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

When configuring the Log Forwarding profile on a Palo Alto Networks firewall, the forwarding methods available include:

Panorama: For forwarding logs to a Panorama management system.

Syslog: For forwarding logs to a syslog server.

Email: For sending logs via email.

In the context of a Zone Protection profile, Protocol Protection is the section used to configure protections against activities such as spoofed IP addresses and split handshake session establishment attempts. These types of attacks typically involve manipulating protocol behaviors, such as IP address spoofing or session hijacking, and are mitigated by the Protocol Protection settings.

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.

To create SD-WAN interfaces through an API, the correct approach is to use the REST API's "sdwanInterfaces" parameter on a firewall device. This parameter allows you to configure SD-WAN interfaces directly on the firewall devices via API, ensuring that the required interfaces are set up and managed for SD-WAN functionality.

When the preemptive hold time is set to 0 minutes in route monitoring, the firewall is configured to immediately reinstall the route into the Routing Information Base (RIB) as soon as the monitored path comes up. This essentially means that the firewall will not wait for any predefined hold time before reestablishing the route once the monitoring condition is met, ensuring a faster recovery of the route.

The Advanced Routing Engine (ARE) is supported on Palo Alto Networks firewalls that utilize the PAN-OS 11.0+ software and have the required hardware architecture. The supported models include PA-3200 Series, PA-5400 Series, PA-800 Series, and PA-400 Series. These models provide enhanced routing capabilities, including BGP, OSPF, and more complex routing policies.

PA-3260 and PA-5410 are part of the PA-3200 and PA-5400 Series, which are known to support ARE.

PA-850 and PA-460 are within the PA-800 and PA-400 Series, which also support ARE

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.

To meet the company's requirements - minimizing changes to the cloud environments, optimizing compute resources, and unifying security policies - the best approach is to deploy Cloud NGFW solutions natively for AWS and Azure while managing policies centrally with Panorama.

In Azure, using Cloud NGFW for Azure deployed within vNETs allows traffic to be routed through security appliances efficiently without requiring a complete re-architecture. This approach aligns with Azure's existing routing mechanism while maintaining security.

In AWS, deploying Cloud NGFW for AWS in a centralized Security VPC and integrating it with AWS Transit Gateway enables traffic inspection for all connected VPCs without modifying individual workloads. This method ensures efficient scaling and minimal infrastructure changes while maintaining security consistency.

The Proxy IDs (or Traffic Selectors) define the local and remote subnets that are allowed to communicate over the IPSec tunnel. If the Proxy IDs on the Palo Alto Networks firewall do not match the configuration on the Cisco ASA, the tunnel will fail to establish because the firewalls won't agree on which traffic to encrypt. Ensuring that the Proxy IDs match between the Palo Alto Networks firewall and the Cisco ASA will resolve the issue.

Separate rules must be created for each direction: Palo Alto Networks firewalls enforce security policies based on traffic direction. To allow bidirectional communication through the IPSec tunnel, two separate rules are required - one for incoming and one for outgoing traffic.

IKE negotiation and IPSec/ESP packets are denied by default: Palo Alto Networks firewalls use an interzone default deny policy, meaning that unless an explicit policy allows IKE (UDP 500/4500) and ESP (protocol 50) traffic, the firewall will block these packets, preventing tunnel establishment. Therefore, administrators must create explicit rules permitting IKE and IPSec/ESP traffic to the firewall's external interface.

In a High Availability (HA) active/passive pair configuration, when setting up an Aggregate Ethernet (AE) interface, enabling the "Enable in HA Passive State" option allows the interface to participate in LACP (Link Aggregation Control Protocol) even when the system is in the passive state. This ensures that the pre-negotiation of the LACP link occurs, allowing the link aggregation to be ready as soon as the firewall becomes active.

To enable the Advanced Routing Engine (ARE) on a Palo Alto Networks firewall, the license for the ARE must be applied first. Without the proper license, the firewall cannot activate and use the advanced routing features provided by ARE, such as support for more complex routing protocols (e.g., BGP, OSPF, etc.).

Once the license is applied and validated, the routing engine can be configured, allowing the creation of logical routers and routing policies.