NGFW-Engineer Practice Exam Questions and Answers

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.

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.

Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFWs) use SSL/TLS profiles to secure connections for services such as GlobalProtect Gateways and GlobalProtect Portals. These profiles are used to manage the SSL/TLS encryption and decryption for secure communication between the firewall and clients (such as VPN clients for GlobalProtect). This helps ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the data during transmission.

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 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.

When configuring a new security zone on a Palo Alto Networks firewall, the two valid zone types are:

Tunnel: A Tunnel zone is used for traffic that is associated with a VPN tunnel, such as IPSec tunnels. Traffic passing through a tunnel interface is classified into this zone.

Virtual Wire: A Virtual Wire zone is used when a firewall operates in transparent mode (also known as Layer 2 mode). In this configuration, the firewall can inspect traffic without modifying the IP address structure of the network.

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.