Next-Generation Firewall Engineer Advanced Practice Exam: Hard Questions 2025

A firewall pair in active/passive HA uses zone-based policies and App-ID. After adding a new internal subnet, users intermittently lose access to a SaaS application only after failover. Traffic logs show sessions matching an intrazone rule that should not apply, and the source zone sometimes appears as the wrong zone after failover. The interfaces are configured as Layer 3 with multiple subinterfaces and VLAN tags. Which action most directly addresses the root cause while preserving security policy intent?

You are migrating from a legacy firewall to a Palo Alto Networks NGFW. Requirements: (1) maintain least-privilege outbound access, (2) allow only sanctioned SaaS apps regardless of IP changes, (3) detect and block evasive tunnels and unknown apps, and (4) minimize operational overhead as the SaaS providers frequently change endpoints. Which policy design best meets the requirements?

A branch NGFW provides site-to-site IPsec VPN to a datacenter. The datacenter team reports intermittent one-way audio for VoIP calls when traffic hairpins through the tunnel. Packet captures show return traffic sometimes follows a different path and arrives on a different interface than the outbound flow. Which NGFW feature should you tune first to address this while maintaining security inspection, and why?

A firewall has two ISP links. The goal is to use ISP1 for all traffic to a partner network over IPsec, but fail over to ISP2 only if ISP1 is down. However, general internet traffic should still load-share across both ISPs. After implementing PBF, the partner traffic fails when ISP1 is up, but works when ISP1 is down. Route table and tunnel status look healthy. What is the most likely cause and correct fix?

A firewall uses BGP to two upstream routers. You must ensure that only a specific set of internal prefixes are advertised, and that a default route learned from either upstream is installed, but never redistributed back to the other upstream (to avoid becoming a transit). The configuration currently redistributes connected and static routes into BGP and uses BGP import/export policies. Which approach best enforces the requirement with the least operational risk?

You are troubleshooting an intermittent decryption failure. Users report that some HTTPS sites load without inspection even though the SSL Forward Proxy decryption policy should match. Decryption logs show 'no decryption' with a reason indicating certificate issues on certain destinations, and some sessions are excluded by policy unexpectedly. Which combination of checks is most likely to pinpoint the issue without broadly weakening decryption coverage?

Your organization manages 120 firewalls with Panorama. A new GlobalProtect configuration must be rolled out to only a subset of firewalls, but address objects and security rules should stay standardized across all devices. You also need local exceptions on a few firewalls for unique ISP next-hop monitoring. What is the best Panorama design to meet these requirements while minimizing configuration drift?

After pushing a change from Panorama, several firewalls show 'Commit failed' due to object dependency errors. The change introduced a new security rule referencing a new Address Group and Service Group. In Panorama, the objects exist in a child device group, but the rule was created in a parent device group's pre-rulebase. What is the correct remediation that preserves hierarchical design?

A team uses Panorama to manage policy across multiple environments (prod/dev). They need a controlled process where dev changes are tested on a small set of devices, then promoted to prod with auditability and the ability to roll back quickly. Which Panorama feature/workflow best supports this requirement?

You are integrating an NGFW with an internal automation platform to dynamically block malicious IPs observed by a SIEM. Requirements: (1) blocks must be applied within minutes, (2) changes must be auditable, (3) avoid frequent commits that could impact management plane performance, and (4) allow automatic expiration of blocks. Which solution best meets these requirements?