is bandwidth?
- The maximum rate at which data can be transferred over a network connection.
- What is DNS (Domain Name System)?
- The system that translates human-readable domain names into IP addresses so users reach the right server.
- What is the network edge?
- Points of presence close to users where Google caches and serves content to reduce latency.
- What are the risks of NOT adopting the cloud?
- Higher costs, slower innovation, scaling limits, security gaps, and falling behind more agile competitors.
- What is data democratization?
- Making data accessible and usable across an organization (not locked in silos) so more people can derive insights.
- Compare on-prem, IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS by management.
- On-prem: you manage everything; IaaS: provider manages hardware; PaaS: also runtime; SaaS: provider manages the whole stack.
- What is data transformation?
- Turning raw data into useful, governed insights — collecting, storing, processing, analyzing, and visualizing data to drive decisions.
- What is BigQuery?
- Google Cloud's fully managed, serverless data warehouse for fast SQL analytics over very large datasets, with built-in ML (BigQuery ML).
- What is structured data?
- Data organized in a defined format like rows and columns (e.g., a relational database table). Easy to query with SQL.
- What is unstructured data?
- Data with no predefined model — images, video, audio, free text, documents. Often stored in object storage like Cloud Storage.
- What is semi-structured data?
- Data with some organizational tags or markers but not a rigid schema — e.g., JSON, XML, or log files.
- What is a data warehouse?
- A central repository optimized for analytics and reporting over large volumes of structured, historical data. Example: BigQuery.
- What is a data lake?
- A repository that stores large amounts of raw data in its native format (structured and unstructured) until it's needed.
- What is a database?
- An organized collection of data designed for transactional reads and writes by applications.
- What is Cloud SQL?
- A fully managed relational database service for MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server — Google handles patching, backups, and replication.
- What is Cloud Spanner?
- A fully managed relational database that combines SQL with horizontal scalability and global consistency — for mission-critical, large-scale apps.
- What is Firestore?
- A serverless, NoSQL document database for mobile and web apps, with real-time sync and offline support.
- What is Bigtable?
- A fully managed, high-throughput NoSQL database for very large analytical and operational workloads (time series, IoT, fintech).
- What is Cloud Storage?
- Google Cloud's object storage service for unstructured data — files stored as objects in buckets, with classes for different access needs.
- What are Cloud Storage classes?
- Standard, Nearline, Coldline, and Archive — trading lower storage cost for less-frequent access (Archive is cheapest, for long-term retention).
- What is the difference between OLTP and OLAP?
- OLTP handles fast transactional reads/writes (databases); OLAP handles complex analytical queries (data warehouses like BigQuery).
- What is Looker?
- Google Cloud's enterprise business intelligence (BI) platform for exploring data, building dashboards, and embedding analytics.
- What is Looker Studio?
- A free, self-service tool for building interactive reports and dashboards from many data sources (formerly Data Studio).
- What is Pub/Sub?
- A fully managed, real-time messaging service that lets independent applications send and receive event data asynchronously at scale.
- What is Dataflow?
- A fully managed service for stream and batch data processing pipelines, based on Apache Beam.
- What is Dataproc?
- A managed service for running Apache Spark and Hadoop clusters on Google Cloud.
- What is streaming (real-time) data?
- Data processed continuously as it arrives (e.g., sensor or clickstream data), often via Pub/Sub and Dataflow.
- What is batch data processing?
- Processing large volumes of data collected over time in scheduled groups, rather than continuously.
- What is an ETL pipeline?
- Extract, Transform, Load — a process that pulls data from sources, transforms it, and loads it into a warehouse for analysis.
- What is data governance?
- The policies and controls that ensure data is accurate, secure, compliant, and used appropriately across the organization.
- What is Dataplex?
- An intelligent data fabric for centrally managing, governing, and monitoring data across lakes and warehouses.
- What is the value of data-driven decision-making?
- Using analyzed data instead of intuition to guide strategy — improving accuracy, speed, and competitiveness.
- What is BigQuery's serverless advantage?
- There's no infrastructure to manage or scale; you run SQL and pay for the data scanned or capacity used — analytics without ops overhead.
- What is data visualization?
- Presenting data graphically (charts, dashboards) so people can quickly understand patterns and make decisions — e.g., via Looker.
- Which Google Cloud service is the managed data warehouse?
- BigQuery — a serverless data warehouse for analytics at scale.
- Which service fits a globally consistent, horizontally scalable SQL database?
- Cloud Spanner — combines relational SQL with global scale and strong consistency.
- Which service fits a traditional managed relational database?
- Cloud SQL — managed MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQL Server.
- Which service fits a NoSQL app database with real-time sync?
- Firestore — serverless NoSQL document database for web and mobile.
- Which service ingests real-time event streams?
- Pub/Sub — managed messaging for real-time event ingestion and delivery.
- What is metadata?
- Data that describes other data (e.g., when a file was created, its format, owner) — key for governance and discovery.
- What is the data lifecycle?
- Stages data passes through: ingest, store, process/transform, analyze, and visualize/activate.
- Why store unstructured data in Cloud Storage?
- It's durable, scalable object storage built for files of any type — images, video, backups, and data-lake content.
- What is the data value chain?
- The journey from raw data to value: ingest, store, process, analyze, and act on insights.
- What is a relational (SQL) database?
- A database that stores data in tables with defined relationships, queried with SQL — e.g., Cloud SQL, Spanner.
- What is a non-relational (NoSQL) database?
- A flexible-schema database for unstructured or rapidly changing data — e.g., Firestore, Bigtable.
- Which Cloud Storage class is cheapest for rarely accessed archives?
- Archive — lowest storage cost, intended for data accessed less than once a year (e.g., long-term retention).
- Which Cloud Storage class suits data accessed about monthly?
- Nearline — low cost for data accessed roughly once a month.
- Which Cloud Storage class suits data accessed about quarterly?
- Coldline — for data accessed roughly once a quarter.
- What is BigQuery's multicloud capability (BigQuery Omni)?
- BigQuery can analyze data across clouds (AWS, Azure) without moving it, via BigQuery Omni.
- What is streaming analytics?
- Analyzing data in real time as it's generated, enabling immediate insights and actions (via Pub/Sub + Dataflow).
- What is a data silo?
- Data isolated within one team or system, hard for the rest of the organization to access — the opposite of data democratization.
- Why migrate databases to managed services?
- To offload administration (patching, backups, scaling, failover) and improve reliability and scalability.
- What is the difference between Bigtable and BigQuery?
- Bigtable is a NoSQL operational database for high-throughput reads/writes; BigQuery is an analytical data warehouse for SQL analytics.
- What is real-time vs historical analytics?
- Real-time analytics acts on data as it arrives; historical analytics examines accumulated data for trends.
- What is artificial intelligence (AI)?
- Technology that enables computers to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence — like understanding language, recognizing images, or making predictions.
- What is machine learning (ML)?
- A subset of AI where systems learn patterns from data to make predictions or decisions, instead of being explicitly programmed for every rule.
- What is the difference between AI and ML?
- AI is the broad goal of intelligent behavior; ML is a technique that achieves it by learning from data.
- What is generative AI?
- AI that creates new content — text, images, code, audio — based on patterns learned from large datasets. Powered by foundation models.
- What is a foundation model / large language model (LLM)?
- A large model trained on vast data that can be adapted to many tasks; LLMs specialize in understanding and generating human language.
- What is Vertex AI?
- Google Cloud's unified platform for building, training, deploying, and managing ML and generative AI models, including access to Gemini.
- What is Gemini?
- Google's family of multimodal generative AI models (text, image, code, audio, video), available through Vertex AI and Google Cloud products.
- What is the difference between predictive and generative AI?
- Predictive AI forecasts an outcome from data (e.g., churn likelihood); generative AI produces new content (text, images).
- What are Google's pre-trained AI APIs?
- Ready-to-use models you call via API without ML expertise — e.g., Vision AI, Speech-to-Text, Natural Language, Translation.
- What is the Vision AI API?
- A pre-trained API that analyzes images — detecting objects, text, faces, and labels — without building a model.
- What is the Speech-to-Text API?
- A pre-trained API that converts spoken audio into written text.
- What is the Translation API?
- A pre-trained API that translates text between languages.
- What is the Natural Language API?
- A pre-trained API that analyzes text for sentiment, entities, and syntax.
- What is Document AI?
- A service that extracts structured data from unstructured documents (forms, invoices, contracts) using ML.
- What is Contact Center AI (CCAI)?
- A solution that uses AI (virtual agents, agent assist) to automate and improve customer service interactions.
- What is AutoML?
- A Vertex AI capability that lets users train high-quality custom ML models with minimal coding, using their own data.
- What is BigQuery ML?
- A feature that lets analysts build and run ML models directly in BigQuery using SQL — no separate ML pipeline needed.
- What is training data?
- The labeled or historical data used to teach an ML model to recognize patterns.
- What is a model in ML?
- The output of training — a function that takes new input and produces a prediction or generated result.
- What is inference (prediction)?
- Using a trained model to make a prediction on new, unseen data.
- What are the typical phases of an ML workflow?
- Data preparation, model training, model evaluation, and deployment/serving for predictions.
- What is responsible AI?
- Developing and using AI in ways that are fair, transparent, accountable, safe, and privacy-protecting.
- What are Google's AI Principles about?
- Google's published commitments to build AI that is socially beneficial, avoids unfair bias, is safe, accountable, and privacy-respecting.
- What is bias in AI?
- Systematic unfairness in a model's outputs, often caused by unrepresentative or skewed training data.
- What is explainability (interpretability) in AI?
- The ability to understand and explain why a model made a particular prediction — important for trust and compliance.
- What is a prompt in generative AI?
- The input instruction or question given to a generative model to produce the desired output.
- When use a pre-trained API vs a custom model?
- Use a pre-trained API for common tasks (vision, speech) with no ML skill; build a custom model (AutoML/Vertex AI) for domain-specific needs.
- What business value does AI bring?
- Automating tasks, surfacing insights, personalizing experiences, improving decisions, and creating new products — driving efficiency and growth.
- What is the role of data quality in AI?
- Model quality depends on training-data quality — 'garbage in, garbage out'; clean, representative data is essential.
- Which platform unifies ML and generative AI on Google Cloud?
- Vertex AI — one platform to build, tune, deploy, and manage models, including Gemini.
- What is multimodal AI?
- AI that can process and combine multiple data types — text, images, audio, video — like Google's Gemini models.
- What is an AI agent?
- An AI system that can reason, plan, and take actions (often calling tools/APIs) to accomplish a goal, not just answer a single prompt.
- What is grounding in generative AI?
- Connecting a model's responses to verifiable sources or enterprise data to improve accuracy and reduce hallucinations.
- What is a hallucination in generative AI?
- When a model produces plausible-sounding but incorrect or fabricated information.
- What is TensorFlow?
- An open-source machine learning framework developed by Google for building and training custom ML models.
- What is a Cloud TPU?
- A Tensor Processing Unit — Google's custom hardware accelerator that speeds up training and running large ML models.
- What is the Text-to-Speech API?
- A pre-trained API that converts written text into natural-sounding spoken audio.
- How does AI/ML differ from analytics and BI?
- Analytics/BI describe what happened using past data; ML predicts or generates outcomes by learning patterns to act on new data.
- What problems is ML well suited to solve?
- Tasks with large datasets, decisions that must scale, and value locked in unstructured data (images, text, audio).
- What are the three options for using AI on Google Cloud?
- Pre-trained APIs (fastest, least effort), AutoML (custom on your data, low code), and fully custom models on Vertex AI (most control).
- When choose a fully custom model over a pre-trained API?
- When you need a model tailored to unique data or a competitive differentiator, and have the data and ML expertise.
- What is the role of large, high-quality datasets in ML?
- They are essential — models learn from data, so more representative, clean data generally yields better predictions.
- What is supervised vs unsupervised learning (concept)?
- Supervised learning trains on labeled examples to predict; unsupervised learning finds patterns or groupings in unlabeled data.
- What business value does generative AI add?
- It can draft content, summarize, answer questions, write code, and power assistants — accelerating knowledge work and customer experiences.
- What is fairness in responsible AI?
- Ensuring AI systems do not create or reinforce unjust bias against groups of people.
- What is transparency in responsible AI?
- Being clear about how AI works and is used, so outcomes can be understood and trusted.
- What is Compute Engine?
- Google Cloud's IaaS — resizable virtual machines (VMs) where you control the OS; best for lift-and-shift and full infrastructure control.
- What is a virtual machine (VM)?
- A software-based computer running on physical hardware; on Google Cloud, VMs run on Compute Engine.
- What is Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)?
- A managed Kubernetes service for deploying, scaling, and managing containerized applications.
- What is a container?
- A lightweight, portable package that bundles an application with its dependencies so it runs consistently across environments.
- What is Kubernetes?
- An open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications; GKE is Google's managed version.
- What is Cloud Run?
- A fully managed, serverless platform that runs stateless containers and scales automatically (even to zero); you pay only when handling requests.
- What is App Engine?
- A fully managed PaaS for building and hosting web apps and APIs; you deploy code and Google handles the infrastructure.
- What is Cloud Functions?
- A serverless, event-driven service that runs single-purpose functions in response to events, scaling automatically.
- What is serverless computing?
- A model where the provider manages all servers and scaling; you deploy code and pay only for actual usage. Examples: Cloud Run, Cloud Functions.
- Compare Compute Engine, GKE, Cloud Run, App Engine.
- Compute Engine = VMs (most control); GKE = managed containers/Kubernetes; Cloud Run = serverless containers; App Engine = serverless app platform.
- What is the spectrum of compute control vs management?
- From most control/most ops (Compute Engine VMs) to least ops/most managed (App Engine, Cloud Run, Cloud Functions).
- What is application modernization?
- Updating legacy apps to use cloud-native patterns — containers, microservices, managed services — for agility and scalability.
- What is a microservices architecture?
- Building an application as small, independent services that communicate over APIs, each deployable and scalable on its own.
- What is a monolithic application?
- A single, tightly coupled application where all functions are deployed together; harder to scale and update than microservices.
- What is hybrid cloud infrastructure?
- Combining on-premises and cloud resources; tools like GKE and Google Distributed Cloud help run workloads across both.
- What is Google Distributed Cloud?
- Google Cloud infrastructure and services that run on-premises, at the edge, or in other clouds — extending Google Cloud beyond its data centers.
- What is Anthos / GKE Enterprise?
- A platform for managing Kubernetes applications consistently across on-premises, Google Cloud, and other clouds.
- What is a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)?
- A logically isolated virtual network on Google Cloud where you define IP ranges, subnets, and routing for your resources.
- What is Cloud Load Balancing?
- A managed service that distributes incoming traffic across multiple instances or Regions for availability and performance.
- What is Cloud CDN?
- A content delivery network that caches content at Google's edge locations to deliver it to users with low latency.
- What is Cloud DNS?
- Google Cloud's scalable, managed Domain Name System service for routing users to applications.
- What is autoscaling?
- Automatically adding or removing compute capacity to match demand, improving performance and controlling cost.
- What is high availability (HA)?
- Designing systems to stay operational despite failures, typically by running across multiple zones or Regions.
- What is a marketplace solution?
- Pre-built software and services (from Google Cloud Marketplace) you can deploy quickly instead of building from scratch.
- Which compute option for full OS control / lift-and-shift?
- Compute Engine — IaaS virtual machines you fully manage.
- Which compute option for containerized apps at scale?
- Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) — managed Kubernetes orchestration.
- Which compute option for serverless containers?
- Cloud Run — runs stateless containers, scales to zero, pay-per-request.
- Which compute option for event-driven functions?
- Cloud Functions — serverless, runs code in response to events.
- What is infrastructure as code (IaC)?
- Defining and provisioning infrastructure through configuration files (e.g., Terraform), enabling repeatable, automated deployments.
- What is the benefit of containers over VMs?
- Containers are lighter and start faster, share the host OS, and are more portable — improving density and deployment speed.
- What is edge computing?
- Processing data closer to where it's generated (near users/devices) to reduce latency, supported by Google's edge locations.
- What does 'scale to zero' mean?
- A serverless service (like Cloud Run) can drop to zero running instances when idle, so you pay nothing when there's no traffic.
- What is API management with Apigee?
- Apigee is Google Cloud's platform for designing, securing, publishing, and analyzing APIs.
- What is an API?
- An Application Programming Interface — a defined way for software systems to communicate and exchange data.
- What are the migration 'R' strategies?
- Approaches to moving a workload: retire, retain, rehost (lift-and-shift), replatform (move-and-improve), refactor, and reimagine.
- What is rehosting (lift-and-shift)?
- Moving an application to the cloud with minimal change — the fastest path, but it doesn't modernize the app.
- What is replatforming (move-and-improve)?
- Making a few cloud optimizations during migration (e.g., moving to a managed database) without a full rewrite.
- What is refactoring (reimagining)?
- Re-architecting an application to be cloud-native — containers, microservices, managed services — for maximum cloud benefit.
- What is App Engine best for?
- Quickly building and scaling web apps and APIs on a fully managed platform without managing servers.
- What is Cloud Run best for?
- Running stateless containers serverlessly, scaling to zero, paying only per request — ideal for web services and APIs.
- What is GKE best for?
- Orchestrating containerized applications at scale with Kubernetes, when you need fine-grained control over containers.
- What is Compute Engine best for?
- Workloads needing full control of the OS, custom configurations, or lift-and-shift migrations of existing VMs.
- What is the value of containerization?
- Consistent, portable deployments across environments, faster startup, and efficient resource use compared to full VMs.
- Why use hybrid or multicloud?
- To meet data-residency or latency needs, avoid lock-in, use best-of-breed services, and bridge existing on-prem investments.
- What does Anthos provide?
- A single, consistent control plane to manage Kubernetes apps across on-premises, Google Cloud, and other clouds.
- What is a stateless application?
- An app that doesn't store client session data between requests, making it easy to scale horizontally (well suited to Cloud Run).
- What is the shared responsibility model?
- Security duties are split: Google secures the cloud infrastructure; the customer secures what they put in the cloud (data, access, configuration).
- What is shared fate?
- Google's approach of being an active partner in customer security — providing secure defaults, blueprints, and guidance — going beyond shared responsibility.
- What is the CIA triad?
- The three goals of information security: Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability.
- What is confidentiality?
- Ensuring data is accessible only to authorized people — enforced via access control and encryption.
- What is integrity (security)?
- Ensuring data is accurate and unaltered by unauthorized parties.
- What is availability (security)?
- Ensuring authorized users can access systems and data when needed.
- What is Cloud IAM?
- Identity and Access Management — controls who (identity) has what access (role) to which Google Cloud resources, following least privilege.
- What is the principle of least privilege?
- Granting users and services only the minimum permissions needed to do their job — limiting risk if credentials are compromised.
- What is a role in Cloud IAM?
- A collection of permissions that can be granted to identities; roles can be basic, predefined, or custom.
- What is a service account?
- A special identity used by an application or VM (not a person) to authenticate and access Google Cloud resources.
- What is multi-factor authentication (MFA) / 2-Step Verification?
- Requiring a second factor (like a phone or security key) in addition to a password, strongly improving account security.
- What is encryption at rest?
- Encrypting stored data so it's unreadable without keys; Google Cloud encrypts data at rest by default.
- What is encryption in transit?
- Encrypting data as it moves across networks (e.g., TLS) so it can't be read if intercepted.
- What is Cloud KMS?
- Cloud Key Management Service — create, manage, and control the encryption keys used to protect your data.
- What are CMEK and CSEK?
- Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (you manage keys in Cloud KMS) and Customer-Supplied Encryption Keys (you provide your own keys).
- What is Cloud Armor?
- A service that protects applications from DDoS attacks and web threats (like SQL injection and XSS) using a web application firewall (WAF).
- What is a DDoS attack?
- A Distributed Denial of Service attack floods a system with traffic to make it unavailable; Cloud Armor helps mitigate it.
- What is a firewall in Google Cloud?
- VPC firewall rules control inbound and outbound traffic to resources based on IP, protocol, and port.
- What is the Security Command Center?
- Google Cloud's centralized security and risk platform for finding misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, and threats across resources.
- What is BeyondCorp / zero trust?
- A security model that trusts no request by default — every access is verified by identity and context, not just network location.
- What is Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP)?
- A service that controls access to applications based on user identity and context, enabling zero-trust access without a VPN.
- What is Cloud DLP / Sensitive Data Protection?
- A service that discovers, classifies, and de-identifies sensitive data (like PII) across your environment.
- What is compliance in the cloud?
- Meeting laws, regulations, and standards (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, ISO 27001); Google Cloud provides certifications and reports.
- What is data residency / data sovereignty?
- Requirements that data be stored or processed in a specific geographic location; Region selection helps meet them.
- What is data governance (security view)?
- Policies and controls for how data is accessed, classified, retained, and protected throughout its lifecycle.
- What is Cloud Audit Logs?
- Logs that record administrative and data-access activity, providing an audit trail of who did what, where, and when.
- What is VPC Service Controls?
- A security perimeter that helps prevent data exfiltration from Google-managed services like Cloud Storage and BigQuery.
- What is phishing?
- A social-engineering attack that tricks users into revealing credentials or installing malware via deceptive messages.
- What is malware / ransomware?
- Malware is malicious software; ransomware encrypts data and demands payment. Backups, patching, and least privilege reduce risk.
- What is a security key (FIDO/Titan)?
- A physical hardware device used as a strong second factor for authentication, resistant to phishing; Google offers Titan Security Keys.
- Who is responsible for securing customer data in the cloud?
- The customer — under the shared responsibility model, customers control and secure their own data, access, and configuration.
- What does Google secure under shared responsibility?
- The physical infrastructure, hardware, network, and the security of its managed services — 'security of the cloud.'
- What is Google Cloud's default encryption?
- Customer data is automatically encrypted at rest and in transit by default, with no action required.
- What is a vulnerability vs a threat?
- A vulnerability is a weakness that could be exploited; a threat is a potential event or actor that could exploit it.
- What is defense in depth?
- Layering multiple security controls (physical, network, identity, data) so no single failure compromises the system.
- What is authentication vs authorization?
- Authentication verifies who you are; authorization determines what you're allowed to do.
- What is auditing in security?
- Recording and reviewing activity (e.g., via Cloud Audit Logs) to detect issues and prove compliance.
- What is encryption in use?
- Protecting data while it's being processed in memory, e.g., with Confidential Computing — beyond at-rest and in-transit.
- What is Google's custom hardware advantage for security?
- Google designs its own data centers, servers, and chips (like Titan), reducing attack surface and supply-chain risk.
- What are Google's transparency reports?
- Public reports on government data requests and other disclosures that support customer trust.
- What is a third-party audit / certification?
- Independent verification (e.g., ISO 27001, SOC) that Google Cloud meets security and compliance standards.
- What is the Compliance Reports Manager?
- A Google Cloud tool providing on-demand access to compliance documentation and audit reports.
- What is control in cloud security?
- The customer's ability to manage and govern their data and access, even though Google operates the infrastructure.
- What are common cyber threats to know?
- Phishing, malware, ransomware, DDoS attacks, and data breaches from misconfiguration or weak access controls.
- How does cloud security compare to on-prem?
- Cloud providers like Google offer scale, dedicated security teams, secure defaults, and certifications most organizations can't match alone.
- What is 2-Step Verification (2SV)?
- Requiring a second verification step beyond a password, greatly reducing account-takeover risk.
- What does Cloud Armor protect against?
- DDoS attacks and web application threats such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS).
- What is cloud operations (Ops)?
- Monitoring, logging, and managing applications and infrastructure to keep them reliable, performant, and cost-effective.
- What is Google Cloud Observability (Cloud Operations Suite)?
- A set of tools — Cloud Monitoring, Cloud Logging, Cloud Trace, Error Reporting — to observe and troubleshoot applications.
- What is Cloud Monitoring?
- A service that collects metrics, sets up dashboards, and alerts you when systems behave abnormally.
- What is Cloud Logging?
- A service that collects, stores, and lets you search logs from applications and Google Cloud resources.
- What is Cloud Trace?
- A distributed tracing tool that shows how requests propagate through your application to find latency bottlenecks.
- What is site reliability engineering (SRE)?
- Google's discipline of applying software engineering to operations — using SLOs, automation, and error budgets to run reliable services.
- What is an SLA (Service Level Agreement)?
- A formal commitment between provider and customer on the expected level of service (e.g., uptime), often with credits if missed.
- What is an SLO (Service Level Objective)?
- An internal target for a service-level metric (e.g., 99.9% availability) that teams aim to meet.
- What is an SLI (Service Level Indicator)?
- A measured metric of service performance (e.g., request latency, error rate) used to evaluate an SLO.
- What is an error budget?
- The allowed amount of unreliability (100% minus the SLO); spending it triggers a focus on reliability over new features.
- What is total cost of ownership (TCO) in operations?
- The full cost of running workloads over time; cloud cost management aims to optimize it continuously.
- What is FinOps?
- A practice of managing cloud spending collaboratively across finance, engineering, and business to maximize value.
- What is the Google Cloud Pricing Calculator?
- A tool to estimate the cost of a Google Cloud architecture before deploying it.
- What is a committed use discount (CUD)?
- A discount for committing to a consistent amount of usage (1 or 3 years) — good for steady, predictable workloads.
- What is a sustained use discount?
- An automatic discount applied when you run certain resources (like VMs) for a large portion of the billing month.
- What is a preemptible / Spot VM?
- A low-cost Compute Engine VM that Google can reclaim with short notice — best for fault-tolerant, interruptible workloads.
- What are budgets and alerts in billing?
- Tools to set spending thresholds and get notified when costs approach or exceed them, helping control spend.
- What is right-sizing?
- Adjusting resources (like VM size) to match actual workload needs, eliminating waste and lowering cost.
- What is a billing account?
- The account that defines who pays for Google Cloud resources and how; it can be linked to multiple projects.
- What is a Google Cloud project?
- The basic organizing unit for resources, billing, permissions, and APIs in Google Cloud.
- What is the resource hierarchy in Google Cloud?
- Organization → folders → projects → resources; IAM policies and billing flow down this hierarchy.
- What is the Google Cloud Adoption Framework?
- A model assessing an organization's cloud maturity across people, process, and technology to guide its cloud journey.
- What is Cloud Customer Care (support)?
- Google Cloud's tiered support offerings (Basic, Standard, Enhanced, Premium) with increasing response speed and services.
- What is a Technical Account Manager (TAM)?
- A designated Google advocate (available in Premium support) who provides proactive, strategic guidance.
- What is uptime / availability?
- The percentage of time a service is operational; higher availability often requires multi-zone or multi-Region design.
- What is disaster recovery (DR)?
- A plan and capabilities to restore systems and data after a major failure, measured by RTO and RPO.
- What are RTO and RPO?
- Recovery Time Objective (how fast you must recover) and Recovery Point Objective (how much data loss is acceptable).
- What is monitoring vs logging?
- Monitoring tracks metrics and alerts on health/performance; logging records detailed event records for troubleshooting and audit.
- What is operational efficiency in the cloud?
- Reducing manual toil through automation and managed services so teams focus on value, not infrastructure upkeep.
- How does cloud help organizations scale?
- Elastic resources, autoscaling, global infrastructure, and managed services let organizations grow capacity on demand without buying hardware.
- What is a quota in Google Cloud?
- A limit on resource usage per project, protecting against runaway consumption and unexpected cost; quotas can be raised on request.
- Which support tier includes a designated TAM?
- Premium support — Google Cloud Customer Care's top tier, including a Technical Account Manager.
- What is total cost optimization on Google Cloud?
- Using CUDs, sustained-use discounts, right-sizing, autoscaling, Spot VMs, and budgets/alerts to lower spend while meeting needs.
- What is financial governance in the cloud?
- Processes and policies that control who can spend, set budgets, and keep cloud costs aligned with business value.
- What are Cloud Billing Reports?
- Tools that visualize and break down your Google Cloud spending by project, service, and time to understand cost drivers.
- How does the resource hierarchy aid governance?
- Organization → folders → projects let you apply IAM policies and budgets at the right level, controlling access and spend centrally.
- What is operational excellence?
- Running systems reliably and efficiently and continuously improving processes, often via automation and SRE practices.
- What is fault tolerance?
- A system's ability to keep operating correctly even when some components fail, typically through redundancy.
- What is resilience in system design?
- The ability to withstand and recover from failures, often via multi-zone/Region deployment and automated recovery.
- What is DevOps?
- A culture and set of practices uniting development and operations to deliver software faster and more reliably.
- What is the 'life of a support case'?
- The flow of a support request through Google Cloud Customer Care: open, triage by priority/severity, work, resolve, and close.
- What are the Google Cloud Customer Care tiers?
- Basic, Standard, Enhanced, and Premium — increasing response speed, channels, and services (Premium adds a TAM).
- What is Google Cloud's sustainability commitment?
- Google has been carbon neutral and matches its energy use with renewables, helping customers cut their own carbon footprint.
- How can Google Cloud help meet sustainability goals?
- Carbon-aware Region choices, efficient managed infrastructure, and carbon-footprint reporting tools reduce environmental impact.
- What is toil in operations?
- Repetitive, manual operational work that scales with service growth; SRE aims to reduce it through automation.
- What is a budget alert?
- A notification triggered when spending reaches a defined percentage of a budget, helping prevent overspend.
