Your team needs to create a Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) cluster to host a newly built application that requires access to third-party services on the internet. Your company does not allow any Compute Engine instance to have a public IP address on Google Cloud. You need to create a deployment strategy that adheres to these guidelines. What should you do?

The correct approach is to configure the GKE cluster as a private cluster and use Cloud NAT Gateway. A private cluster ensures that GKE nodes do not have public IP addresses, meeting the company's security policy. Cloud NAT Gateway provides outbound internet connectivity for instances without external IP addresses, allowing the application to reach third-party services. Configuring Private Google Access on the VPC is insufficient because it only allows instances without external IPs to reach Google APIs and services, not arbitrary internet destinations. A route-based cluster doesn't inherently prevent public IPs on nodes. Installing a NAT Proxy on a Compute Engine instance is a manual, less scalable, and less resilient solution compared to Cloud NAT, which is a managed service.