Cloud Technology Solutions Ltd

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) - Big Data

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) has many Big Data service. BigQuery is a fully managed petabyte scale data warehouse. Data ingestion via Pub/Sub, Cloud Data Fusion, Cloud Composer (Airflow), Dataproc (Hadoop and Spark), Dataflow and Google Cloud Storage and services in a data centre enable the creation of huge data lakes.

Features

  • Fully-managed big data (petabyte-scale) SQL data warehouse
  • Managed SQL and highly-scalable managed NoSql databases
  • Process structured and unstructured data
  • Fully-managed global-scale transactionally-consistent SQL database
  • Fully managed Hadoop and Spark
  • Process data in batch or in streams
  • Easy-to-use report creation tools
  • Build on Google's data processing knowhow
  • Easy to use visualisation tools

Benefits

  • Focus on analytics not operational support
  • Data analytics that grows with you, however much you need
  • Highly scalable
  • Highly available
  • High performance
  • Industry standard interfaces
  • Easy-to-use stream processing tools
  • Easily create and share reports
  • Benefit from Google's data processing innovation
  • Interactive analytics tools which enable faster time-to-insight

Pricing

£0.01 a unit

Service documents

Request an accessible format
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at alison.king@cts.co. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 13

Service ID

3 8 9 6 5 7 3 9 3 9 3 5 6 7 7

Contact

Cloud Technology Solutions Ltd Alison King
Telephone: 07847 302291
Email: alison.king@cts.co

Service scope

Service constraints
No
System requirements
None

User support

Email or online ticketing support
Yes, at extra cost
Support response times
P1 - 15 minute response time (24/7) P2 - 1 hour minute response time (24/7) P3 - 4 business hours minute response time P4 - 8 business hours minute response time Subject to agreed contract
User can manage status and priority of support tickets
No
Phone support
Yes
Phone support availability
24 hours, 7 days a week
Web chat support
No
Onsite support
Yes, at extra cost
Support levels
1st, 2nd and 3rd line support is provided by cloud support engineers and in some cases a technical account manager is assigned. Costs for the service start from £5000 and will be based on the levels required, response times, resolutions times and hours of availability required. Calls are processed and managed based on standard P1, P2, P3, P4 classifications. Support channels provided include web, phone and email. Service Level Agreement (SLA) is defined and provided to the customer as part of the service design and transition to their live operations environment.
Support available to third parties
Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

Getting started
CTS are a Google Premier Partner with a proven track record of deploying Google into Central & Local Government, Education, 3rd Sector and Private sector. CTS Provide on-site user training, VIP training, Admin Training, Change Management, Technical & Strategic consultancy, Project Management.

Google Documentation, training, worked examples, best practices, and a free usage tier are available to assist users with getting started on Google Cloud Platform.

Getting Started: https://cloud.google.com/getting-started/
Online Documentation: https://cloud.google.com/docs/
Training Sessions: https://cloud.google.com/training/
Google Developers Codelabs provide a guided, tutorial, hands-on coding experience:
https://codelabs.developers.google.com/
Best practices: https://cloud.google.com/docs/enterprise/best-practices-for-enterprise-organizations
Free tier available: https://cloud.google.com/free/
Service documentation
Yes
Documentation formats
PDF
End-of-contract data extraction
Google's adoption of open APIs and open source technology allows users to move their data easily between cloud environments and prevent vendor lock-in (https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/07/how-to-escape-lock-in-with-a-multi-cloud-stack26.html). We offer third party solutions for offline data import/export (https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/offline-media-import-export), and VM migration through recommended partners (https://cloud.google.com/migrate/). Further to this Articles 7 and 8 of Google Data Processing and Security Terms (https://cloud.google.com/terms/data-processing-terms) states that Google will provide the ability to correct, block, export and delete the Customer Data during the terms of the agreement. To the extent the customer does not have the ability migrate Customer Data to another system, Google will, at Customer’s reasonable expense, comply with any reasonable requests to assist in this.
End-of-contract process
On the expiry or termination of the Agreement, after a recovery period of up to 30 days following such expiry or termination, Google will delete the Customer-Deleted Data within a maximum period of 180 days, unless applicable legislation or legal process prevents it from doing so.

Using the service

Web browser interface
Yes
Using the web interface
Deploy, scale and diagnose issues via a simple web based interface. You can securely manage and monitor everything that powers your cloud application.
https://cloud.google.com/cloud-console/
Web interface accessibility standard
None or don’t know
How the web interface is accessible
We are working towards making our products and services more accessible for assistive technology users.
Web interface accessibility testing
We are working towards improving the testing of our products and services with assistive technology users.
API
Yes
What users can and can't do using the API
You can automate your workflows in your language by accessing the Google Cloud Platform products from your code. Cloud APIs provide similar functionality to Cloud SDK and Cloud Console, and allow you to automate your workflows by using your favorite language.
https://cloud.google.com/apis/
API automation tools
  • Ansible
  • Chef
  • SaltStack
  • Terraform
  • Puppet
  • Other
Other API automation tools
  • Jenkins
  • Packer
  • Kubernetes
  • Spinnaker
  • Google Cloud Deployment Manager
  • Pivotal
  • Openshift
API documentation
Yes
API documentation formats
  • Open API (also known as Swagger)
  • HTML
Command line interface
Yes
Command line interface compatibility
  • Linux or Unix
  • Windows
  • MacOS
  • Other
Using the command line interface
The CLI can be used to access products and services on GCP from the command-line. You can run these tools interactively or in your automated scripts.
https://cloud.google.com/sdk/

Scaling

Scaling available
Yes
Scaling type
  • Automatic
  • Manual
Independence of resources
GCP runs on top of Google's infrastructure which serves billions of users across many products and services, the integrity and scale of those services ensures that user demand is handled appropriately.
Customer data is logically segregated by domain to allow data to be produced for a single tenant only.
The authorization to provision additional processing capacity is obtained through budget approvals and
managed through internal SLAs as part of an effective resource economy.
Further details - https://cloud.google.com/files/Google-Cloud-CSA-CAIQ-January2017-CSA-CAIQ-v3.0.1.pdf (Section AAC-03.1 and IVS-04.3)
Usage notifications
Yes
Usage reporting
  • API
  • Email
  • SMS
  • Other

Analytics

Infrastructure or application metrics
Yes
Metrics types
  • CPU
  • Disk
  • HTTP request and response status
  • Memory
  • Network
  • Number of active instances
  • Other
Other metrics
See documentation for further metrics https://cloud.google.com/products/management/
Reporting types
  • API access
  • Real-time dashboards

Resellers

Supplier type
Reseller providing extra features and support
Organisation whose services are being resold
Google

Staff security

Staff security clearance
Other security clearance
Government security clearance
Up to Security Clearance (SC)

Asset protection

Knowledge of data storage and processing locations
Yes
Data storage and processing locations
  • United Kingdom
  • European Economic Area (EEA)
  • Other locations
User control over data storage and processing locations
Yes
Datacentre security standards
Complies with a recognised standard (for example CSA CCM version 3.0)
Penetration testing frequency
At least every 6 months
Penetration testing approach
Another external penetration testing organisation
Protecting data at rest
  • Physical access control, complying with CSA CCM v3.0
  • Physical access control, complying with SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
  • Physical access control, complying with another standard
  • Encryption of all physical media
  • Scale, obfuscating techniques, or data storage sharding
  • Other
Other data at rest protection approach
Google hard drives leverage technologies like FDE (full disk encryption) and drive locking.
https://cloud.google.com/security/encryption-at-rest
Data sanitisation process
Yes
Data sanitisation type
  • Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
  • Deleted data can’t be directly accessed
  • Hardware containing data is completely destroyed
Equipment disposal approach
Complying with a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v.30, CAS (Sanitisation) or ISO/IEC 27001

Backup and recovery

Backup and recovery
Yes
Backup controls
This varies between services, users can control what backups are performed via the web interface, CLI or APIs.
Datacentre setup
Multiple datacentres with disaster recovery
Scheduling backups
Users schedule backups through a web interface
Backup recovery
Users can recover backups themselves, for example through a web interface

Data-in-transit protection

Data protection between buyer and supplier networks
  • Private network or public sector network
  • TLS (version 1.2 or above)
  • IPsec or TLS VPN gateway
  • Legacy SSL and TLS (under version 1.2)
  • Other
Other protection between networks
Securing data in transit is a high priority for Google. Google was the first major cloud provider to enable HTTPS/TLS by default. Google has also upgraded all our RSA certificates to 2048-bit keys, making our encryption in transit for Cloud Platform and all other Google services even stronger. Perfect forward secrecy (PFS) minimizes the impact of a compromised key, or a cryptographic breakthrough. It protects network data by using a short- term key that lasts only a couple of days and is only held in memory, rather than a key that’s used for years and kept on durable storage.
https://cloud.google.com/security/
Data protection within supplier network
  • TLS (version 1.2 or above)
  • IPsec or TLS VPN gateway
  • Legacy SSL and TLS (under version 1.2)
  • Other
Other protection within supplier network
Google encrypts Cloud Platform data as it moves between our data centers on our private network. Traffic on Google's networks is encrypted.
https://cloud.google.com/security/

Availability and resilience

Guaranteed availability
SLAs are service specific:
https://cloud.google.com/terms/sla/
Approach to resilience
Google operates a global network of data centers to reduce risks from geographical disruptions. The link
below includes the locations of our data centers:
http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/
Google does not depend on failover to other providers and builds redundancy and failover into its own
global infrastructure.
Google performs annual testing of its business continuity plans to simulate disaster scenarios that
simulate catastrophic events that may disrupt Google operations.
https://cloud.google.com/files/Google-Cloud-CSA-CAIQ-January2017-CSA-CAIQ-v3.0.1.pdf (section BCR-01)
Outage reporting
Google maintains a dashboard with service availability and service issues here:
https://status.cloud.google.com/

Identity and authentication

User authentication
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Public key authentication (including by TLS client certificate)
  • Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google apps)
  • Dedicated link (for example VPN)
  • Username or password
Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels
Google Cloud Identity & Access Management (IAM) lets administrators authorize who can take action on
specific resources, giving you full control and visibility to manage cloud resources centrally. For
established enterprises with complex organizational structures, hundreds of workgroups and potentially
many more projects, Cloud IAM provides a unified view into security policy across your entire
organization, with built-in auditing to ease compliance processes. IAM access policies are defined at the
project level using granular controls of users and groups or using ACLs.
https://cloud.google.com/iam/
https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/access/
For further information see;
https://cloud.google.com/files/Google-Cloud-CSA-CAIQ-January2017-CSA-CAIQ-v3.0.1.pdf
Section IAM-12
Access restriction testing frequency
At least once a year
Management access authentication
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google Apps)
Devices users manage the service through
  • Dedicated device over multiple services or networks
  • Directly from any device which may also be used for normal business (for example web browsing or viewing external email)

Audit information for users

Access to user activity audit information
Users have access to real-time audit information
How long user audit data is stored for
Less than 1 month
Access to supplier activity audit information
Users have access to real-time audit information
How long supplier audit data is stored for
At least 12 months
How long system logs are stored for
User-defined

Standards and certifications

ISO/IEC 27001 certification
Yes
Who accredited the ISO/IEC 27001
Ernst & Young CertifyPoint B.V.
ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date
30/11/2021
What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover
See certificate for full list of products covered, anything not listed is not covered. https://cloud.google.com/security/compliance/iso-27001
ISO 28000:2007 certification
No
CSA STAR certification
Yes
CSA STAR accreditation date
01/01/2017
CSA STAR certification level
Level 1: CSA STAR Self-Assessment
What the CSA STAR doesn’t cover
For further information see;
https://cloud.google.com/security/compliance/csa-star/
https://cloud.google.com/files/Google-Cloud-CSA-CAIQ-January2017-CSA-CAIQ-v3.0.1.pdf
PCI certification
Yes
Who accredited the PCI DSS certification
Reviewed by an independent Qualified Security Assessor
PCI DSS accreditation date
19/05/2016
What the PCI DSS doesn’t cover
The validation enables PCI Level 1 merchants to use Google Cloud Platform for their processing services.
Cyber essentials
Yes
Cyber essentials plus
No
Other security certifications
Yes
Any other security certifications
  • SSAE16 / ISAE 3402 Type II
  • SOC 1
  • SOC 2
  • SOC 3 public audit report
  • ISO 27001
  • ISO 27017
  • ISO 27018
  • HIPAA
  • CSA STAR
  • EU-US Privacy Shield Framework

Security governance

Named board-level person responsible for service security
Yes
Security governance certified
Yes
Security governance standards
  • CSA CCM version 3.0
  • ISO/IEC 27001
  • Other
Other security governance standards
https://cloud.google.com/security/compliance
SSAE16 / ISAE 3402 Type II:
SOC 1
SOC 2
SOC 3 public audit report
ISO 27001
ISO 27017
ISO 27018
FedRamp ATO for Google App Engine
PCI DSS v3.1
HIPAA
CSA STAR
EU Data Protection Directive
EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework
Information security policies and processes
https://cloud.google.com/security/compliance
Custom, ISO27001, ISO27017, ISO270018

Operational security

Configuration and change management standard
Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
Configuration and change management approach
In Google production environments, software updates are manually vetted to ensure the stability of the system. Changes are then tested and cautiously rolled out to systems. The details vary somewhat depending on the service being considered, but all development work is separated from the operation systems, testing occurs in a multi-staged fashion in both environments and in dedicated test settings. We can share, under NDA, the SOC2 audit report (based on standards from the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board), which describes the change management process. Additionally, changes to code go through a process of code review involving additional engineer(s).
Vulnerability management type
Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
Vulnerability management approach
Google administrates a vulnerability management process that actively scans for security threats using a combination of commercially available and purpose-built in-house tools, intensive-automated and manual penetration efforts, quality assurance processes, software security reviews and external audits. The vulnerability management team is responsible for tracking and following up on vulnerabilities. Once a vulnerability requiring remediation has been identified, it is logged, prioritized according to severity, and assigned an owner. The vulnerability management team tracks and follows up frequently until remediated. Google also maintains relationships with members of the security research community to track issues in Google services and open-source tools.
https://cloud.google.com/security/whitepaper
Protective monitoring type
Supplier-defined controls
Protective monitoring approach
Google’s security monitoring program is focused on information gathered from internal network traffic, employee actions on systems and outside knowledge of vulnerabilities. At many points across our global network, internal traffic is inspected for suspicious behavior, such as the presence of traffic that might indicate botnet connections. Network analysis is supplemented by examining system logs to identify unusual behavior, such as attempted access of customer data. They actively review inbound security reports and monitor public mailing lists, blog posts, and wikis. Automated network analysis helps determine when an unknown threat may exist and escalates to Google security staff.
https://cloud.google.com/security/whitepaper
Incident management type
Conforms to a recognised standard, for example, CSA CCM v3.0 or ISO/IEC 27035:2011 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
Incident management approach
We have a rigorous incident management process for security events that may affect the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of systems or data. This process specifies courses of action, procedures for notification, escalation, mitigation, and documentation. Google’s security incident management program is structured around the NIST guidance on handling incidents (NIST SP 800–61). Key staff are trained in forensics and handling evidence in preparation for an event, including the use of third-party and proprietary tools. Testing of incident response plans is performed for key areas, such as systems that store sensitive customer information.
https://cloud.google.com/security/whitepaper

Secure development

Approach to secure software development best practice
Independent review of processes (for example CESG CPA Build Standard, ISO/IEC 27034, ISO/IEC 27001 or CSA CCM v3.0)

Separation between users

Virtualisation technology used to keep applications and users sharing the same infrastructure apart
Yes
Who implements virtualisation
Supplier
Virtualisation technologies used
KVM hypervisor
How shared infrastructure is kept separate
Customer data is logically segregated by domain to allow data to be produced for a single tenant only. Read white paper here : https://cloud.google.com/security/security-design/resources/google_infrastructure_whitepaper_fa.pdf
https://cloud.google.com/files/Google-Cloud-CSA-CAIQ-January2017-CSA-CAIQ-v3.0.1.pdf (Section AAC-03.1)

Energy efficiency

Energy-efficient datacentres
Yes
Description of energy efficient datacentres
We use Google Cloud data centres, summary below: https://www.google.co.uk/about/datacenters/efficiency/

Social Value

Fighting climate change

Fighting climate change

Environmental - Effective stewardship of the environment

Our Environmental Board focus their time on making our business more sustainable and educating our people to live more sustainably in their personal lives. The team have worked to implement changes in our offices, working with building managers to ensure the proper recycling of materials, building an environmental procurement policy to ensure that our suppliers are playing their part, and even implementing a ‘offset your commute’ programme which everyone in the organisation can participate in to ensure carbon neutrality in their commutes.
Tackling economic inequality

Tackling economic inequality

Economic inequality - Create new jobs and new skills

We work with a small number of partners, such as colleges, universities and training providers working with a focus on people who face barriers to employment or live in deprived areas. We provide free one-day workshops to the learners to help them realise their potential of working in cloud technologies. In addition, we take on a cohort of 6 learners each year and provide them with a fast track into our data and platform engineering teams.
Equal opportunity

Equal opportunity

Equal opportunity - Tackle workforce inequality

Our DEI committee have been working to improve diversity, equity and inclusion across the tech landscape. Whilst we work to always improve the conditions of our own business (eg. implementing a diversity-focused leadership programme, gender neutral parental policies and creating “lunch and learns” to share experiences from different backgrounds with the aim to reduce polarisation), we’re also working to diversify the wider tech community by offering free introduction to GCP workshops to communities and learners from under-represented backgrounds. We also work without partnerships providing funding, talks, mentors and connections to inspire and attract talent into our industry.
Wellbeing

Wellbeing

Wellbeing - Improve health and wellbeing

We have built a wellbeing ‘web’ of support to ensure a rounded approach to assist our employees. This includes;

Maintenance strategies; such as free yoga, fitness classes and football, as well as a resource centre and toolkit to help with mindfulness, stress management and meditation to ensure people are looking after their wellbeing day to day. We also support peoples’ financial wellbeing by providing a financial advisor free of charge and during the working day to all employees.

Management strategies; such as training and deploying of mental health mascots into the business. These are our key contacts for people who are struggling to self-manage their wellbeing using the above strategies. If the support required is deeper or too personal to share with a colleague, we also have an employee assistance programme with financial, legal and health experts at hand.

Crisis strategies; such as our fully covered and maximum level private health insurance including physical therapies, full treatment plans and unlimited mental therapies and cancer treatment.

Pricing

Price
£0.01 a unit
Discount for educational organisations
No
Free trial available
Yes
Description of free trial
Any customer may initiate a trial of the service with a $300 free credit. The trial is available outside of the scope of G-Cloud and not offered under G-Cloud terms and conditions.
Link to free trial
https://cloud.google.com/free/

Service documents

Request an accessible format
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at alison.king@cts.co. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.