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)

Prisma Access for secure remote access

“Prisma Access extends consistent security and optimized connectivity to branch locations, enabling secure access for mobile and branch users.”

(Source: Prisma Access Overview)

Centralized management for consistent policy enforcement

“Centralized management using Strata Cloud Manager or Panorama ensures security policies and updates are uniformly applied across distributed locations, preventing policy drift and security gaps.”

(Source: Strata Cloud Manager Best Practices)

These two practices are foundational for modern, distributed enterprise networks to maintain security posture and performance.

Protecting against malicious and misconfigured domains requires 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)

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

To allow third-party contractors controlled access, security policies must combine user identification and time-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.

Blocking non-compliant SSH versions and failing certificate validations are fundamental security measures:

Block sessions when certificate validation fails

“The SSH Proxy profile should block sessions that fail certificate validation to ensure that only trusted hosts are allowed.”

(Source: SSH Proxy Decryption Best Practices)

Block connections using non-compliant SSH versions

Older SSH versions may have vulnerabilities or lack modern encryption algorithms.

“To enforce stronger security, block SSH sessions that use older or deprecated versions of the SSH protocol that do not comply with your security posture.”

(Source: SSH Decryption and Best Practices)

Together, these measures minimize the risk of MITM attacks and secure SSH traffic.

When migrating from a perpetual 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)