Protecting againstmaliciousandmisconfigured domainsrequires two critical services:

Advanced Threat Prevention

Provides signature-based and advanced analysis to identify threats, including DNS-based attacks.

“Advanced Threat Prevention enables the NGFW to detect and prevent exploits and malware-based communications, including those leveraging DNS.”

(Source: Advanced Threat Prevention)

Advanced DNS Security

Specifically designed to detect and sinkhole malicious and misconfigured DNS queries.

“DNS Security uses real-time intelligence to block DNS-based threats, protect against data exfiltration, and automatically sinkhole suspicious domain lookups.”

(Source: DNS Security)

Bycombiningthese services in security policies, NGFWs ensure robust protection against domain-based threats and misconfigurations.

Cloud NGFW for AWS can be configured usingPanoramafor centralized management, as well as theAWS management consolefor native integration and configuration.

“You can configure Cloud NGFW for AWS using Panorama for centralized security management, or directly through the AWS management console to deploy and manage security services for your AWS resources.”

(Source: Cloud NGFW for AWS Guide)

When implementing SSL Forward Proxy decryption for outbound traffic, two key challenges that must be evaluated are:

Incomplete certificate chains: This occurs when the firewall cannot validate the entire certificate chain for a site, which may cause decryption failures.

Certificate pinning: Applications like banking apps may use certificate pinning to prevent MITM (man-in-the-middle) attacks, and these applications will break if SSL Forward Proxy is used.

“When decrypting outbound SSL traffic, you must consider incomplete certificate chains, which can cause decryption to fail if the firewall cannot validate the entire chain. Also, be aware of certificate pinning in applications that prevents decryption by rejecting forged certificates.”

(Source: Palo Alto Networks Decryption Concepts)

When migrating from aperpetual VM-Series firewall license to a flexible VM licensing model, two critical steps are needed:

Allocate same number of vCPUs– This ensures that the VM-Series capacity remains consistent and avoids resource bottlenecks.

“When migrating perpetual VM-Series licenses to flexible VM licensing, allocate the same vCPU and memory resources to ensure equivalent performance.”

(Source: VM-Series Flexible Licensing Migration)

Limit to same security services– Flexible licensing requires maintaining the same security services to preserve licensing compliance.

“Ensure that you allow only the same security services on the flexible VM instance as were licensed on the perpetual VM.”

(Source: Flexible Licensing and Service Subscriptions)

To allow third-party contractors controlled access, security policies must combineuser identificationandtime-based access controls:

User-ID

“User-ID enables security policies to be based on user identity rather than IP addresses, ensuring precise policy enforcement for specific users such as contractors.”

(Source: User-ID Overview)

Schedule

“Schedules allow policies to be active only during specific times, providing time-based access control (e.g., after business hours).”

(Source: Security Policy Schedules)

Together, they ensure that only authorized users (contractors) have access, and only when explicitly allowed.

Applications and threats

Panorama can push application and threat signature updates to managed firewalls, ensuring consistent application and threat visibility.

“Panorama uses dynamic updates to distribute the latest application and threat signature packs to all managed firewalls.”

(Source: Manage Content Updates in Panorama)

WildFire

Panorama also distributes WildFire signature updates to firewalls for real-time malware detection.

“WildFire updates provide the latest malware signatures to enhance detection and prevention, and can be deployed to all managed firewalls via Panorama.”

(Source: WildFire and Dynamic Updates)