Address groups overview

An address group contains multiple IP addresses, IP address ranges in CIDR format, or both. Each address group can be used by multiple resources, such as rules in Cloud NGFW firewall policies or rules in Google Cloud Armor security policies.

Updates to an address group are automatically propagated to the resources that reference the address group. For example, you can create an address group containing a set of trusted IP addresses. To change the set of trusted IP addresses, you update the address group. Your updates to the address group are reflected in each associated resource automatically.

Specifications

Address group resources have the following characteristics:

  • Each address group is uniquely identified by a URL with the following elements:
    • Container type: Determines the address group type—organization or project.
    • Container ID: ID of the organization or the project.
    • Location: Specifies if the address group is a global or regional resource (such as europe-west).
    • Name: The address group name with the following format:
      • A string 1-63 characters long
      • Includes only alphanumeric characters
      • Must not start with a number

  • You can construct a unique URL identifier for an address group in the following format:

    <containerType>/<containerId>/locations/<location>/addressGroups/<address-group-name>

    For example, a global address group example-address-group in project myprojecthas the following unique 4-tuple identifier:

    projects/myproject/locations/global/addressGroups/example-address-group

  • Each address group has an associated type that can be either IPv4 or IPv6, but not both. The address group type cannot be changed later.

  • Each IP address or IP range in an address group is referred to as an item. The number of items that you can add to an address group depends on the address group's capacity. You can define the item capacity during address group creation. This capacity cannot be changed later. The maximum capacity that you can configure for an address group varies depending on the product with which you use the address group.

  • You must specify the capacity and type when you create an address group. In addition, when you use Google Cloud Armor, you must set the purpose field to CLOUD_ARMOR.

  • When you create an address group with a purpose that is not CLOUD_ARMOR, the address group has a maximum capacity of 1,000 IP addresses.

Types of address groups

Address groups are classified based on their scope. The scope identifies the level at which the address group is applicable in the resource hierarchy. Address groups are categorized into the following types:

An address group can be either project-scoped or organization-scoped, but not both.

Project-scoped address groups

Use project-scoped address groups when you want to define your own list of IP addresses to be used within a project or a network to block or allow a list of changing IP addresses. For example, if you want to define your own threat intelligence list and add it to a rule, create an address group with the required IP addresses.

The container type for project-scoped address groups is always set to project. For more information about how to create and modify project-scoped address groups, see Configure address groups.

Organization-scoped address groups

Google Cloud Armor does not support organization-scoped address groups.

How address groups work with security policies

Address groups simplify the configuration and maintenance of security policies because you can share each list of IP addresses across many security policies. Consider the following additional specifications when you use address groups with security policies:

  • Address groups are only available for globally scoped backend security policies.
  • The capacity of an address group is added to the total attribute count of the security policy where the address group is used. Make sure that you set the capacity to an appropriate value based on your use case.
  • To use address groups, your project must be enrolled in Cloud Armor Enterprise. If you downgrade to standard billing, you can't create new address groups or view or modify existing address groups. You also can't create rules that reference an existing address group, and your rules that reference address groups are frozen. This means that they are still active, but the only action that you can perform on them is delete.

We recommend that you view the quotas and limits for address groups.

Example

Imagine that you have a network configuration in which you have three backend services, each of which has one security policy. In addition, you have a list of IP addresses that you know are malicious. When you create a deny rule in each security policy, you can create one address group and use it with all three security policies instead of adding the list of IP addresses to each security policy. Then, whenever you create a new security policy, you can use the address group again to make new rules.

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