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

When configuring a Multi-VSYS environment on a Palo Alto Networks firewall, the administrator can manage and restrict the consumption of hardware resources by individual virtual systems usingResource Quotas. This is a critical architectural step to prevent a single VSYS (tenant) from exhausting the firewall's capacity, which could impact other virtual systems on the same physical chassis.

On theResource tabwithin the Virtual System configuration (found underDevice > Virtual Systems), administrators can set specific limits for various policy types and session counts. Valid configurable limits include:

Sessions Limit(to control the total number of concurrent sessions per dataplane).

Security Rules, NAT Rules, andDecryption Rules.

DoS Protection, QoS, and Application Override rules.

VPN Tunnel limits (Site-to-Site and Concurrent SSL VPN tunnels).

Option B is correct becauseDecryption Rulesare specifically listed as a configurable quota. It is important to note that the firewall does not support limitingCPU utilization(Option A) orMemoryon a per-VSYS basis; these resources are dynamically shared based on traffic demand. While you can assign aVirtual Router(Option C) to a VSYS, it is not treated as a "quota" that you limit by quantity in the resource settings. Similarly,Disk space allocation(Option D) is typically managed at the log database level for the entire device or directed to external collectors, rather than being partitioned as a VSYS resource quota.

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 Panorama, without performing a context switch, the administrator can perform local configuration tasks directly on the connected firewall. The following operations can be done:

Modification of local security rules: Security rules can be modified directly on the connected firewall from the Panorama GUI.

Modification of a Layer 3 interface: Changes to the Layer 3 interfaces on the connected firewall can be done from Panorama, without needing to switch to the firewall's local interface.

Modification of the firewall device hostname: The firewall's hostname can be changed via Panorama.

To enable both RADIUS and SAML authentication to run in parallel during the transition period, you need to configure an authentication sequence and an authentication profile that includes both authentication methods.

By creating an authentication sequence that includes both RADIUS and SAML server profiles, the firewall will attempt authentication with RADIUS first and, if that fails, will fall back to SAML. This enables both authentication types to function simultaneously during the transition period.

You can also configure an authentication profile that includes both the RADIUS Server Profile and the SAML Identity Provider server profile. This setup allows the firewall to use both RADIUS and SAML for authentication requests, and it will check both authentication methods in parallel.

The Transient zone type is used to allow traffic between zones in different virtual systems (VSYS) on a Palo Alto Networks firewall without the traffic leaving the firewall. It provides a way for virtual systems to communicate with each other by acting as a temporary or intermediary zone. Traffic can pass through the firewall between the virtual systems without requiring physical interfaces or leaving the device.

When split tunneling is enabled with the "Both Network Traffic and DNS" option in the GlobalProtect portal configuration, it allows the firewall to control which traffic is sent over the VPN tunnel and which is not. Specifically, it determines which domains are resolved by the VPN-assigned DNS servers (for domains requiring VPN access) and which are resolved by local DNS servers (for domains that can be accessed without the VPN tunnel).

In an active/passive HA setup, the recommended process for upgrading involves minimizing downtime and ensuring traffic continuity by using the failover process:

Suspend the active firewall: This triggers a failover to the passive unit, making it the active unit.

Upgrade the former passive (now active) unit: With traffic now running on the previously passive unit, upgrade the suspended unit while the active unit continues handling traffic.

Confirm proper operation: Once the upgrade is complete, verify that the upgraded unit is functioning properly.

Fail traffic back: Once the upgraded firewall is confirmed to be working, fail the traffic back to the original active unit and upgrade the remaining firewall.

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.

In a multi-vsys (Virtual System) architecture on a Palo Alto Networks firewall, communication between two virtual systems can occur internally through the firewall's backplane without requiring the traffic to exit through a physical interface to an external switch or router. To facilitate this internal routing, a specialized zone type is required.

While Layer 3 zones are used for standard routed traffic and are bound to physical or logical interfaces, theExternalzone type is specifically designed for inter-vsys communication. When an engineer configures two virtual systems to talk to one another, they must create a zone in each VSYS and set the Type toExternal. These zones act as the logical "entry" and "exit" points for traffic crossing the VSYS boundary.

For the traffic flow to be successful, the Virtual Router in the source VSYS must have a route (typically a next-vr route) pointing to the Virtual Router in the destination VSYS. However, from a security policy perspective, the firewall sees the traffic as egressing the External zone of the source VSYS and ingressing the External zone of the destination VSYS. Without defining these zones asExternal, the firewall cannot logically associate the session with the internal backplane hand-off, and the traffic will be dropped despite having correct routing entries. This architectural requirement ensures that even internal virtual traffic remains subject to the firewall's zone-based security inspection.

Use of dynamic routing protocols: An IP address is needed on the tunnel interface to participate in dynamic routing protocols (like OSPF, BGP, etc.) over the tunnel. This allows the firewall to advertise routes and receive updates over the tunnel.

Tunnel monitoring: The IP address on the tunnel interface can also be used for monitoring the tunnel's status. Tunnel monitoring (such as IPSec tunnel monitoring) requires an IP address on the tunnel interface to check the health and availability of the tunnel.

In Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS, the management interface (MGT) is distinct from the data plane interfaces. Configuration of the management interface is handled under the deviceconfig system hierarchy within the Command Line Interface (CLI). By default, many Palo Alto Networks hardware appliances are set to a static IP address (typically 192.168.1.1), but in dynamic environments or cloud deployments, shifting to DHCP is often necessary for initial onboarding.

The correct command to enable this is set deviceconfig system type dhcp-client. When this command is executed in configuration mode, the firewall changes its management interface behavior from a static assignment to a DHCP client. Once the change is committed, the firewall will send a DHCP Discover packet out of the MGT port to obtain an IP address, subnet mask, and default gateway from a local DHCP server.

It is important to differentiate between deviceconfig (which handles system-level and management plane settings) and network (which handles data plane interfaces like Ethernet1/1). Options C and D are syntactically incorrect for PAN-OS, while Option B does not follow the standard hierarchy for system configuration. For engineers troubleshooting connectivity, verifying this setting via the command show deviceconfig system is a standard step to ensure the management plane is communicating correctly with the network infrastructure.

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.

To meet the requirement of data isolation for different regional business units while minimizing administrative overhead, the best approach is to establish separate Cloud Identity Engine (CIE) tenants for each business unit. Each tenant would be integrated with the relevant identity sources (such as on-premises AD, Azure AD, and Okta) for that specific region. This ensures that the identity data for each region is kept isolated and only relevant user and group data is distributed to the respective regional firewalls.

By maintaining a strict one-to-one mapping between CIE tenants and business units, the organization ensures that each region’s firewall only receives the user and group data relevant to that region, thus meeting data sovereignty requirements and minimizing administrative complexity.

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.

To ensure high availability (HA) across multiple availability zones (AZs) in a cloud service provider (CSP) environment, using a load balancer with health probes is a recommended method. This setup ensures that traffic can be directed to the healthy NGFW instances across multiple availability zones. If one NGFW instance or availability zone goes down, the load balancer can redirect traffic to the available instance(s) in other zones, providing redundancy and maintaining service availability.

When generating custom reports on a Palo Alto Networks firewall, the administrator must first select the underlying database that the report will query. The firewall maintains two primary types of databases for reporting:Summary DatabasesandDetailed Logs. The Summary Databases aggregate data every 15 minutes for faster report generation, whereas Detailed Logs provide a granular look at every single event.

The valid databases available for custom reports include:

Summary Databases:Traffic, Threat, URL Filtering, Application Statistics, and Tunnel Inspection.

Detailed Logs:Traffic, Threat, URL Filtering, WildFire Submissions, Data Filtering, HIP Match, GlobalProtect, IP-Tag, User-ID, Decryption, Tunnel, Authentication, and SCTP.

OptionAis the correct answer because all four components (Threat, URL Filtering, WildFire Submissions, and GlobalProtect) are distinct, valid database types that can be selected from the "Database" dropdown menu in the Custom Report configuration (found underMonitor > Manage Custom Reports > Add).

Option B is also composed of valid databases; however, in the context of Palo Alto Networks certification objectives, Option A is typically the highlighted set for demonstrating visibility into security-related network events. Option C is incorrect because "Endpoint Security" is not a valid database name in the firewall’s reporting engine (the firewall uses "HIP Match" for host information). Option D is incorrect because the "Config" and "System" logs are generally viewed through the standard Log Viewer and are not available as source databases for the Custom Report builder, nor is there a "Session Flow" database in this context.