Paloalto Networks Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewall Engineer NGFW-Engineer Exam Dumps: Updated Questions & Answers (February 2026)

The phases of the Palo Alto Networks AI Runtime Security: Network Intercept solution are designed to help identify and protect against potential threats in real time by using AI to detect and prevent malicious activities within the network.

Discovery: Identifying applications, services, and behaviors within the network to understand baseline activity.

Deployment: Implementing the solution into the network and integrating with existing security measures.

Detection: Monitoring traffic and activities to identify abnormal or malicious behavior.

Prevention: Taking action to stop threats once detected, such as blocking malicious traffic or stopping exploit attempts.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewall Engineer documents objectives:

According to Palo Alto Networks technical documentation,GlobalProtectis considered the most accurate and preferred method for obtaining user-to-IP address mappings. This is because GlobalProtect requires an explicit authentication event directly with the firewall (or portal/gateway) to establish a connection. Whether the user is internal or external, the GlobalProtect app provides the firewall with consistent, high-fidelity identity data the moment the network interface is initialized.

While the Authentication Portal (formerly Captive Portal) also uses direct authentication, it is often triggered by specific web traffic (HTTP/HTTPS) and is generally used as a fallback for users who cannot be identified through other means. GlobalProtect, conversely, is described as the "best solution" for sensitive environments because it ensures that the mapping is established at the session level and remains persistent as long as the agent is connected. It eliminates the latency and "best-guess" nature of passive methods like Server Monitoring (probing Active Directory logs) or XFF headers, which can be spoofed or stripped by proxies. Because the firewall itself validates the credentials and maintains the tunnel or connection state, the resulting mapping is 100% verified and tied to the specific device's logical interface.

To create SD-WAN interfaces through an API, the correct approach is to use the REST API's "sdwanInterfaces" parameter on a firewall device. This parameter allows you to configure SD-WAN interfaces directly on the firewall devices via API, ensuring that the required interfaces are set up and managed for SD-WAN functionality.

To ensure continuous, secure connectivity and consistent policy enforcement with GlobalProtect in an enterprise environment that uses user- and machine-based certificate authentication, the approach should:

Distribute root and intermediate CAs via Panorama templates: This ensures that all firewalls managed by Panorama share the same trusted certificate authorities for consistency and security.

Use distinct certificate profiles for user vs. machine certificates: This enables separate handling of user and machine authentication, ensuring that both types of certificates are managed and validated appropriately.

Reference an internal OCSP responder: By integrating OCSP checks, the firewall can validate certificate revocation in real-time, meeting the security requirement while minimizing the overhead and latency associated with traditional CRLs (Certificate Revocation Lists).

Automate certificate deployment with Group Policy: This ensures that machine certificates are deployed in a consistent and scalable manner across the enterprise, reducing manual intervention and minimizing user disruption.

This approach supports the requirements for pre-logon, OCSP checks, and minimal user disruption, while maintaining a secure, automated, and consistent authentication process across all firewalls managed via Panorama.

To successfully implement an IPSec VPN on a Palo Alto Networks NGFW, the security architect must account for two distinct types of traffic:Control Plane(tunnel negotiation) andData Plane(traffic through the tunnel).

First, for the tunnel to establish, the firewall must permit negotiation traffic. While IKE (UDP 500/4500) is the protocol used, Palo Alto Networks uses theIPSec container applicationto represent the underlying encrypted tunnel traffic. This traffic is typically destined for the firewall's own "Local" zone (the management/loopback or physical interface IP). Therefore, a policy must exist to allow theipsec-esp-udpor the broaderIPSecapplication between the external-facing zone and theLocal zone.

Second, once the tunnel is active, the decrypted traffic emerges from theTunnel Interface. This interface must be assigned to a security zone (often a dedicated "VPN" zone or an existing internal zone). Because the NGFW is a stateful, zone-based firewall, theinterzone-defaultpolicy is "Deny" by default. Consequently, a pair of security policies is required to allow data to flow: one for traffic entering the tunnel (e.g., Trust to VPN) and one for traffic exiting the tunnel (e.g., VPN to Trust). Without these specific rules, the tunnel may show as "Up" (Phase 1 and 2 complete), but no production data will pass through it.

To implement post-quantum cryptography (PQC) in VPNs between Palo Alto Networks NGFWs, you would enable the PQ KEM (Post-Quantum Key Encapsulation Mechanism) in the IKE gateway configuration. This enables the firewall to use quantum-resistant encryption for key exchange, which is an essential part of securing communications against the potential future threats posed by quantum computing.

By selecting IKE v2 Preferred and enabling the PQ KEM option under Advanced Options, you can add specific Rounds for the post-quantum cryptography process, which will help in implementing quantum-resistant key exchange methods.

This option similarly selects IKE v2 and enables PQ KEM while also creating a dedicated IKE Crypto Profile with the necessary Rounds configured for post-quantum cryptography.

In the Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS architecture, anSSL/TLS Service Profileis used to specify the certificate and the allowed versions of SSL/TLS for services where the firewall acts as aserver(terminating the connection). This profile ensures that when an external entity connects to the firewall, the handshake adheres to the organization's security standards regarding protocol versions (e.g., TLS 1.2 or 1.3) and cipher suites.

GlobalProtect portal (Option A):When users connect to a GlobalProtect portal, they establish an HTTPS connection to the firewall. The firewall uses an SSL/TLS Service Profile to present the server certificate and define the encryption parameters for this management-plane or data-plane interaction.

Syslog server monitoring (Option D):When the firewall is configured to send logs to a Syslog server over a secure channel (encrypted Syslog), or when it performs monitoring checks, an SSL/TLS Service Profile is applied to define the security parameters for that outbound encrypted communication to the destination server.

It is critical to distinguish this from theForward-Trust certificate(Option C), which is used within aDecryption Profilefor SSL Forward Proxy. While both involve SSL/TLS, the SSL/TLS Service Profile is specifically for trafficterminating at or originating fromthe firewall’s own services, whereas the Forward-Trust certificate is used to intercept and re-sign transit traffic for internal clients.

For a mission-critical network, it is recommended to configure the content update threshold to 8 hours. This ensures that the network is protected with the latest threat intelligence, updates to signatures, and other critical content, minimizing the exposure to newly discovered vulnerabilities and threats.

Regular content updates are crucial in mission-critical environments to ensure the firewall is up-to-date with the latest protections. 8 hours is considered an optimal balance between timely updates and network performance.

When implementing a new self-signed root certificate authority (CA) for SSL decryption on a Palo Alto Networks firewall, the subordinate CA certificate (which is generated by the firewall) must be imported into the trust stores of all client devices. This ensures that client devices trust the firewall as a valid certificate authority, enabling the firewall to decrypt and re-encrypt SSL traffic.

Importing the subordinate CA certificate into the client devices' trust stores is necessary for those devices to trust the new self-signed root CA and properly handle SSL decryption traffic.

To ensure high availability (HA) across multiple availability zones (AZs) in a cloud service provider (CSP) environment, using a load balancer with health probes is a recommended method. This setup ensures that traffic can be directed to the healthy NGFW instances across multiple availability zones. If one NGFW instance or availability zone goes down, the load balancer can redirect traffic to the available instance(s) in other zones, providing redundancy and maintaining service availability.