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

Documenting the key aspects

Before you can start the upgrade procedure, you should first take some time to document the key aspects of the network surrounding the firewall or Panorama. This information will need to go into a test plan that you can execute immediately after you have performed the upgrade as you will need to quickly ascertain whether the device is up and running and passing traffic as expected. It is important to identify key production applications and if possible, identify personnel who can assist in testing application functionality post-upgrade.

It may be prudent to make an upgrade checklist so that you don't forget any important caveats, as well as a contingency plan in case something goes wrong, which includes at which point fallback is required. Set this point so that you have plenty of time to troubleshoot for minor oversights, but not so long that it impacts the business. Arrange for an appropriately sized maintenance window beforehand. Here's...