PSE-SoftwareFirewall Palo Alto Networks Systems Engineer (PSE): Software Firewall Professional Questions and Answers

CN-Series devices obtain a VM-Series authorization key from Panorama. Panorama is the centralized management platform for Palo Alto Networks firewalls, including CN-Series and VM-Series. It provides the necessary authorization keys and other configurations to ensure proper deployment and operation of the firewalls.

References:

Palo Alto Networks Panorama Documentation: Panorama Overview

Palo Alto Networks CN-Series Setup Guide: CN-Series Setup

CN-Series for EKS Security:

The CN-Series firewalls are specifically designed to secure Kubernetes environments, such as Amazon EKS. Deploying them in a high availability (HA) pair ensures robust, fault-tolerant security for containerized workloads, providing continuous protection and high availability.

Full set of APIs enabling programmatic control of policy and configuration:

Palo Alto Networks provides a comprehensive set of APIs that allow for the automation and orchestration of security policies and configurations in an SDN environment.

VM-Series qcow2 image:

The qcow2 image format is commonly used in OpenStack environments. The VM-Series firewalls are provided in the qcow2 format for compatibility with OpenStack.

The VM-Series plugin supports integration with multiple public cloud platforms, including:

Amazon Web Services (AWS):The VM-Series firewalls can be deployed in AWS to provide comprehensive security for cloud applications and data, leveraging AWS's native services and integration capabilities.

Azure:The VM-Series firewalls also integrate with Microsoft Azure, offering advanced security features and policies for applications and data hosted in Azure's cloud environment.

References:

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series on AWS: VM-Series on AWS

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series on Azure: VM-Series on Azure

Consistent Security Across the Environment:

CN-Series firewalls are designed to provide security for containerized environments by protecting traffic between pods and other workload types. This ensures that security policies are consistently enforced across all elements of the environment, maintaining a unified security posture.

Visibility into application-level cluster traffic:

VM-Series firewalls and hardware firewalls that are external to the Kubernetes cluster lack the necessary visibility into the traffic and communications occurring at the application level within the cluster. This limitation impedes their ability to effectively protect containerized workloads.

VM-Series firewalls provide advanced application-level security for web-server instances on AWS. These virtual firewalls leverage Palo Alto Networks’ next-generation firewall capabilities to offer features like application identification, threat prevention, and URL filtering, ensuring comprehensive security for web applications hosted on AWS.

References:

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series on AWS: VM-Series on AWS

AWS Security Best Practices:AWS Security Best Practices

To integrate a Palo Alto Networks VM-Series firewall with Azure Orchestration, an API Key is required. The API Key is used to authenticate and authorize the firewall to interact with Azure services, enabling automated management and orchestration of security policies and configurations.

References:

Palo Alto Networks Integration with Azure: Azure Integration

Azure API Management:Azure API Key

Zero Trust implementation revolves around the principle that no entity, inside or outside the network, should be trusted by default. The primary methods that benefit an organization are:

Security automation is seamlessly integrated: Zero Trust requires continuous monitoring and verification of every device and user attempting to access resources. Automation helps in efficiently managing these processes, ensuring that security policies are consistently enforced without human error. Automated tools can quickly detect anomalies, respond to threats, and update access controls dynamically.

Address Group:

Address groups in Palo Alto Networks firewalls allow for the grouping of multiple addresses or address objects. This capability enables the sharing of cloud-learned tags with on-premises firewalls, facilitating the consistent application of security policies across hybrid cloud environments.

For deploying VM-Series firewalls in high availability (HA), it is crucial to ensure that both firewalls in the HA pair have identical licenses and subscriptions to ensure feature parity and uninterrupted service during failover. Additionally, both firewalls must be deployed on the same type of hypervisor to ensure compatibility and proper synchronization of state and configurations between the active and passive units.

References:

Palo Alto Networks High Availability Guide: HA Requirements

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Deployment Guide: High Availability

Dynamic Address Groups in PAN-OS allow for automated updates to address objects when VM-Series firewalls are set up as part of an NSX deployment. These address groups can dynamically include members based on criteria such as tags, enabling automated and flexible security policies that adjust to changes in the virtual environment.

References:

Palo Alto Networks Dynamic Address Groups: Dynamic Address Groups

NSX and VM-Series Integration: NSX Integration Guide

CN-Series for DevOps deployments:

The CN-Series firewall is specifically designed to secure containerized environments and is ideal for protecting extensive DevOps deployments. It integrates seamlessly with Kubernetes and other container orchestration platforms, providing the necessary security controls for DevOps processes.

TLS decryption is the feature that inspects encrypted outbound traffic. By decrypting TLS/SSL traffic, the firewall can inspect the content for threats and enforce security policies. This is crucial for preventing malware and other threats that might hide within encrypted traffic.

References:

Palo Alto Networks TLS Decryption Documentation: TLS Decryption

Palo Alto Networks Security Subscriptions: TLS Decryption

Creating a New Virtual Switch:

By creating a new virtual switch, you can segment the network within the ESXi environment. The VM-Series firewall can then be used to provide security controls between these virtual switches using virtual wire mode.