Professional Data EngineerManaging and securing dataMedium
A financial services company is migrating its on-premises transactional database to Google Cloud. The database contains critical customer account information that requires high availability, strong consistency, and robust disaster recovery capabilities across multiple regions. Due to strict regulatory requirements, all data at rest must be encrypted with customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK). Which Google Cloud database service and encryption setup should they choose?
- ACloud SQL with Google-managed encryption keys
- BCloud Spanner with customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK)
- CCloud Firestore with Google-managed encryption keys
- DBigQuery with customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK)
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: B. Cloud Spanner with customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK)
Cloud Spanner offers globally distributed, strong consistency, high availability, and robust disaster recovery, making it suitable for critical transactional data. It also supports customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK) for regulatory compliance.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Cloud SQL is regional and might not meet multi-regional disaster recovery requirements for strong consistency, and Google-managed keys don't meet the CMEK requirement.
- C. Cloud Firestore is a NoSQL document database, not suitable for traditional transactional relational workloads, and Google-managed keys don't meet the CMEK requirement.
- D. BigQuery is a data warehouse for analytics, not a transactional database, and would not meet the strong consistency and transactional requirements.
Cloud Spanner with CMEK
Cloud Spanner is a globally distributed, strongly consistent, and highly available relational database service that supports customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK) for data at rest.
- Enterprise-grade, highly scalable relational database.
- Strong global consistency.
- Supports CMEK for enhanced security and compliance.
Memory trick: Spanner Secures Critical Customer Keys Globally.