Book Image

Mastering Palo Alto Networks

By : Tom Piens aka Piens aka 'reaper'
Book Image

Mastering Palo Alto Networks

By: Tom Piens aka Piens aka 'reaper'

Overview of this book

To safeguard against security threats, it is crucial to ensure that your organization is effectively secured across networks, mobile devices, and the cloud. Palo Alto Networks’ integrated platform makes it easy to manage network and cloud security along with endpoint protection and a wide range of security services. With this book, you'll understand Palo Alto Networks and learn how to implement essential techniques, right from deploying firewalls through to advanced troubleshooting. The book starts by showing you how to set up and configure the Palo Alto Networks firewall, helping you to understand the technology and appreciate the simple, yet powerful, PAN-OS platform. Once you've explored the web interface and command-line structure, you'll be able to predict expected behavior and troubleshoot anomalies with confidence. You'll learn why and how to create strong security policies and discover how the firewall protects against encrypted threats. In addition to this, you'll get to grips with identifying users and controlling access to your network with user IDs and even prioritize traffic using quality of service (QoS). The book will show you how to enable special modes on the firewall for shared environments and extend security capabilities to smaller locations. By the end of this network security book, you'll be well-versed with advanced troubleshooting techniques and best practices recommended by an experienced security engineer and Palo Alto Networks expert.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
1
Section 1: First Steps and Basic Configuration
4
Section 2: Advanced Configuration and Putting the Features to Work
10
Section 3: Maintenance and Troubleshooting

Filtering logs

When you access any of the logs in Monitor | Logs, the sheer volume of information can be overwhelming and difficult to navigate at first. Once you learn how to master log filters, you'll be able to get to the information you need quickly. Log filters are built by combining several statements via logical operators. Most fields in the log view are clickable and will automatically create a filter for you. You can then edit the filter and add more conditions to return the information you need.

For example, if you want to look at a 5 minute timeframe, you can click on any date in the log view twice and then edit both entries to look something like this:

( receive_time geq '2020/04/05 14:45:00' ) and ( receive_time leq '2020/04/05 14:50:00' )

receive_time is the parameter for when a log was received

geq stands for Greater or Equal, while c means Less than or Equal. So, this filter restricts the log view to anything received after 2020...