Starting with Palo Alto Networks - What I wish I had known...

[carnould]

Beginnings are not always perfect.  Whether you started your Palo Alto Networks journey years ago or just recently, tell us what you learned early on that you wish you had known before. 

If there was one thing, or maybe more, Live Community users would love to hear about it.  Share your stories, your tips to help other users along the way.

Read a tip you like, make sure to like it or let them know by commenting!  

The most popular and helpful stories will get you a cool new Live Community t-shirt!

Looking forward to reading all the great stories!

@carnould

[carnould]

And the WINNERS SO FAR ARE:

Published in LiveWeek 12 Friday April 7th 2017.

Your time to share - "What I wish I had known"

Community is all about sharing ideas and best practices.  Whether you started your Palo Alto Networks journey years ago or just last month, your experience can really help others.  Share your story with other Live users. 

Thanks to @santonic, @DPoppleton, @BPry and @jjb3k for all the valuable insight - each user will receive the hot off the press Live Community t-shirt!

Keep sharing - more t-shirts to grab!

[DPoppleton]

Do you need any info from me for the shirt?

[nikoo]

Hi,

Beginning are always clumsy, but one of the first things I was impressed - community and knowledge base articles. I cannot stress enough how many times articles around here have helped me to get around some issues or simply get to know some feature.

Anyway, when I got into PA firewalling, it all looked nice and shiny and overall easy to deal with, so it felt good, but some things I've learned over time:

• Subscribe for Security Advisories, Software Update & Content Update e-mails - that way you will always know when new feature release comes and will not miss more severe notifications about vulnerabilities - in such a cases every minute counts.
• Use packet capture - that has proven my point countless times - if, for any reason, you do not believe logs - getting the capture in such a cases is easy & fast way to see what really happens from a different directions.
• Learn some basic CLI - they WILL become handy one day and when that happens - it may be already stressful enough as you will not go there unless there is a really good reason. Know how to deal with HA from CLI, log structure, running debug packet diag, flow basic (https://live.paloaltonetworks.com/t5/Featured-Articles/Getting-Started-Flow-Basic/ta-p/72556), etc.
• Superb feature I learned about after a while - https://live.paloaltonetworks.com/t5/Management-Articles/How-to-Test-Which-Security-Policy-Applies-t.... Testing policy match from the CLI - that really helps to understand if the traffic will pass without bothering the end-user. P.S. TCP - IP protocol 6, UDP - 17. Good to know when testing. :)
• Features that are synchronized in HA - https://live.paloaltonetworks.com/t5/Tech-Note-Articles/High-Availability-Synchronization/ta-p/61190. Had to deal with the question - why the heck secondary device is not getting the updates from the Internet although the network setup should allow it, but, whooaaah, service routes had to be set for both devices of the HA pair saperately as they are not synced in HA.
• Although it was not possible in early PA releases - it is possible to log the default security rule traffic - https://live.paloaltonetworks.com/t5/Configuration-Articles/How-to-See-Traffic-from-Default-Security.... I've seen some creating custom "catch-all" rule for the traffic just for the logging - not required anymore. I was told it is not possible and it turned to out to be legacy and wrong.

..and there are definitely other things, but as you see all of these are well described in Live community - you still have to find them though. :)

[santonic]

Thanx @carnould for the t-shirt! it arrived quickly! :)

[oscaringosv]

"What I wish I had known" that a complex administration appliance (Panorama) will help me in one or two clicks to apply configuration changes to almost 100 firewalls in a few seconds and not go firewall by firewall that used to take me a few hours, now it makes our company happier and more secure, quick example would be deploying an emergency content updated. WAY FASTER, thanks to Palo Alto Panorama :). 

P.S: Almost all of my questions or steps by steps procedures (Like 80% of the time) are here in the community. 

[carnould]

Hi @DPoppleton, Could you check your inbox or spam folder? I sent you an email on 4/7.  If you can't find it, send me an email at carnould@paloaltonetworks.com.  Thanks! Christine

[Lora]

The difference between FUEL Palo Alto User Group, and LIVEcommunity?  

[BillyeMoore]

I wish I had time to utilize all the CBT training resources available and build a cheap lab.

cbt nuggets  - good source of basic training

Udemy has some great training as well and it is cheap and easy to follow. 

Access to a long term demo vmware version of PANOS for training would be helpful, I know we can get these through our sales channel but would love to get a good usable free VM to use with all options and limited connectivity. 

Also I came from a networking background but hear stories of information security folks who do not and they have problems learning the networking basics. The ACE is decent but needs more teeth and something like network + or CCNA type certs should be required.. 

[DarinSutton]

wow - many things...I  wish I knew then

1 - Sys logs (not packet cap nor widgets) for VPN troubleshooting

2 - when reading Traffic logs - open detailed view then bottom has firewall policy - missed that first 2-3 months

3 - reports are useful - there are many canned reports that i could schedule...

---side note - cant always make the custom report look like the canned report

4 - add widgets for anything you want to have a quick peak

5 - ACC - build custom tabs to monitor tricky scenarios over many days/weeks

6 - VPN to Cisco not as easy as other vendors - fortunatley there is a document for that

7 - newapps - started when we had 1000 or so - they keep coming and if I'm not on top of them and reading the release notes I can easily/accidentally block something ( default action) that we needed

8 - and a biggie - read the notes when a commit fails/or succeeds and there is a bunch words after.... commit succeeded but.......

9 - one i miss - no POLICY hit count - had in other vendors

10 - not an easy way to see ip to user-ID in the GUI

just a few off the top of my head - still enjoy working with these boxes tho

of 2 more

test policyies and other items  from cli - nice

sign up for the security notices from PAn, Fuel, Unit42

[gefuchs]

Wish I had known you could open a medium priorty support case and not get a response for over a week.