Help secure the Cloud Workstations API using Chrome Enterprise Premium

Overview

Chrome Enterprise Premium is Google Cloud's zero trust solution that enables an organization's workforce to access web applications securely from anywhere, without the need for VPN, and to help prevent malware, phishing, and data loss.

With the power of Google Chrome, Chrome Enterprise Premium enables users to access applications from any device. Chrome Enterprise Premium is expanding its capabilities to address some key security challenges in the developer environment. Using context-aware access control for Google Cloud console and APIs, Chrome Enterprise Premium enables additional security for the Cloud Workstations API.

The following table lists whether Chrome Enterprise Premium supports context-aware access control for the specified Cloud Workstations access method.

  • The check mark indicates Chrome Enterprise Premium limits this Cloud Workstations access method.
  • The not supported icon indicates Chrome Enterprise Premium does not limit this Cloud Workstations access method.

Objectives

This document describes the steps that an administrator follows to set up Chrome Enterprise Premium access control for the Cloud Workstations API and to provide additional mechanisms that help prevent source code exfiltration from browser-based Cloud Workstations IDEs.

Costs

As part of this tutorial, you may need to get other teams involved (for billing or IAM) and you also test access-control to demonstrate that Chrome Enterprise Premium guardrails are in place.

In this document, you use the following billable components of Google Cloud:

To generate a cost estimate based on your projected usage, use the pricing calculator.

New Google Cloud users might be eligible for a free trial.

When you finish the tasks that are described in this document, you can avoid continued billing by deleting the resources that you created. For more information, see Clean up.

Before you begin

  1. Sign in to your Google Cloud account. If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how our products perform in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.

  2. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

    Roles required to select or create a project

    • Select a project: Selecting a project doesn't require a specific IAM role—you can select any project that you've been granted a role on.
    • Create a project: To create a project, you need the Project Creator role (roles/resourcemanager.projectCreator), which contains the resourcemanager.projects.create permission. Learn how to grant roles.

    Go to project selector

  3. Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

  4. Enable the Workstations API.

    Roles required to enable APIs

    To enable APIs, you need the serviceusage.services.enable permission. If you created the project, then you likely already have this permission through the Owner role (roles/owner). Otherwise, you can get this permission through the Service Usage Admin role (roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin). Learn how to grant roles.

    Enable the API

  5. Make sure that you have the following role or roles on the project: Cloud Workstations > Cloud Workstations Admin.

    Check for the roles

    1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the IAM page.

      Go to IAM
    2. Select the project.

    3. In the Principal column, find all rows that identify you or a group that you're included in. To learn which groups you're included in, contact your administrator.

    4. For all rows that specify or include you, check the Role column to see whether the list of roles includes the required roles.

    Grant the roles

    1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the IAM page.

      Go to IAM
    2. Select the project.
    3. Click Grant access.

    4. In the New principals field, enter your user identifier. This is typically the email address for a Google Account.

    5. Click Select a role, then search for the role.
    6. To grant additional roles, click Add another role and add each additional role.
    7. Click Save.

  6. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

    Roles required to select or create a project

    • Select a project: Selecting a project doesn't require a specific IAM role—you can select any project that you've been granted a role on.
    • Create a project: To create a project, you need the Project Creator role (roles/resourcemanager.projectCreator), which contains the resourcemanager.projects.create permission. Learn how to grant roles.

    Go to project selector