Configure VPC Service Controls for Gemini

This document shows how to configure VPC Service Controls to support Gemini, an AI-powered collaborator in Google Cloud. To complete this configuration, you do the following:

  1. Update your organization's service perimeter to include Gemini. This document assumes that you already have a service perimeter at the organization level. For more information about service perimeters, see Service perimeter details and configuration.

  2. In projects that you have enabled access to Gemini, configure VPC networks to block outbound traffic except for traffic to the restricted VIP range.

Before you begin

  1. Ensure that Gemini is set up for your Google Cloud user account and project.

  2. Make sure that you have the required Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles to set up and administer VPC Service Controls.

  3. Ensure that you have a service perimeter at the organization level that you can use to set up Gemini. If you don't have a service perimeter at this level, you can create one.

Add Gemini to your service perimeter

To use VPC Service Controls with Gemini, you add Gemini to the service perimeter at the organization level. The service perimeter must include all the services that you use with Gemini and other Google Cloud services that you want to protect.

To add Gemini to your service perimeter, follow these steps:

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the VPC Service Controls page.

    Go to VPC Service Controls

  2. Select your organization.

  3. On the VPC Service Controls page, click the name of your perimeter.

  4. Click Add Resources and do the following:

    1. For each project in which you have enabled Gemini, in the Add resources pane, click Add project, and then do the following:

      1. In the Add projects dialog, select the projects that you want to add.

        If you're using Shared VPC, add the host project and service projects to the service perimeter.

      2. Click Add selected resources. The added projects appear in the Projects section.

    2. For each VPC network in your projects, in the Add resources pane, click Add VPC network, and then do the following:

      1. From the list of projects, click the project that contains the VPC network.

      2. In the Add resources dialog, select the VPC network's checkbox.

      3. Click Add selected resources. The added network appears in the VPC networks section.

  5. Click Restricted Services and do the following:

    1. In the Restricted Services pane, click Add services.

    2. In the Specify services to restrict dialog, select Cloud AI Companion API as the service that you want to secure within the perimeter.

    3. Click Add n services, where n is the number of services you selected in the previous step.

  6. Optional: If your developers need to use Gemini within the perimeter from the Cloud Code plugin in their IDEs, then you'll need to add Cloud Code API to the Restricted Services list and configure the ingress policy.

    Enabling VPC Service Controls for Gemini prevents all access from outside the perimeter, including running Cloud Code IDE extensions from machines not in the perimeter, such as company laptops. Therefore, these steps are necessary if you want to use Gemini with the Cloud Code plugin.

    1. In the Restricted Services pane, click Add services.

    2. In the Specify services to restrict dialog, select Cloud Code API as the service that you want to secure within the perimeter.

    3. Click Add n services, where n is the number of services you selected in the previous step.

    4. Click Ingress policy.

    5. In the Ingress rules pane, click Add rule.

    6. In From attributes of the API client, specify the sources from outside the perimeter that require access. You can specify projects, access levels, and VPC networks as sources.

    7. In To attributes of Google Cloud resources/services, specify the service name of Gemini and Cloud Code API.

      For a list of ingress rule attributes, see Ingress rules reference.

  7. Optional: If your organization uses Access Context Manager and you want to provide developers access to protected resources from outside the perimeter, then set access levels:

    1. Click Access Levels.

    2. In the Ingress Policy: Access Levels pane, select the Choose Access Level field.

    3. Select the checkboxes corresponding to the access levels that you want to apply to the perimeter.

  8. Click Save.

After you complete these steps, VPC Service Controls checks all calls to the Cloud AI Companion API to ensure that they originate from within the same perimeter.

Configure VPC networks

You need to configure your VPC networks so that the requests sent to the regular googleapis.com virtual IP are automatically routed to the restricted virtual IP (VIP) range, 199.36.153.4/30 (restricted.googleapis.com), where your Gemini service is serving. You don't need to change any configurations in the Cloud Code IDE extensions.

For each VPC network in your project, follow these steps to block outbound traffic except for traffic to the restricted VIP range:

  1. Enable Private Google Access on the subnets hosting your VPC network resources.

  2. Configure firewall rules to prevent data from leaving the VPC network.

    1. Create a deny egress rule that blocks all outbound traffic.

    2. Create an allow egress rule that permits traffic to 199.36.153.4/30 on TCP port 443. Ensure that the allow egress rule has a priority before the deny egress rule that you have just created—this allows egress only to the restricted VIP range.

  3. Create a Cloud DNS response policy.

  4. Create a rule for the response policy to resolve *.googleapis.com to restricted.googleapis.com with the following values:

    • DNS name: *.googleapis.com.

    • Local data: restricted.googleapis.com.

    • Record type: A

    • TTL: 300

    • RR data: 199.36.153.4|199.36.153.5|199.36.153.6|199.36.153.7

      The IP address range for restricted.googleapis.com is 199.36.153.4/30.

After you complete these steps, the requests that originate from within the VPC network are unable to leave the VPC network, preventing egress outside the service perimeter. These requests can only reach Google APIs and services that check VPC Service Controls, preventing exfiltration through Google APIs.

Additional configurations

Depending on the Google Cloud products that you use with Gemini, you must consider the following:

  • Client machines connected to the perimeter. Machines that are inside the VPC Service Controls perimeter can access all Gemini experiences. You can also extend the perimeter to an authorized Cloud VPN or Cloud Interconnect from an external network.

  • Client machines outside the perimeter. When you have client machines outside the service perimeter, you can grant controlled access to the restricted Gemini service.

  • Gemini Code Assist. For compliance with VPC Service Controls, make sure the IDE or workstation you're using doesn't have access to https://www.google.com/tools/feedback/mobile through firewall policies.

  • Cloud Workstations. If you use Cloud Workstations, follow the instructions in Configure VPC Service Controls and private clusters.

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