PCNSE PCNSE Firewall Technology and Architecture 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which Palo Alto Networks firewall component is responsible for identifying applications regardless of port or protocol?
- App-ID (Correct answer)
- User-ID
- Content-ID
- Device-ID
Correct answer: App-ID
App-ID uses multiple classification mechanisms including application signatures, protocol decoding, and behavioral analysis to identify applications independent of port or protocol.
Question 2: In a Palo Alto Networks firewall, what is the purpose of the Security Policy Optimizer?
- To migrate legacy rules to App-ID based rules (Correct answer)
- To automatically block all unknown applications
- To optimize NAT policy performance
- To tune IPS signatures
Correct answer: To migrate legacy rules to App-ID based rules
Security Policy Optimizer identifies port-based rules and helps migrate them to application-based rules to improve security posture.
Question 3: What happens to traffic matching a Security policy rule with action 'drop' versus 'deny' on a Palo Alto Networks firewall?
- Drop silently discards without TCP RST; deny sends a TCP RST to the client (Correct answer)
- Drop sends TCP RST; deny silently discards
- Both drop and deny silently discard traffic
- Both drop and deny send TCP RST to the client
Correct answer: Drop silently discards without TCP RST; deny sends a TCP RST to the client
The 'drop' action silently discards packets while 'deny' sends a TCP RST or ICMP unreachable to notify the sender.
Question 4: Which zone type on a Palo Alto Networks firewall is used to inspect traffic that originates and terminates on the firewall itself?
- Layer 3 zone
- Tap zone
- Loopback zone (Correct answer)
- Tunnel zone
Correct answer: Loopback zone
The loopback zone handles traffic that originates or terminates on the firewall itself, such as management services hosted on the device.
Question 5: What is the function of the Palo Alto Networks 'Commit' operation in relation to the candidate configuration?
- It saves changes to the running configuration immediately
- It validates and activates the candidate configuration replacing the running configuration (Correct answer)
- It backs up the running configuration to the cloud
- It exports the configuration to Panorama
Correct answer: It validates and activates the candidate configuration replacing the running configuration
A commit validates the candidate configuration for errors and then activates it, making it the new running configuration.
Question 6: In Palo Alto Networks firewall architecture, which plane handles the actual packet forwarding and security policy enforcement?
- Management plane
- Control plane
- Data plane (Correct answer)
- Log plane
Correct answer: Data plane
The data plane (also called the forwarding plane) performs packet processing, App-ID, Content-ID, and policy enforcement at line rate.
Question 7: Which feature in Palo Alto Networks firewalls allows you to define which applications are permitted within a parent application tunnel like SSL?
- Application Override
- Application Filter
- Application Group
- SSL Decryption with App-ID (Correct answer)
Correct answer: SSL Decryption with App-ID
SSL Decryption combined with App-ID allows the firewall to decrypt SSL traffic and then apply App-ID to identify and control applications running inside the SSL tunnel.
PCNSE PCNSE Firewall Technology and Architecture 2
Which Palo Alto Networks firewall component is responsible for identifying applications regardless of port or protocol?