Architecting with Google Cloud — selected guide
How to protect your company from cyberattacks
Ten case studies on scale, service boundaries, data platforms, machine learning, and security
Ten 2021–2023 case studies explain how teams handle global storage, concurrent requests, service boundaries, media ingestion, analytics migration, machine learning, healthcare data, and security response. Results describe the participating organizations' systems, not universal performance guarantees.
In this collection Browse 10 summaries 10 of 10
An employee may be authorized to use an application while their computer is compromised. Palo Alto Networks' Google Cloud alliance technical lead Mason describes a 2022 integration designed to make access depend on the device's reported security state, not just the user's identity. The Cortex XDR Endpoint Verification integration was in private preview at the time. 04:15–05:17(opens in a new tab), 10:33–11:34(opens in a new tab)
Key Points Covered
- Endpoint protection supplies the signal. Cortex XDR's software agent runs on employee devices to detect or block malicious activity and produce alerts. Mason describes local file analysis followed, when needed, by analysis in the WildFire security sandbox. 05:17–07:22(opens in a new tab)
- The first release used three checks. A device needed the Cortex XDR agent, could not be marked as isolated by a security administrator, and needed an alert-derived health score that met a configured threshold. Incident information was planned for a later release. 07:22–09:30(opens in a new tab)
- A separate integration turns device state into access policy input. A Cloud Function calls the Cortex XDR API and updates Google's endpoint management. Context-aware access policies can then use that state to restrict access to cloud resources, Workspace, and other applications. Mason presents this as a way to contain damage from a compromised device, alongside the agent's protection on the device itself. 08:26–11:34(opens in a new tab)
Full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4Ci-zs2bwE(opens in a new tab)