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

Monitoring with Pan(w)achrome

Some monitoring tools come in very simple packaging, such as the Chrome browser extension Pan(w)achrome (also known as Panachrome). You can install the extension right from the Chrome web store:

  1. Open https://chrome.google.com/webstore/category/extensions in the Chrome browser.
  2. Search for pan(w)achrome.
  3. Click on Add to Chrome, as shown in the following screenshot:

    Figure 13.7 – Adding the Pan(w)achrome extension to Chrome

  4. Once the extension is installed, the icon will appear in your extension quick launch.
  5. Click on the icon to go to the landing page, where you can add new firewalls, as shown in the following screenshot:

    Figure 13.8 – Pan(w)achrome managed devices

  6. Click on the Add button and add the firewall by its URL.
  7. Select whether you want to authenticate using an API key or username and password.

    The API key can be easily extracted from each firewall using the following command:

    curl -k -X GET &apos...