NGFW-Engineer Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewall Engineer Questions and Answers

In this scenario, the customer requires that users do not directly access websites and that a security device (the firewall) manages the connection, while also ensuring that there is authentication back to the Active Directory (AD) servers for all sessions. The explicit proxy with Kerberos authentication is the best solution because:

The explicit proxy allows the firewall to intercept user web traffic and manage the connections on behalf of users.

Kerberos authentication ensures that the user’s identity is validated against the Active Directory servers before the session is allowed, fulfilling the authentication requirement.

For a mission-critical network, it is recommended to configure the content update threshold to 8 hours. This ensures that the network is protected with the latest threat intelligence, updates to signatures, and other critical content, minimizing the exposure to newly discovered vulnerabilities and threats.

Regular content updates are crucial in mission-critical environments to ensure the firewall is up-to-date with the latest protections. 8 hours is considered an optimal balance between timely updates and network performance.

When configuring a new security zone on a Palo Alto Networks firewall, the two valid zone types are:

Tunnel: A Tunnel zone is used for traffic that is associated with a VPN tunnel, such as IPSec tunnels. Traffic passing through a tunnel interface is classified into this zone.

Virtual Wire: A Virtual Wire zone is used when a firewall operates in transparent mode (also known as Layer 2 mode). In this configuration, the firewall can inspect traffic without modifying the IP address structure of the network.

Assigning an Admin Role Profile to a user in a Palo Alto Networks NGFW is used to define granular permissions for management tasks. This allows administrators to control what actions a user can perform on the firewall, such as configuration changes, monitoring, and logging. By assigning different admin roles, you can ensure that users have access only to the areas and tasks they need, enforcing the principle of least privilege.

Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFWs) use SSL/TLS profiles to secure connections for services such as GlobalProtect Gateways and GlobalProtect Portals. These profiles are used to manage the SSL/TLS encryption and decryption for secure communication between the firewall and clients (such as VPN clients for GlobalProtect). This helps ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the data during transmission.

The phases of the Palo Alto Networks AI Runtime Security: Network Intercept solution are designed to help identify and protect against potential threats in real time by using AI to detect and prevent malicious activities within the network.

Discovery: Identifying applications, services, and behaviors within the network to understand baseline activity.

Deployment: Implementing the solution into the network and integrating with existing security measures.

Detection: Monitoring traffic and activities to identify abnormal or malicious behavior.

Prevention: Taking action to stop threats once detected, such as blocking malicious traffic or stopping exploit attempts.

To begin sending logs to Strata Logging Service while continuing to forward them to Panorama log collectors, the necessary configuration is to enable Cloud Logging. This option is configured in the Cloud Logging section under Device → Setup → Management in the appropriate templates. Once enabled, this ensures that logs are directed both to the Strata Logging Service (cloud) and to the Panorama log collectors.

In a Layer 2 configuration, interfaces are typically grouped into the same Layer 2 zone. When the interfaces are assigned to the same VLAN, the firewall will treat them as part of the same broadcast domain.

In a Layer 2 setup, interfaces must be in the same Layer 2 zone to allow the traffic within the same VLAN to pass. Additionally, a security policy must be configured to allow traffic within this VLAN or zone. This will resolve the issue by ensuring that traffic is permitted between clients behind different interfaces assigned to the same VLAN.

Local firewall rules are evaluated after Panorama pre-rules (those applied before the firewall’s local policies) and before Panorama post-rules (those applied after the firewall’s local policies). This ensures that the local firewall rules do not override the central Panorama policy and are only applied in the appropriate order within the policy evaluation sequence.

When building a custom report on a Palo Alto Networks NGFW, you can select detailed logs that provide specific insights into various aspects of firewall activity. The available options for detailed logs typically include:

Traffic logs: These provide information on the network traffic passing through the firewall.

Threat logs: These logs capture data related to identified security threats, such as malware or intrusion attempts.

Data filtering logs: These logs capture events related to data filtering policies, such as preventing the transfer of sensitive data.

User-ID logs: These logs associate user identities with the traffic and activities observed on the firewall, enabling user-based policy enforcement.

The maximum number of Log Collectors that can be added to a Log Collector Group is 18 plus 2 hot spares, ensuring redundancy and availability in case of failure. This allows for a total of up to 20 Log Collectors in a group, providing sufficient scalability and reliability for log collection.

In the context of virtual systems (VSYS) on a Palo Alto Networks firewall, the external zone is typically associated with specific interfaces within a VSYS. Zones are fundamental security objects used to define traffic flow between interfaces, and the external zone would be used for interfaces that connect to external networks.

An external zone is associated with an interface within a VSYS of the firewall. This ensures that traffic from specific interfaces can be classified as belonging to the external zone, allowing the firewall to apply appropriate security policies.

The external zone is indeed a security object that is specific to a given VSYS, as each VSYS can have its own set of zones that are isolated from others.