---
name: performing-gcp-security-assessment-with-forseti
description: Audit Google Cloud Platform environments for security misconfigurations using Forseti, Security Command Center, and gcloud CLI to evaluate IAM policies, firewall rules, storage permissions, and CIS compliance.
license: Apache-2.0
---

# Performing GCP Security Assessment with Forseti

## When to Use

- When conducting periodic security assessments of GCP organizations and projects
- When onboarding new GCP projects and establishing security baselines
- When compliance mandates CIS GCP Foundations Benchmark evaluation
- When auditing IAM bindings, firewall rules, and storage ACLs across multiple GCP projects
- When building continuous security monitoring for GCP infrastructure

**Do not use** as a replacement for GCP Security Command Center Premium for real-time threat detection, for application-level vulnerability scanning (use Web Security Scanner), or for GKE-specific security (use GKE Security Posture).

## Prerequisites

- GCP Organization with Organization Admin or Security Admin IAM role
- gcloud CLI authenticated with sufficient permissions (`roles/securitycenter.admin`, `roles/iam.securityReviewer`)
- Security Command Center (SCC) enabled at the organization level
- ScoutSuite installed for multi-cloud comparison (`pip install scoutsuite`)
- Python 3.8+ for custom audit scripts using google-cloud-asset and google-cloud-securitycenter libraries

## Workflow

### Step 1: Enable Security Command Center and Asset Inventory

Enable SCC and set up Cloud Asset Inventory for comprehensive resource visibility.

```bash
# Enable Security Command Center API
gcloud services enable securitycenter.googleapis.com \
  --project=PROJECT_ID

# Enable Cloud Asset API
gcloud services enable cloudasset.googleapis.com \
  --project=PROJECT_ID

# List all assets in the organization
gcloud asset search-all-resources \
  --scope=organizations/ORG_ID \
  --asset-types="compute.googleapis.com/Instance,storage.googleapis.com/Bucket,iam.googleapis.com/ServiceAccount" \
  --format="table(name, assetType, location, project)"

# Export asset inventory to BigQuery for analysis
gcloud asset export \
  --organization=ORG_ID \
  --output-bigquery-force \
  --output-bigquery-dataset=projects/PROJECT_ID/datasets/asset_inventory \
  --output-bigquery-table=resources \
  --content-type=resource
```

### Step 2: Audit IAM Policies and Bindings

Review IAM policies across the organization for overly permissive bindings, primitive roles, and service account misuse.

```bash
# List all IAM policy bindings at org level
gcloud organizations get-iam-policy ORG_ID \
  --format=json > org-iam-policy.json

# Find all users with Owner or Editor roles across projects
gcloud asset search-all-iam-policies \
  --scope=organizations/ORG_ID \
  --query="policy:roles/owner OR policy:roles/editor" \
  --format="table(resource, policy.bindings.role, policy.bindings.members)"

# Identify service accounts with admin roles
gcloud asset search-all-iam-policies \
  --scope=organizations/ORG_ID \
  --query="policy.bindings.members:serviceAccount AND policy:roles/owner" \
  --format=json

# Check for allUsers or allAuthenticatedUsers bindings (public access)
gcloud asset search-all-iam-policies \
  --scope=organizations/ORG_ID \
  --query="policy:allUsers OR policy:allAuthenticatedUsers" \
  --format="table(resource, policy.bindings.role, policy.bindings.members)"

# List service account keys older than 90 days
gcloud iam service-accounts keys list \
  --iam-account=SA_EMAIL \
  --managed-by=user \
  --format="table(name,validAfterTime,validBeforeTime)"
```

### Step 3: Assess Firewall Rules and Network Configuration

Audit VPC firewall rules for overly permissive ingress rules, missing logging, and network exposure.

```bash
# List all firewall rules allowing ingress from 0.0.0.0/0
gcloud compute firewall-rules list \
  --filter="direction=INGRESS AND sourceRanges=0.0.0.0/0" \
  --format="table(name, network, allowed, sourceRanges, targetTags)"

# Find firewall rules allowing all protocols/ports
gcloud compute firewall-rules list \
  --filter="direction=INGRESS AND allowed[].IPProtocol=all" \
  --format="table(name, network, sourceRanges, targetTags)"

# Check for SSH (22) and RDP (3389) open to internet
gcloud compute firewall-rules list \
  --filter="direction=INGRESS AND sourceRanges=0.0.0.0/0 AND (allowed[].ports=22 OR allowed[].ports=3389)" \
  --format="table(name, network, allowed, sourceRanges)"

# Audit VPC flow log configuration
gcloud compute networks subnets list \
  --format="table(name, region, enableFlowLogs, logConfig.aggregationInterval)"
```

### Step 4: Audit Cloud Storage Bucket Permissions

Check for publicly accessible storage buckets and missing encryption configurations.

```bash
# List all buckets in a project
gsutil ls -p PROJECT_ID

# Check bucket IAM for public access
for bucket in $(gsutil ls -p PROJECT_ID); do
  echo "=== $bucket ==="
  gsutil iam get "$bucket" | grep -E "allUsers|allAuthenticatedUsers" && \
    echo "  WARNING: PUBLIC ACCESS DETECTED" || \
    echo "  OK: No public access"
done

# Check bucket encryption configuration
for bucket in $(gsutil ls -p PROJECT_ID); do
  echo "=== $bucket ==="
  gsutil kms encryption "$bucket" 2>/dev/null || echo "  Using Google-managed encryption"
done

# Check uniform bucket-level access enforcement
for bucket in $(gsutil ls -p PROJECT_ID); do
  gsutil uniformbucketlevelaccess get "$bucket"
done
```

### Step 5: Run ScoutSuite for Comprehensive Assessment

Execute ScoutSuite for an automated multi-check security assessment of the GCP environment.

```bash
# Run ScoutSuite against GCP
python3 -m ScoutSuite gcp \
  --user-account \
  --all-projects \
  --report-dir ./scoutsuite-gcp-report

# Run with service account credentials
python3 -m ScoutSuite gcp \
  --service-account /path/to/service-account-key.json \
  --all-projects \
  --report-dir ./scoutsuite-gcp-report

# Open the HTML report
open ./scoutsuite-gcp-report/gcp-report.html
```

### Step 6: Query Security Command Center Findings

Retrieve and analyze SCC findings for vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and threats.

```bash
# List active SCC findings
gcloud scc findings list ORG_ID \
  --filter="state=\"ACTIVE\" AND severity=\"CRITICAL\"" \
  --format="table(finding.category, finding.severity, finding.resourceName, finding.eventTime)"

# List findings by category
gcloud scc findings list ORG_ID \
  --filter="state=\"ACTIVE\" AND category=\"PUBLIC_BUCKET_ACL\"" \
  --format=json

# Get finding statistics grouped by category
gcloud scc findings group ORG_ID \
  --group-by="category" \
  --filter="state=\"ACTIVE\""

# List compliance violations from SCC
gcloud scc findings list ORG_ID \
  --filter="state=\"ACTIVE\" AND sourceProperties.compliance_standard=\"CIS\"" \
  --format="table(finding.category, finding.severity, finding.resourceName)"
```

## Key Concepts

| Term | Definition |
|------|------------|
| Security Command Center | GCP-native security and risk management platform that provides asset inventory, vulnerability detection, and threat monitoring |
| Forseti Security | Open-source GCP security toolkit (now deprecated in favor of SCC) that provided inventory, scanning, enforcement, and notification capabilities |
| Cloud Asset Inventory | GCP service that provides a complete inventory of cloud resources with metadata, IAM policies, and org policy configurations |
| CIS GCP Foundations Benchmark | Security best practice guidelines from Center for Internet Security specific to Google Cloud Platform configuration |
| Uniform Bucket-Level Access | GCP storage setting that disables legacy ACLs and enforces access exclusively through IAM policies for consistent access control |
| Organization Policy | GCP constraint-based governance mechanism that restricts resource configurations across the organization hierarchy |

## Tools & Systems

- **Security Command Center**: GCP-native CSPM providing asset inventory, vulnerability findings, and compliance scoring
- **ScoutSuite**: Multi-cloud security auditing tool with comprehensive GCP checks for IAM, compute, storage, and networking
- **gcloud CLI**: Primary command-line interface for querying GCP resource configurations and security settings
- **Cloud Asset Inventory**: API for searching and exporting resource metadata and IAM policies across GCP projects
- **Forseti Security**: Legacy open-source GCP security toolkit, superseded by SCC but still referenced in compliance frameworks

## Common Scenarios

### Scenario: Assessing a Newly Acquired GCP Organization

**Context**: After a company acquisition, the security team needs to assess the security posture of the acquired company's GCP organization with 30+ projects.

**Approach**:
1. Enable Cloud Asset API and export full resource inventory to BigQuery for analysis
2. Run `gcloud asset search-all-iam-policies` to find all Owner/Editor bindings and public access grants
3. Audit firewall rules across all projects for overly permissive ingress from `0.0.0.0/0`
4. Check all storage buckets for public access using `gsutil iam get`
5. Run ScoutSuite for a comprehensive automated assessment with HTML report
6. Enable SCC and review all CRITICAL and HIGH findings
7. Generate a risk-prioritized remediation roadmap for the integration team

**Pitfalls**: GCP IAM bindings are inherited from organization to folder to project. A permissive binding at the organization level affects all downstream projects. Always audit IAM at every level of the hierarchy, not just at the project level.

## Output Format

```
GCP Security Assessment Report
=================================
Organization: acme-acquired-org (ORG_ID: 123456789)
Projects Assessed: 34
Assessment Date: 2026-02-23
Standards: CIS GCP Foundations 2.0

IAM FINDINGS:
  Users with Owner role at org level:       3
  Service accounts with Editor role:        12
  Resources with allUsers binding:           5
  Service account keys > 90 days:           18

NETWORK FINDINGS:
  Firewall rules allowing 0.0.0.0/0:       14
  SSH open to internet:                      7
  RDP open to internet:                      2
  Subnets without VPC flow logs:            22

STORAGE FINDINGS:
  Publicly accessible buckets:               5
  Buckets without CMEK encryption:          28
  Buckets without uniform access:           15

CRITICAL FINDINGS: 12
HIGH FINDINGS: 34
MEDIUM FINDINGS: 78
LOW FINDINGS: 145

TOP REMEDIATION PRIORITIES:
  1. Remove allUsers bindings from 5 storage buckets (CRITICAL)
  2. Restrict 0.0.0.0/0 firewall rules to specific CIDRs (HIGH)
  3. Rotate 18 service account keys older than 90 days (HIGH)
  4. Enable VPC flow logs on 22 subnets (MEDIUM)
```