Google Cloud Professional Cloud Security Engineer Practice Exam 2025 - Free Cloud Security Engineer Practice Questions and Study Guide

The first step to implement Workload Identity Federation (WIF) with an on-premises identity provider is to set up a workload identity pool. This pool acts as a container for the identities from the external provider, allowing Google Cloud to recognize and map those identities to the Google Cloud service accounts.

When you create a workload identity pool, you establish the framework within which identities can be federated. This is foundational because it lays the groundwork for subsequent configurations, such as integrating and configuring the specific identity provider and creating necessary service accounts that will use the identity pool for granting permissions.

Setting up the pool enables you to define how external identities will be asserted and managed within the Google Cloud environment, and it's crucial for the successful implementation of WIF. Subsequent steps, like configuring an identity provider or creating associated service accounts, depend on having this foundational structure in place.