Overview
LowerPlane connects to Google Cloud Platform using a service account with read-only IAM roles. This provides visibility into your GCP security posture without any write access.Prerequisites
Before connecting GCP to LowerPlane, ensure you have:- A Google Cloud project with billing enabled
- Owner or IAM Admin permissions on the project
- A service account with the following roles:
- Security Reviewer (
roles/iam.securityReviewer) — Read IAM policies and service account details - Compute Viewer (
roles/compute.viewer) — Read Compute Engine resources and firewall rules - Monitoring Editor (
roles/monitoring.editor) — Access monitoring metrics and alerting policies
- Security Reviewer (
Services Monitored
Manual Setup
Step 1: Create a Service Account
- Go to Google Cloud Console
- Select your project from the top dropdown
- Navigate to IAM & Admin > Service Accounts
- Click Create Service Account
- Enter the following:
- Name:
lowerplane-service-account - Description:
Read-only service account for LowerPlane compliance monitoring
- Name:
- Click Create and Continue
Step 2: Assign Roles
Add the following roles to the service account:
Click Continue, then Done.
Step 3: Create a Service Account Key
- Open the service account you just created
- Go to the Keys tab
- Click Add Key > Create new key
- Select JSON as the key type
- Click Create
Step 4: Enable Required APIs
Navigate to APIs & Services > Library and enable the following APIs:Step 5: Connect in LowerPlane
- Go to Integrations in LowerPlane
- Find Google Cloud Platform and click Connect
- Enter your project ID (or multiple project IDs, comma-separated)
- Paste the full contents of the JSON key file into the Service Account Key field
- Click Connect
Automated Setup via Cloud Shell
You can automate the entire setup using Google Cloud Shell. Open Cloud Shell and follow these steps:1
Set your project
2
Create the setup script
3
Make it executable and run
4
Copy the key
Once the script completes, copy the key file contents:Paste the full JSON output into LowerPlane when connecting the GCP integration.
5
Clean up
After pasting the key into LowerPlane, delete it from Cloud Shell:
Multiple Project IDs
LowerPlane supports monitoring multiple GCP projects with a single service account. To set this up:- Enter comma-separated project IDs in the Project ID field when connecting (e.g.,
project-prod, project-staging, project-dev) - Grant the service account access to each additional project:
- Go to IAM & Admin > IAM in each project
- Click Grant Access
- Enter the service account email (
lowerplane-service-account@YOUR_PROJECT.iam.gserviceaccount.com) - Assign the same roles listed above (Security Reviewer, Compute Viewer, Monitoring Editor, Viewer)
- Organization-level access (optional): Instead of granting access per project, assign roles at the organization level for visibility across all projects
Required APIs
The following APIs must be enabled in each project you want to monitor:The Security Command Center API may require the Security Command Center to be activated at the organization level. If you cannot enable it, LowerPlane will still collect data from all other services.
Automated Tests
When GCP is connected, LowerPlane automatically creates and runs tests including:- Organization policy constraints are enforced
- VPC firewall rules do not allow unrestricted access
- Cloud Storage buckets are not publicly accessible
- Cloud Storage bucket encryption is enabled
- Service account keys are rotated within 90 days
- Audit logging is configured for all services
- Binary authorization is enabled for GKE clusters