Connect GCP account

Securing your cloud infrastructure is crucial to protecting your data. You can leverage Aikido's security checks to detect and address any misconfigurations in your infrastructure.

To view the list of security checks performed by Aikido on your cloud environment, go to the 'checks' tab on the cloud overview page at. Filter to GCP to see specific checks performed on your connected GCP project(s).

To get started, head to the cloud overview page on Aikido and click 'Connect cloud.' Follow the step-by-step setup wizard to connect your GCP project with Aikido.

First, you'll need to provide the project ID to help identify the correct project. Then, you'll be prompted to enable API access to specific GCP services. This is a critical step that enables Aikido to inspect the security of your cloud resources through API requests.

After enabling API access, the setup wizard will guide you through creating a service account with limited, read-only access to specific services in your GCP project. This account will be associated with the necessary roles and permissions, all of which are read-only. This ensures that Aikido can perform its security checks without the risk of unintended modifications to your resources.

If you do not want to assign the suggested roles during the setup. You can ensure the service account includes the following permissions to perform the scans:

bigtable.instances.list,
cloudasset.assets.listResource,
cloudfunctions.functions.list,
cloudkms.cryptoKeys.list,
cloudkms.keyRings.list,
cloudkms.cryptoKeys.getIamPolicy,
cloudsql.instances.list,
cloudsql.users.list,
compute.autoscalers.list,
compute.backendServices.list,
compute.disks.list,
compute.firewalls.list,
compute.healthChecks.list,
compute.instanceGroupManagers.list,
compute.instanceGroups.list,
compute.instances.getIamPolicy,
compute.instances.list,
compute.images.list,
compute.networks.list,
compute.projects.get,
compute.resourcePolicies.list,
compute.securityPolicies.list,
compute.snapshots.list,
compute.subnetworks.list,
compute.targetHttpProxies.list,
compute.urlMaps.list,
compute.routes.list,
container.clusters.list,
dns.managedZones.list,
iam.serviceAccountKeys.list,
iam.serviceAccounts.list,
logging.logMetrics.list,
logging.sinks.list,
monitoring.alertPolicies.list,
spanner.instances.list,
storage.buckets.getIamPolicy,
storage.buckets.list,
deploymentmanager.deployments.list,
dataproc.clusters.list,
artifactregistry.repositories.list,
composer.environments.list

Once the service account is created, you'll need to generate an access key and upload it to Aikido. This key will be used by Aikido to make the necessary API requests to scan your resources.

Finally, you can name your connected project in Aikido and specify the environment it operates in. This information helps Aikido prioritize findings based on the severity and impact to your business.

Within 1-2 minutes after connecting your account, Aikido will report misconfigurations that could pose a threat.

Advanced Rules

Besides the checks mentioned above, Aikido offers a suit of complementary checks/rules that you can enable. We call these advanced cloud rules and you can find them here. After enabling any of these rules, you can expect to see the results (as new issues in the feed) within a few seconds.

Just like the standard checks, these are evaluated with each scan of your cloud environments. Moreover, they are mapped to the compliance reports. By default, the advanced rules will appear as disabled in the compliance reports, unless you activate them.

GCP Advanced Rules Changelog

Rule	Severity	Release Date
Cloud SQL instances do not have deletion protection enabled	Medium	Jul 25, 2025
GKE clusters have the Kubernetes Dashboard enabled	Medium	Jul 25, 2025
Storage buckets do not have uniform bucket-level access enabled	Medium	Jul 25, 2025
Compute instances have serial port access enabled	Medium	Jul 25, 2025
Compute instances have IP forwarding enabled	Medium	Jul 25, 2025
Compute instances have public IP addresses	Medium	Jul 25, 2025
Compute instances have Shielded VM disabled	Medium	Jul 25, 2025
Compute instances do not have OS Login enabled	Low	Jul 25, 2025
GKE clusters are not using automatic upgrades with stable release channels	Medium	Jul 25, 2025
GKE node pools use the default service account	Medium	Jul 25, 2025
GKE clusters do not have the GKE Metadata Server enabled	Medium	Jul 25, 2025
GKE node pools are not using Container-Optimized OS	Medium	Jul 25, 2025
GKE node pools do not have node auto-repair enabled	Medium	Jul 27, 2025
GKE node pools do not have node auto-upgrade enabled	Medium	Jul 27, 2025
GKE clusters do not have Shielded Nodes enabled	Medium	Jul 27, 2025