NGFW-Engineer Sample Questions Answers

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.

In the context of GlobalProtect with certificate-based authentication, certificate profiles are used to ensure proper validation of the certificates. They perform the following functions:

Define trust anchors, which are the root and intermediate Certificate Authorities (CAs) that the firewall trusts to authenticate certificates.

Specify revocation checks, such as CRL (Certificate Revocation List) and OCSP (Online Certificate Status Protocol), to ensure that the certificates being used have not been revoked.

Map certificate attributes, such as the Common Name (CN), which helps in authenticating users and devices based on their certificates.

When configuring a new firewall virtual system (VSYS) on a Palo Alto Networks firewall, one of the resources that can be assigned is the sessions limit. This setting allows the administrator to control the number of active sessions that can be handled by the VSYS, ensuring that each virtual system has an appropriate allocation of resources based on its needs.

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.

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 Palo Alto Networks SSL Forward Proxy deployment, theDecryption Profileis the primary policy component used to control how the firewall handles various technical aspects of the decryption process. While the SSL Forward Proxy itself uses a Forward Trust Certificate to resign certificates for the client, the firewall must first perform its own due diligence on the server-side certificate received from the external web server.

The Decryption Profile allows the administrator to define granular security checks for the session. Specifically, within theSSL Decryption Settingstab of the profile, there are options for "Certificate Revocation Checking." Here, the engineer can enable and define how the firewall performsOnline Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP)andCertificate Revocation List (CRL)checks. These mechanisms are used to verify that the external server's certificate has not been revoked by its issuing CA before the firewall proceeds with the decryption and re-signing process.

Failure to configure these settings within the Decryption Profile would mean the firewall might trust and proxy a connection to an external site that has a technically valid but revoked certificate, creating a significant security hole. Unlike an SSL/TLS Service Profile (which is used for trafficterminatingat the firewall) or the Forward Trust Certificate (used for theclient-sidetrust), the Decryption Profile specifically dictates thevalidation behaviorfor outgoing proxied sessions.

To implement post-quantum cryptography (PQC) in VPNs between Palo Alto Networks NGFWs, you would enable the PQ KEM (Post-Quantum Key Encapsulation Mechanism) in the IKE gateway configuration. This enables the firewall to use quantum-resistant encryption for key exchange, which is an essential part of securing communications against the potential future threats posed by quantum computing.

By selecting IKE v2 Preferred and enabling the PQ KEM option under Advanced Options, you can add specific Rounds for the post-quantum cryptography process, which will help in implementing quantum-resistant key exchange methods.

This option similarly selects IKE v2 and enables PQ KEM while also creating a dedicated IKE Crypto Profile with the necessary Rounds configured for post-quantum cryptography.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewall Engineer documents objectives:

According to Palo Alto Networks technical documentation,GlobalProtectis considered the most accurate and preferred method for obtaining user-to-IP address mappings. This is because GlobalProtect requires an explicit authentication event directly with the firewall (or portal/gateway) to establish a connection. Whether the user is internal or external, the GlobalProtect app provides the firewall with consistent, high-fidelity identity data the moment the network interface is initialized.

While the Authentication Portal (formerly Captive Portal) also uses direct authentication, it is often triggered by specific web traffic (HTTP/HTTPS) and is generally used as a fallback for users who cannot be identified through other means. GlobalProtect, conversely, is described as the "best solution" for sensitive environments because it ensures that the mapping is established at the session level and remains persistent as long as the agent is connected. It eliminates the latency and "best-guess" nature of passive methods like Server Monitoring (probing Active Directory logs) or XFF headers, which can be spoofed or stripped by proxies. Because the firewall itself validates the credentials and maintains the tunnel or connection state, the resulting mapping is 100% verified and tied to the specific device's logical interface.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This approach meets all the requirements for securing east-west traffic within each Kubernetes cluster, maintaining consistent security policies across on-premises and cloud environments, and allowing for dynamic scaling of the CN-Series NGFWs as containerized workloads spin up or down. By using Kubernetes-native deployment tools (such as Helm), the CN-Series NGFWs can be deployed and scaled dynamically within each cluster. Local insertion into the service mesh or CNI ensures that the NGFW can inspect traffic at the appropriate points within the cluster.

Centralized management via Panorama ensures that security policies are uniform across both on-premises and cloud environments, providing visibility and control across all clusters.

Server monitoring is the most reliable method for mapping users to IP addresses in PAN-OS. This method allows the firewall to monitor specific servers, such as Microsoft Active Directory (AD) or LDAP servers, to dynamically retrieve and update user-to-IP mappings. It provides a more accurate and up-to-date mapping of users to their associated IP addresses, as it directly queries user databases in real time.

To configure the management interface as a DHCP client on a Palo Alto Networks NGFW, the correct CLI command is set deviceconfig management type dhcp-client.

This command configures the management interface to obtain an IP address dynamically using DHCP.