Securely Expose Services Privately with Private Service Connect

As cloud adoption accelerates, organizations are seeking more efficient ways to securely connect to cloud services at scale. Traditionally, connecting different domains required extensive manual effort. Cloud and network architects had to exchange infrastructure-level information like IP addresses, coordinate subnets, and manage complex routing across various networks and organizations. This approach was particularly challenging for enterprises that needed to isolate services for security or compliance reasons.

For instance, connecting to services like Solr Cloud or custom applications (e.g., payment gateways) running in Google Cloud from on-premises or other cloud projects often involved VPC peering. While VPC peering enables private connectivity, it can expose a broader range of IP addresses than necessary.

Google Cloud Private Service Connect offers a more secure and efficient solution. It allows you to connect to Google Cloud services using private RFC1918 IP addresses within your own VPC. This eliminates the need for internet exposure and minimizes the risk of IP address exposure from the projects hosting your cloud services.

Google Cloud Private Service Connect: A Deep Dive

Private Service Connect offers two distinct deployment models:

• Endpoints: Deployed using forwarding rules, endpoints provide consumers with an IP address that maps to the Private Service Connect service.
• Backends: Deployed using Network Endpoint Groups (NEGs), backends allow consumers to direct traffic to their load balancer before reaching the Private Service Connect service. Managing Access and Security

Private Service Connect provides granular controls for managing access to its resources:

• Identity and Access Management (IAM): Determines which users or service accounts have the necessary permissions to deploy and manage Private Service Connect resources (endpoints, backends, services).
• Accept/Reject Lists & Organization Policies: Control which consumers and producers can establish connections with each other.
• VPC Firewall Rules: Filter traffic based on TCP/UDP protocols to control access to Private Service Connect connections.

Key Advantages of Private Service Connect

• Simplified Service Management: Eliminates the need for internet gateways or VPC peering, streamlining cloud network management. Services can be accessed directly within your virtual networks without the need for complex middleboxes, proxies, or configurations.
• Enhanced Network Security: Isolates your network traffic from the public internet. Data remains secure within Google’s private backbone network.
• Accelerated Service Consumption: Enables secure and easy access to Google Cloud services (Cloud Storage, Cloud Bigtable), third-party services (Snowflake, MongoDB), and your own custom services.
• Restricted Infrastructure Access: Consumers can only connect to the specific service, preventing exposure to the underlying infrastructure of the producer’s VPC. This is achieved through endpoints and service attachments.

Resources

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/networking/private-service-connect-is-now-generally-available https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/private-service-connect