PCNSA case studies

The Palo Alto Networks Certified Network Security Administrator (PCNSA) is an entry- to administrator-level credential for IT and security professionals who configure and operate Palo Alto Networks next-generation firewalls running PAN-OS. It is aimed at firewall administrators, network security engineers, and security operations staff who translate organizational security policy into firewall configuration rather than at architects or platform engineers. The blueprint is organized into five equally weighted topic areas: the Palo Alto Networks portfolio and architecture; managing and administering the next-generation firewall; controlling access to network resources; controlling access to applications; and controlling access to URLs. In practice that means you should be comfortable with device administration and management-plane tasks, security zone and interface design, security policy construction, application identification and application-based rules, and URL Filtering profiles, along with the supporting objects each of those depends on. The PCNSA case studies are 5 cases and about 2,518 words.