NetSec-Pro Palo Alto Networks Network Security Professional Question and Answers

The“Report and Maintenance”step of the Zero Trust model emphasizes ongoing monitoring, analysis, and reporting to ensure the environment remains secure over time.

“The Report and Maintenance phase includes continuous monitoring, log forwarding, and sharing of security telemetry to third-party tools to maintain and validate Zero Trust implementation.”

(Source: Zero Trust Best Practices)

By forwarding logs to SOC tools, the engineer ensures comprehensive visibility and proactive threat hunting.

Strata Cloud Manager (SCM)offers acloud-based unified managementplane for both NGFWs and Prisma Access, enabling consistent policy enforcement, simplified management, and AI-driven operational insights.

“Strata Cloud Manager provides a single interface for unified management of NGFWs and Prisma Access, leveraging AI to optimize security operations and streamline workflows.”

(Source: Strata Cloud Manager Overview)

Unlike Panorama, which is an on-premises management solution, SCM delivers cloud-based, AI-driven capabilities for centralized oversight.

Enterprise DLP Profileis specifically designed to detect and logdata exfiltration attempts, including those involving confidential or sensitive data.

“Enterprise DLP logs capture incidents involving potential data exfiltration. They help identify sensitive data transfers, even in seemingly legitimate traffic.”

(Source: Enterprise DLP Logging and Alerts)

File Blocking and Vulnerability Protection handle files or exploit detection, while WildFire focuses on malware analysis—not direct data exfiltration.

TheSP3 architectureof Palo Alto NGFWs ensures that additional security services (CDSS) only cause aminor reduction in performance, as traffic is inspected once in a single pass.

“The single-pass parallel processing (SP3) architecture performs application identification and security enforcement simultaneously in one pass, resulting in only minor performance impacts when enabling multiple security services.”

(Source: SP3 Architecture)

Unlike traditional multi-pass engines, SP3 architecture optimizes performance while delivering comprehensive security.

App-ID Cloud Engine (ACE)in SaaS Security uses cloud-based signatures to detectunknownandunsanctioned SaaS applicationsin the environment.

“App-ID Cloud Engine (ACE) uses real-time cloud intelligence to identify SaaS applications, including previously unknown or newly introduced applications.”

(Source: ACE for SaaS Visibility)

This feature is key for comprehensive SaaS visibility beyond static signatures.

Cloud NGFW for AWS can be configured usingPanoramafor centralized management, as well as theAWS management consolefor native integration and configuration.

“You can configure Cloud NGFW for AWS using Panorama for centralized security management, or directly through the AWS management console to deploy and manage security services for your AWS resources.”

(Source: Cloud NGFW for AWS Guide)

Negated source addressesexclude traffic from the specified region. To avoid accidental connectivity loss for trafficfrom that region, create a separate Security policy toexplicitly permit it.

“When you use a negated region in a Security policy rule, ensure to create an additional Security policy to permit traffic from the excluded (negated) region to avoid unintentional drops.”

(Source: Prisma Access Policy Best Practices)

This ensuresexplicit inclusivity for the excluded region, maintaining reliable connectivity.

To inspect SaaS app traffic (often encrypted), you must configure:

SSL Forward Proxy

“The SSL Forward Proxy decryption profile enables the firewall to decrypt outbound SSL traffic, essential for visibility into SaaS app usage.”

(Source: SSL Forward Proxy Overview)

Validate certificates

“Validating and deploying the appropriate root and intermediate CA certificates is critical for establishing trust and preventing SSL errors during decryption.”

(Source: Certificate Deployment and Validation)

Without these steps, SaaS decryption and policy enforcement would be incomplete.

To allow third-party contractors controlled access, security policies must combineuser identificationandtime-based access controls:

User-ID

“User-ID enables security policies to be based on user identity rather than IP addresses, ensuring precise policy enforcement for specific users such as contractors.”

(Source: User-ID Overview)

Schedule

“Schedules allow policies to be active only during specific times, providing time-based access control (e.g., after business hours).”

(Source: Security Policy Schedules)

Together, they ensure that only authorized users (contractors) have access, and only when explicitly allowed.

Host Information Profile (HIP) checksare used in GlobalProtect to collect and evaluate endpoint posture (OS, patch level, AV status) to enforce granular security policies for remote users.

“The HIP feature collects information about the host and can be used in security policies to enforce posture-based access control. This ensures only compliant endpoints can access sensitive resources.”

(Source: GlobalProtect HIP Checks)

This enables fine-grained, context-aware access decisions beyond user identity alone.

TheAnti-spyware profileincludes DNS-based protections like sinkholing and detection of DNS queries to malicious domains, offering real-time protection against attacks that exploit DNS misconfigurations.

“The Anti-Spyware profile protects against DNS-based threats by sinkholing DNS queries to malicious domains and detecting suspicious DNS activity, thus blocking data exfiltration and C2 communication.”

(Source: Anti-Spyware Profiles)

SSL Inbound Inspectionallows the firewall to decrypt incoming encrypted traffic to internal servers (e.g., web servers) by acting as aman-in-the-middle (MITM). The firewall uses the private key of the server to decrypt the session and apply security policies before re-encrypting the traffic.

“SSL Inbound Inspection requires you to import the server’s private key and certificate into the firewall. The firewall then acts as a man-in-the-middle (MITM) to decrypt inbound sessions from external clients to internal servers for inspection.”

(Source: SSL Inbound Inspection)

Voice quality issues in SD-WAN deployments are typically linked to path performance metrics (latency, jitter, packet loss). Reviewingreal-time analyticshelps pinpoint root causes and appropriate mitigation.

“When experiencing performance issues, the first step is to analyze real-time performance data. Prisma SD-WAN provides path quality analytics to identify degradation and ensure informed troubleshooting.”

(Source: Prisma SD-WAN Monitoring)

This data-driven approach avoids unnecessary configuration changes.

For large lists of specific URLs, creating acustom URL categoryand importing the list is the most efficient approach for granular URL filtering.

“You can create custom URL categories to define specific URLs or patterns and enforce policies for these categories. This is the most efficient way to handle large sets of URLs.”

(Source: Custom URL Categories)

This approach saves time compared to manual rule creation or using generic application filters.

A centralized certificate automation approach reduces management overhead and security risks by standardizing processes, automating renewals, and continuously monitoring the certificate lifecycle.

“Implementing a centralized certificate management approach with automation and continuous monitoring ensures optimal security while reducing operational complexity in hybrid environments.”

(Source: Best Practices for Certificate Management)