Building a Solid Google Cloud Foundation Landing Zone: Essential Steps You Need to Know

When you're gearing up to shift your business infrastructure onto Google Cloud Platform (GCP), the most critical step isn't about flashy tech—it's about building a stable, secure, and scalable foundation first. Think of this foundation as the solid base that supports everything your business plans to achieve in the cloud.

Why a Proper Landing Zone Matters?

Without a well-designed landing zone, your cloud environment can quickly spiral out of control. Ever found yourself wrestling with tangled permissions, disorganized security policies, or unexpected costs? Getting your GCP landing zone right from the start means:

• Rock-solid security right out of the gate

• Clear visibility and ease of management

• Simple scalability to meet evolving business needs

  
  

So, what's the best way to build and manage this infrastructure? By using Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) through Terraform templates combined with automation via GitHub Actions or another CI/CD pipeline. Automating your deployments through a structured pipeline ensures consistency, eliminates human error, and makes your cloud journey smooth and repeatable.

Let’s break down Google's Security Foundation Framework and see how it all fits together.

Stage 1: Core Foundation Setup

Google’s Cloud Security Foundation gives you the building blocks needed for robust, repeatable cloud deployments:

gcp-bootstrap

Your journey to a secure, scalable Google Cloud environment starts with a rock-solid bootstrap process. Think of this as planting the seeds that everything else grows from—careful, secure, and automated right from day one.

Key configurations you'll tackle here:

• Terraform State Storage:

  • Centralized Cloud Storage buckets securely hosting Terraform state files, ensuring state consistency and protection.

• Initial IAM Setup:

  • Defined organization-level roles and initial IAM policies to control foundational permissions securely and efficiently.

• Service Accounts for Automation:

  • Dedicated service accounts for automation tasks, clearly scoped to minimal required permissions, reducing potential security risks.

    
    

GitHub Actions with Workload Identity Federation:

• To securely automate infrastructure deployments, you'll configure Workload Identity Federation between Google Cloud and GitHub Actions.

• This eliminates the need for static service account keys—dramatically reducing security risks—by enabling your GitHub workflows to securely authenticate with Google Cloud using temporary credentials.

• Workload Identity Federation aligns perfectly with security best practices, empowering your GitHub CI/CD pipelines to provision and manage cloud infrastructure securely and seamlessly.

  
  

Integrating GitHub Actions with Workload Identity Federation in your bootstrap stage, will set the foundation for secure, continuous delivery and deployments throughout your entire cloud environment structure.

gcp-org

Organization Hierarchy and Policies:

• Clearly defined folders structured by business units, workloads, or compliance requirements.

• IAM policies aligned at folder and organization levels to simplify permission management and security enforcement.

• Essential organization policies, such as enforced multi-factor authentication (MFA), external IP address restrictions, and service usage policies.

  
  

Cloud Asset Inventory (CAI):

• Enable Cloud Asset Inventory (CAI) at the organization level to maintain a comprehensive view of all your cloud resources, configuration changes, and historical asset data.

• CAI provides critical visibility into your infrastructure state, asset metadata, and compliance status across all your environments.

Centralized Foundational Projects & Services: To simplify management and enhance security visibility, your organization setup will typically include the following foundational projects and services:

• Centralized Logging Project:

  • Aggregates logs from all GCP resources through Cloud Logging, stored securely for auditing, troubleshooting, and compliance.

  • Logs can be routed to Cloud Storage buckets, BigQuery datasets, or external logging systems like Splunk or Elasticsearch for advanced analysis.

• Cloud Monitoring Project:

  • Provides comprehensive visibility and alerting across your organization's infrastructure.

  • Includes dashboards and alerting policies for resource utilization, performance, and availability across your GCP estate.

• Security Command Center (SCC) Project:

  • Centralizes security findings, threat detection, and compliance assessments across your entire organization.

  • Enables quick identification and response to vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and threats, enhancing your overall security posture.

Integrating these core services into your gcp-org structure doesn't just streamline your cloud management—it sets your business up for proactive security, simplified compliance, and operational excellence.

gcp-environments

Create separate yet consistent environments—Development, Non-Production, and Production—making compliance and management straightforward.

• Environment-specific folders and roles

• Tagging and billing standardization

• Policy separation for controlled deployments

  
  

gcp-networks

In the dual Shared VPC network topology, each environment—be it development, non-production, or production—is allocated its own Shared VPC network. This design ensures stringent network isolation between environments, a critical factor for maintaining security and compliance.

Key Features of the Dual Shared VPC Network Topology:

• Environment-Specific Networks: Each environment operates within its dedicated Shared VPC, eliminating direct network traffic between environments. This isolation minimizes the risk of cross-environment interference and enhances security boundaries.

• Base and Restricted Networks: Within each environment's Shared VPC, there are two subdivisions:

  • Base Shared VPC Network: Designed for resources handling non-sensitive data.

  • Restricted Shared VPC Network: Tailored for resources managing sensitive data, incorporating VPC Service Controls to bolster data protection.

• Hybrid Connectivity: Each Shared VPC network is equipped with VLAN attachments connecting to a Dedicated Interconnect, facilitating secure and efficient communication with on-premises resources.

  
  

Advantages of Implementing Dual Shared VPC Networks:

• Enhanced Security Through Isolation: By segregating environments into distinct networks, the potential attack surface is reduced, and the impact of security incidents is contained within a single environment.

• Compliance Alignment: The clear separation between base and restricted networks aids in meeting regulatory requirements by ensuring that sensitive data is processed and stored in controlled environments.

• Operational Clarity: This topology simplifies network management by providing a clear structure, making it easier to apply environment-specific policies and troubleshoot issues.

  
  

Stage 2: Deploying the GCP Project Landing Zone

With your foundational layer securely established, the next critical stage involves deploying your project-specific landing zones. At this point, there’s flexibility in how you proceed—multiple deployment pathways exist, which varies based on your operational preferences and organizational needs.

At Proplr, we’ve found it highly effective to create separate project-level and application infrastructure (app-infra) deployments. This approach ensures each component has its own dedicated CI/CD pipeline, providing significant operational advantages:

• Independent Project Pipelines:
  Each business unit or application team manages their own gcp-project pipeline, simplifying coordination, and drastically reducing deployment bottlenecks.

• Dedicated App-Infra Pipelines:
  Deployments related specifically to application infrastructure (app-infra) leverage their own pipelines separate from core project provisioning. This accelerates deployment cycles, enhances troubleshooting efficiency, and maintains clear operational boundaries.

• Increased Agility and Speed:
  Independent pipelines let teams rapidly iterate and deploy infrastructure changes without dependencies on centralized or cross-team coordination.

• Improved Security and Compliance:
  Segregating pipelines per business unit ensures tighter control over who can deploy and manage specific infrastructure, aligning perfectly with best practices for security and compliance.

  
  

This structured yet flexible strategy empowers your teams to move faster, maintain robust compliance standards, and scale effortlessly as your organization grows.

Stage 3: Deploying the App-Infra Landing Zone

Stage 3 is where the real magic happens—it's all about working closely with your app-infra teams to deeply understand their specific workloads. At this stage, infrastructure deployments are tailored explicitly to meet the unique requirements of each application.

Think of each app-infra deployment as representing a distinct application workload or service. This precise targeting ensures infrastructure matches the application's exact performance, scalability, and compliance needs.

What Happens During App-Infra Deployment?

• Application-Specific Infrastructure:
  Here, resources like Compute Engine, serverless platforms (Cloud Run), databases (Cloud SQL, Cloud Spanner), and Kubernetes clusters (GKE) are provisioned explicitly for your applications.

• Collaboration with App-Infra Teams:
  Close coordination with application teams ensures infrastructure accurately reflects workload-specific requirements, enabling optimal resource allocation and operational efficiency.

  
  

Leveraging GitOps in Kubernetes (GKE)

When deploying workloads on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), adopting a GitOps approach significantly streamlines operations and enhances reliability. Specifically, at Proplr, we leverage:

• Anthos Service Mesh (ASM):

  • Provides robust observability, enhanced security, and traffic management capabilities, delivering deeper insights into your application's operational health and performance.

• Anthos Config Management & Root Sync:

  • Ensures continuous reconciliation of Kubernetes manifests directly from Git repositories, keeping your application environments consistently aligned with your source of truth.

By using a GitOps model with ASM and Root Sync, you benefit from automated deployments, improved consistency, and drastically reduced manual intervention—transforming your Kubernetes operations into a smooth, predictable experience.

Beyond the Basics: What's Next?

Once your foundational landing zones are established, the journey doesn’t end there. In fact, you're just getting started. There’s a whole range of advanced security and compliance configurations that extend beyond the core Google Security Foundations.

Stay tuned—here’s a sneak peek at upcoming deep dives designed to elevate your cloud strategy even further:

Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP)

Securely grant identity-based access to your web applications without relying on complex VPN setups. Interested in enabling context-aware access based on user identity and security posture? We've got you covered.

SSL & Cloud Armor Setup

Enhance your applications’ resilience against sophisticated DDoS attacks. We'll walk through setting up secure load balancing, Cloud Armor policies, and managed SSL certificates.

TLS Inspection via NGFW & Private CA

Implement advanced traffic inspection techniques using Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFW). We'll cover how integrating Google's Private CA enhances your ability to perform TLS inspection securely, facilitating deeper network-level security and compliance.

VPC Service Controls

Strengthen your security perimeter by configuring VPC Service Controls. We'll explore how to effectively isolate sensitive workloads and restrict unauthorized data exfiltration, significantly reducing the risk of accidental or malicious data breaches.

Compliance-Specific Deployments using Assured Workloads

When your business needs to meet stringent regulatory frameworks such as FedRAMP High, CJIS, or other rigorous standards, Google's Assured Workloads provides the answer. Discover how we leverage Assured Workloads to simplify and streamline compliance-specific deployments, reducing your operational overhead while meeting strict audit and regulatory requirements.

Stay tuned for these insightful topics—we’ll unpack each carefully, guiding your business towards greater security, compliance, and operational excellence in the cloud.

Ready to Get Started?

Building your Google Cloud foundation the right way is easier—and safer—than ever. Leveraging Infrastructure-as-Code, automation, and Google’s best practices, you can confidently establish a cloud environment that's secure, manageable, and scalable from day one.

Questions? Need a hand getting started? We're here to help every step of the way!