Using Palo Alto firewall as a proxy (anonymous browsing + URL filtering)

[Gregoryp]

Hi all,

We currently have a setup using a Forcepoint Content Gateway for proxy server with an external facing Palo Alto 850. The main we reason with use the Forcepoint appliance is for:

1. "Anonymous browsing" (no leakage of internal IP spaces)

2. DLP

3. URL Filtering

Ideally, I would like to remove this appliance to simplify our setup and I understand that our PAs can easily handle 2. and 3.  However, is there way to configure the PA for 1? Or do I still need some an inline proxy for this?

Thanks for your time and advice!

Gregory

[reaper · Accepted solution]

could you elaborate on what you're looking for with 'leakage of internal IP space' ?

as soon as you apply NAT on the Palo Alto, the internal IP is replaced by the public IP, x-forward-for headers are only added by proxies, so removing the proxy will also take care of that issue

lastly, if there is apotential for private IPs to somehow show up in http payload, you could create a custom threat to block packets/sessions containing private IP addresses

[Gregoryp]

Many thanks for your reply, Tom.

Your question prompted me into looking at our NAT settings and it looks like we are all set. Removing the proxy would only mean that whoever can administer the PA, can see what our users our browsing but this is not of concern for us.