topic Re: NGFW admin account is locked. What should I do? in Next-Generation Firewall Discussions

NGFW admin account is locked. What should I do?

SangHoonLee — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 01:23:20 GMT

Hello all,

I received a report that I couldn't log in to my GP account. Upon checking my firewall, I discovered that the admin account was also locked, blocking GUI/CLI access.

Q1. Is there a connection between the GP account and the admin account being locked?

Q2. I reverted to the previous settings, but the issue persisted. Is a factory reset the only solution?

I need to figure out why my account is locked, but I'm in a difficult situation because doing a factory reset will erase all my logs.

Thank you,

Re: NGFW admin account is locked. What should I do?

S.Cantwell — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 19:57:25 GMT

f you have no administrative access at all and no other reachable management method (Panorama, alternate admin account, etc.):

You cannot unlock the admin from running config.
The typical recovery is to boot the firewall into Maintenance Mode and either:
- Restore a saved configuration with a known admin, or
- Default the device and re-apply the config.
  This is a documented recovery method for when admin access is completely lost.

Re: NGFW admin account is locked. What should I do?

reaper — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 10:50:20 GMT

Q1 depends how your system is set up: do you have a password profile that locks your account if you tried the wrong password too many times and are you exposing something to the internet (portal, GUI) where someone could try to brute force your admin account, thereby locking it ?

if you totally lost your password and are unable to get back in, you can boot into maintenance mode and load a previously saved config. If you haven't created any backups, you'll need to factory reset and start over unfortunately

Q2 how did you revert? did another admin account work?