GlobalProtect, Working from Home, Prisma Access and Covid-19

[jdelio]

To all, 

Just wanted to post a message about the Hot Topic right now, which is Covid-19. 

With all of this going around, everybody's health and safely is the utmost concern. Keeping your hands clean, washing your hands (A LOT), using hand sanitizers, and stop touching your face (I see you doing it now).

One of the things that is happening all over the place is telecommuting. Just like being safe in the real world, a VPN is a necessity when doing your work online. Palo Alto Networks has a couple of products that can help keep you secure online, which are GlobalProtect and Prisma Access.

GlobalProtect is the built-in VPN solution for our Strata (firewall) suite.

Prisma Access is our globally distributed cloud service that can automatically scale when your need increases. 

One of the advantages of using Prisma Access is that you do not need to deploy any new hardware to expand your capacity.

For GlobalProtect, our sales staff is available is to help your need for more hardware capacity.

For Prisma Access, we are offering free accelerated deployment and on-boarding of remote users.

Also, for any existing Prisma Access customers, we will be giving additional capacity to address increased usage at no additional cost for 90 days.

This is meant as a reminder for everyone that we have products to keep you secure.

Please send an email if you have any questions about increasing capacity to the following address:

rapid-response@paloaltonetworks.com

More Information:

Palo Alto Networks CEO, Nikesh Arora has put out a blog about this subject here:

Securely Connect and Scale Remote Workforces

For a list of Configuration and Troubleshooting articles, please see the GlobalProtect Resource List here:

GlobalProtect Resource List on Configuring and Troubleshooting

For any questions about licensing, please review GlobalProtect License requirements here:

GlobalProtect Licensing

Please check my Blog about this with more information, links and even videos here:

GlobalProtect and Prisma Access during COVID-19

[jdelio · Accepted solution]

Dear @Sokchen,

One of the best parts about GlobalProtect is that the core license to run the product is FREE. The only time you need the license is when:

• Using HIP
• Using iOS or Android mobile application

Otherwise you will only be limited to the hardware limitations of your device.

Which are listed in the spec sheets.. 

https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/network-security/pa-series

[Sokchen]

Dear Jdelio,

Do you have any discount for Global Protect?

Thanks

Best regard,

Sokchen

[jdelio · Accepted solution]

Dear @Sokchen,

One of the best parts about GlobalProtect is that the core license to run the product is FREE. The only time you need the license is when:

• Using HIP
• Using iOS or Android mobile application

Otherwise you will only be limited to the hardware limitations of your device.

Which are listed in the spec sheets.. 

https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/network-security/pa-series

[gesqueda]

Is there a way to get throughput statistic of GP Usage. 

Since we are quickly adding more remote users through global protect we need a way to monitor throughput and performance on the firewall. 

So far all I have been able to find is ways to track the AP but it is not representative of throughput 

[jdelio]

@gesqueda 

Are you wanting performance numbers? or are you just wanting to show the number of users?

Inside of this KB about troubleshooting GlobalProtect, it shows many things including the commands below to show the usage:

https://knowledgebase.paloaltonetworks.com/KCSArticleDetail?id=kA10g000000ClkBCAS

Command	Description
current-satellite	Show current GlobalProtect gateway satellites
current-user	Show current GlobalProtect gateway users
flow	Show dataplane GlobalProtect gateway tunnel information
flow-site-to-site	Show dataplane GlobalProtect site-to-site gateway tunnel information
gateway	Show list of GlobalProtect gateway configuration
previous-satellite	Show previous GlobalProtect gateway satellites
previous-user	Show previous user session for GlobalProtect gateway users
statistics	Show statistics of current GlobalProtect gateway users

I hope this helps.

[dannon]

Joe,

I'd like to request that this information also be viewable in the GUI as well, maybe under "monitor"?

Always nice to be able to get the info in both places.

Maybe add this as a feature-request?

[googol]

Its a work in progress, but they started having this data in PAN OS 9.1

https://docs.paloaltonetworks.com/pan-os/9-1/pan-os-new-features/globalprotect-features/enhanced-log...

[jdelio]

@googol , thanks for posting that. 

@dannon , I am sorry I didn't give all that info. 

And just like you wanted, this is available under the monitor > Logs > GlobalProtect. and under the ACC > GlobalProtect Activity. Under PAN-OS 9.1

[dannon]

Dang!

We are only on 8.13 because of bugs in 9.0 / 9.1 we experienced and had to roll back.

Glad it will be there when we finally move to the newer code.

[mike.pochan]

All the Prisma Access North American gateways show as healthy on the status dashboard but from our perspective it is virtually unusable (especially US-WEST). Is there any way for us to determine what gateway's are under the most load? Right now we're essentially playing hot potato and telling users to switch to other ones as performance degrades