PCNSE Certification Sample Questions for Palo Alto Network Security Engineer Exam

Ace the Palo Alto Networks Certified Network Security Engineer (PCNSE) exam with this high-quality collection of sample questions and hands-on practice tests. These expertly designed PCNSE Certification Sample Questions cover all domains of the exam, including firewall configuration, security policies, advanced threat prevention, and network troubleshooting. Ideal for professionals aiming to validate their expertise in Palo Alto’s technologies, this guide helps reinforce your concepts, identify weak areas, and simulate real exam scenarios. Whether you're reviewing dumps or taking structured mock tests, this resource is your path to PCNSE certification success.

PCNSE Certification Sample Questions List :

1. Cortex XDR notifies an administrator about grayware on the endpoints. There are no entries about grayware in any of the logs of the corresponding firewall. Which setting can the administrator configure on the firewall to log grayware verdicts?

1. in Threat General Settings, select "Report Grayware Files"

2. within the log settings option in the Device tab

3. in WildFire General Settings, select "Report Grayware Files"

4. within the log forwarding profile attached to the Security policy rule

2. Decrypted packets from the website https://www.microsoft.com will appear as which application and service within the Traffic log?

1. web-browsing and 443

2. SSL and 80

3. SSL and 443

4. web-browsing and 80

3. Which function is handled by the management plane (control plane) of a Palo Alto Networks firewall?

1. logging

2. signature matching for content inspection

3. Quality of Service

4. IPSec tunnel standup

4. A firewall has Security policies from three sources: 1. locally created policies 2. shared device group policies as pre-rules 3. the firewall's device group as post-rules How will the rule order populate once pushed to the firewall?

1. shared device group policies, local policies, firewall device group policies

2. firewall device group policies, local policies, shared device group policies

3. local policies, firewall device group policies, shared device group policies

4. shared device group policies, firewall device group policies, local policies

5. Which Security profile generates a packet threat type found in threat logs?

1. WildFire

2. Zone Protection

3. Anti-Spyware

4. Antivirus

6. A firewall engineer reviews the PAN-OS GlobalProtect application and sees that it implicitly uses web-browsing and depends on SSL. When creating a new rule, what is needed to allow the application to resolve dependencies?

1. Add SSL application to the same rule

2. SSL and web-browsing must both be explicitly allowed

3. Add SSL and web-browsing applications to the same rule

4. Add web-browsing application to the same rule

7. An engineer wants to forward all decrypted traffic on a PA-850 firewall to a forensic tool with a decrypt mirror interface. Which statement is true regarding the configuration of the Decryption Port Mirroring feature?

1. The engineer should install the Decryption Port Mirror license and reboot the firewall

2. The PA-850 firewall does not support decrypt mirror interface, so the engineer needs to upgrade the firewall to PA-3200 series

3. The engineer must assign an IP from the same subnet with the forensic tool to the decrypt mirror interface

4. The engineer must assign the related virtual-router to the decrypt mirror interface

8. In a security-first network, what is the recommended threshold value for content updates to be dynamically updated?

1. 1 to 4 hours

2. 6 to 12 hours

3. 24 hours

4. 36 hours

9. A company is deploying User-ID in their network. The firewall team needs to have the ability to see and choose from a list of usernames and user groups directly inside the Panorama policies when creating new security rules. How can this be achieved?

1. by configuring User-ID group mapping in Panorama > User Identification

2. by configuring Master Device in Panorama > Device Groups

3. by configuring User-ID source device in Panorama > Managed Devices

4. by configuring Data Redistribution Client in Panorama > Data Redistribution

10. A firewall administrator requires an A/P HA pair to fail over more quickly due to critical business application uptime requirements. What is the correct setting?

1. Change the HA timer profile to "user-defined" and manually set the timers

2. Change the HA timer profile to "fast"

3. Change the HA timer profile to "aggressive" or customize the settings in advanced profile

4. Change the HA timer profile to "quick" and customize in advanced profile

11. A network administrator notices there is a false-positive situation after enabling Security profiles. When the administrator checks the threat prevention logs, the related signature displays: threat type: spyware category: dns-c2 threat ID: 1000011111 Which set of steps should the administrator take to configure an exception for this signature?

1. Navigate to Objects > Security Profiles > Anti-Spyware Select related profile Select the signature exceptions tab and then click show all signatures Search related threat ID and click enable Change the default action Commit

2. Navigate to Objects > Security Profiles > Anti-Spyware Select related profile Select the Exceptions tab and then click show all signatures Search related threat ID and click enable Commit

3. Navigate to Objects > Security Profiles > Vulnerability Protection Select related profile Select the Exceptions tab and then click show all signatures Search related threat ID and click enable Commit

4. Navigate to Objects > Security Profiles > Anti-Spyware Select related profile Select DNS exceptions tabs Search related threat ID and click enable Commit

12. An administrator troubleshoots an issue that causes packet drops. Which log type will help the engineer verify whether packet buffer protection was activated?

1. Configuration

2. Data Filtering

3. Traffic

4. Threat

13. An administrator is configuring SSL decryption and needs to ensure that all certificates for both SSL Inbound inspection and SSL Forward Proxy are installed properly on the firewall. When certificates are being imported to the firewall for these purposes, which three certificates require a private key? (Choose three.)

1. Forward Untrust certificate

2. Enterprise Root CA certificate

3. Forward Trust certificate

4. End-entity (leaf) certificate

5. Intermediate certificate(s)

14. An administrator connects four new remote offices to the corporate data center. The administrator decides to use the Large Scale VPN (LSVPN) feature on the Palo Alto Networks next-generation firewall. What should the administrator configure in order to connect the sites?

1. Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) Tunnels

2. GlobalProtect Satellite

3. SD-WAN

4. IKE Gateways

15. If a template stack is assigned to a device and the stack includes three templates with overlapping settings, which settings are published to the device when the template stack is pushed?

1. The settings assigned to the template that is on top of the stack

2. The administrator will be promoted to choose the settings for that chosen firewall

3. All the settings configured in all templates

4. Depending on the firewall location, Panorama decides with settings to send

16. An engineer notices that the tunnel monitoring has been failing for a day and the VPN should have failed over to a backup path. What part of the network profile configuration should the engineer verify?

1. Destination IP

2. Threshold

3. Action

4. Interval

17. A company needs to preconfigure firewalls to be sent to remote sites with the least amount of preconfiguration. Once deployed, each firewall must establish secure tunnels back to multiple regional data centers to include the future regional data centers. Which VPN preconfigured configuration would adapt to changes when deployed to the future site?

1. GlobalProtect client

2. PPTP tunnels

3. IPsec tunnels using IKEv2

4. GlobalProtect satellite

18. What is the best description of the Cluster Synchronization Timeout (min)?

1. The maximum interval between hello packets that are sent to verify that the HA functionality on the other firewall is operational

2. The maximum time that the local firewall waits before going to Active state when another cluster member is preventing the cluster from fully synchronizing

3. The timeframe within which the firewall must receive keepalives from a cluster member to know that the cluster member is functional

4. The time that a passive or active-secondary firewall will wait before taking over as the active or active-primary firewall

19. Which protocol is supported by GlobalProtect Clientless VPN?

1. FTP

2. HTTPS

3. SSH

4. RDP

20. Which two subscriptions are available when configuring Panorama to push dynamic updates to connected devices? (Choose two.)

1. Content-ID

2. User-ID

3. Applications and Threats

4. Antivirus

21. What is a correct statement regarding administrative authentication using external services with a local authorization method?

1. The administrative accounts you define on an external authentication server serve as references to the accounts defined locally on the firewall

2. Prior to PAN-OS 10.2, an administrator used the firewall to manage role assignments, but access domains have not been supported by this method

3. Starting with PAN-OS 10.2, an administrator needs to configure Cloud Identity Engine to use external authentication services for administrative authentication

4. The administrative accounts you define locally on the firewall serve as references to the accounts defined on an external authentication server

22. A network security engineer has applied a File Blocking profile to a rule with the action of Block. The user of a Linux CLI operating system has opened a ticket. The ticket states that the user is being blocked by the firewall when trying to download a TAR file. The user is getting no error response on the system. Where is the best place to validate if the firewall is blocking the user's TAR file?

1. Threat log

2. Data Filtering log

3. WildFire Submissions log

4. URL Filtering log

23. A security engineer needs firewall management access on a trusted interface. Which three settings are required on an SSL/TLS Service Profile to provide secure Web Ul authentication? (Choose three.)

1. Authentication Algorithm

2. Encryption Algorithm

3. Certificate

4. Maximum TLS version

5. Minimum TLS version

24. If an administrator wants to apply QoS to traffic based on source, what must be specified in a QoS policy rule?

1. Post-NAT destination address

2. Pre-NAT destination address

3. Pre-NAT source address

4. Post-NAT source address

25. An administrator has configured a QoS policy rule and a QoS Profile that limits the maximum allowable bandwidth for the YouTube application. However, YouTube is consuming more than the maximum bandwidth allotment configured. Which configuration step needs to be configured to enable QoS?

1. Enable QoS interface

2. Enable QoS in the Interface Management Profile

3. Enable QoS Data Filtering Profile

4. Enable QoS monitor

26. A firewall is configured with SSL Forward Proxy decryption and has the following four enterprise certificate authorities (CAs): i. Enterprise-Trusted-CA, which is verified as Forward Trust Certificate (The CA is also installed in the trusted store of the end-user browser and system.) ii. Enterprise-Untrusted-CA, which is verified as Forward Untrust Certificate iii. Enterprise-Intermediate-CA iv. Enterprise-Root-CA, which is verified only as Trusted Root CA An end-user visits https://www.example-website.com/ with a server certificate Common Name (CN): www.example-website.com. The firewall does the SSL Forward Proxy decryption for the website and the server certificate is not trusted by the firewall. The end-user's browser will show that the certificate for www. example-website.com was issued by which of the following?

1. Enterprise-Trusted-CA which is a self-signed CA

2. Enterprise-Root-CA which is a self-signed CA

3. Enterprise-Intermediate-CA which was, in turn, issued by Enterprise-Root-CA

4. Enterprise-Untrusted-CA which is a self-signed CA

27. An administrator connected a new fiber cable and transceiver to interface Ethernet1/1 on a Palo Alto Networks firewall. However, the link does not seem to be coming up. If an administrator were to troubleshoot, how would they confirm the transceiver type, tx-power, rx-power, vendor name, and part number via the CLI?

1. show system state filter sw.dev.interface.config

2. show chassis status slot s1

3. show system state filter-pretty sys.s1.*

4. show system state filter ethernet1/1

28. Which DoS protection mechanism detects and prevents session exhaustion attacks?

1. Packet Based Attack Protection

2. Flood Protection

3. Resource Protection

4. TCP Port Scan Protection

29. Before an administrator of a VM-500 can enable DoS and zone protection, what actions need to be taken?

1. Create a zone protection profile with flood protection configured to defend an entire egress zone against SYN, ICMP, ICMPv6, UDP, and other IP flood attacks

2. Add a WildFire subscription to activate DoS and zone protection features

3. Replace the hardware firewall, because DoS and zone protection are not available with VM-Series systems

4. Measure and monitor the CPU consumption of the firewall data plane to ensure that each firewall is properly sized to support DoS and zone protection

30. Which two virtualization platforms officially support the deployment of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series firewalls? (Choose two.)

1. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV)

2. Kernel Virtualization Module (KVM)

3. Boot Strap Virtualization Module (BSVM)

4. Microsoft Hyper-V

31. A consultant deploys a PAN-OS 11.0 VM-Series firewall with the Web Proxy feature in Transparent Proxy mode. Which three elements must be in place before a transparent web proxy can function? (Choose three.)

1. User-ID for the proxy zone

2. DNS Security license

3. Prisma Access explicit proxy license

4. Cortex Data Lake license

5. Authentication Policy Rule set to default-web-form

32. When backing up and saving configuration files, what is achieved using only the firewall and is not available in Panorama?

1. Load configuration version

2. Save candidate config

3. Export device state

4. Load named configuration snapshot

33. You need to allow users to access the office-suite applications of their choice. How should you configure the firewall to allow access to any office-suite application?

1. Create an Application Group and add Office 365, Evernote, Google Docs, and Libre Office

2. Create an Application Group and add business-systems to it

3. Create an Application Filter and name it Office Programs, then filter it on the office-programs subcategory

4. Create an Application Filter and name it Office Programs, then filter it on the business-systems category

34. Which menu item enables a firewall administrator to see details about traffic that is currently active through the NGFW?

1. ACC

2. System Logs

3. App Scope

4. Session Browser

35. Which two components are required to configure certificate-based authentication to the web UI when an administrator needs firewall access on a trusted interface? (Choose two.)

1. Server certificate

2. CA certificate

3. SSL/TLS Service Profile

4. Certificate Profile

36. Which feature must you configure to prevent users from accidentally submitting their corporate credentials to a phishing website?

1. URL Filtering profile

2. Zone Protection profile

3. Anti-Spyware profile

4. Vulnerability Protection profile

37. Which processing order will be enabled when a Panorama administrator selects the setting `Objects defined in ancestors will take higher precedence?`

1. Descendant objects will take precedence over other descendant objects

2. Descendant objects will take precedence over ancestor objects

3. Ancestor objects will have precedence over descendant objects

4. Ancestor objects will have precedence over other ancestor objects

38. A client has a sensitive application server in their data center and is particularly concerned about resource exhaustion because of distributed denial-of-service attacks. How can the Palo Alto Networks NGFW be configured to specifically protect this server against resource exhaustion originating from multiple IP addresses (DDoS attack)?

1. Define a custom App-ID to ensure that only legitimate application traffic reaches the server

2. Add a Vulnerability Protection Profile to block the attack

3. Add QoS Profiles to throttle incoming requests

4. Add a DoS Protection Profile with defined session count

39. An administrator is receiving complaints about application performance degradation. After checking the ACC, the administrator observes that there is an excessive amount of SSL traffic. Which three elements should the administrator configure to address this issue? (Choose three.)

1. QoS on the egress interface for the traffic flows

2. QoS on the ingress interface for the traffic flows

3. A QoS profile defining traffic classes

4. A QoS policy for each application ID

5. An Application Override policy for the SSL traffic

40. What happens when an A/P firewall cluster synchronizes IPsec tunnel security associations (SAs)?

1. Phase 2 SAs are synchronized over HA2 links

2. Phase 1 and Phase 2 SAs are synchronized over HA2 links

3. Phase 1 SAs are synchronized over HA1 links

4. Phase 1 and Phase 2 SAs are synchronized over HA3 links

41. Engineer was tasked to simplify configuration of multiple firewalls with a specific set of configurations shared across all devices. Which two advantages would be gained by using multiple templates in a stack? (Choose two.)

1. inherits address-objects from the templates

2. standardizes server profiles and authentication configuration across all stacks

3. standardizes log-forwarding profiles for security policies across all stacks

4. defines a common standard template configuration for firewalls

42. An administrator is using Panorama and multiple Palo Alto Networks NGFWs. After upgrading all devices to the latest PAN-OSֲ® software, the administrator enables log forwarding from the firewalls to Panorama. Pre-existing logs from the firewalls are not appearing in Panorama. Which action would enable the firewalls to send their pre-existing logs to Panorama?

1. Use the import option to pull logs into Panorama

2. A CLI command will forward the pre-existing logs to Panorama

3. Use the ACC to consolidate pre-existing logs

4. The log database will need to exported form the firewalls and manually imported into Panorama

43. Which statement accurately describes service routes and virtual systems?

1. Virtual systems can only use one interface for all global service and service routes of the firewall

2. Virtual systems that do not have specific service routes configured inherit the global service and service route settings for the firewall

3. Virtual systems cannot have dedicated service routes configured; and virtual systems always use the global service and service route settings for the firewall

4. The interface must be used for traffic to the required external services

44. An engineer needs to configure a standardized template for all Panorama-managed firewalls. These settings will be configured on a template named "Global" and will be included in all template stacks. Which three settings can be configured in this template? (Choose three.)

1. Log Forwarding profile

2. SSL decryption exclusion

3. Email scheduler

4. Login banner

5. Dynamic updates

45. A network administrator created an intrazone Security policy rule on the firewall. The source zones were set to IT, Finance, and HR. Which two types of traffic will the rule apply to? (Choose two.)

1. traffic between zone Finance and zone HR

2. traffic between zone IT and zone Finance

3. traffic within zone HR

4. traffic within zone IT

46. A client is concerned about resource exhaustion because of denial-of-service attacks against their DNS servers. Which option will protect the individual servers?

1. Enable packet buffer protection on the Zone Protection Profile

2. Apply an Anti-Spyware Profile with DNS sinkholing

3. Use the DNS App-ID with application-default

4. Apply a classified DoS Protection Profile

47. A firewall should be advertising the static route 10.2.0.0/24 into OSPF. The configuration on the neighbour is correct, but the route is not in the neighbour's routing table. Which two configurations should you check on the firewall? (Choose two.)

1. Ensure that the OSPF neighbour state is "2-Way"

2. In the OSPF configuration, ensure that the correct redistribution profile is selected in the OSPF Export Rules section

3. Within the redistribution profile ensure that Redist is selected

4. In the redistribution profile check that the source type is set to "ospf."

48. An organization is interested in migrating from their existing web proxy architecture to the Web Proxy feature of their PAN-OS 11.0 firewalls. Currently, HTTP and SSL requests contain the destination IP address of the web server and the client browser is redirected to the proxy. Which PAN-OS proxy method should be configured to maintain this type of traffic flow?

1. SSL forward proxy

2. Explicit proxy

3. Transparent proxy

4. DNS proxy

49. A network security engineer needs to ensure that virtual systems can communicate with one another within a Palo Alto Networks firewall. Separate virtual routers (VRs) are created for each virtual system. In addition to confirming security policies, which three configuration details should the engineer focus on to ensure communication between virtual systems? (Choose three.)

1. Add a route with next hop next-vr by using the VR configured in the virtual system

2. Layer 3 zones for the virtual systems that need to communicate

3. Add a route with next hop set to none, and use the interface of the virtual systems that need to communicate

4. Ensure the virtual systems are visible to one another

5. External zones with the virtual systems added

50. An administrator creates an SSL decryption rule decrypting traffic on all ports. The administrator also creates a Security policy rule allowing only the applications DNS, SSL, and web-browsing. The administrator generates three encrypted BitTorrent connections and checks the Traffic logs. There are three entries. The first entry shows traffic dropped as application Unknown. The next two entries show traffic allowed as application SSL. Which action will stop the second and subsequent encrypted BitTorrent connections from being allowed as SSL?

1. Create a decryption rule matching the encrypted BitTorrent traffic with action "No-Decrypt," and place the rule at the top of the Decryption policy

2. Create a Security policy rule that matches application "encrypted BitTorrent" and place the rule at the top of the Security policy

3. Disable the exclude cache option for the firewall

4. Create a Decryption Profile to block traffic using unsupported cyphers, and attach the profile to the decryption rule

51. A firewall engineer has determined that, in an application developed by the company’s internal team, sessions often remain idle for hours before the client and server exchange any data. The application is also currently identified as unknown-tcp by the firewalls. It is determined that because of a high level of trust, the application does not require to be scanned for threats, but it needs to be properly identified in Traffic logs for reporting purposes. Which solution will take the least time to implement and will ensure the App-ID engine is used to identify the application?

1. Create a custom application with specific timeouts and signatures based on patterns discovered in packet captures

2. Access the Palo Alto Networks website and complete the online form to request that a new application be added to App-ID

3. Create a custom application with specific timeouts, then create an application override rule and reference the custom application

4. Access the Palo Alto Networks website and raise a support request through the Customer Support Portal

52. What is the best definition of the Heartbeat Interval?

1. the interval during which the firewall will remain active following a link monitor failure

2. the frequency at which the HA peers exchange ping

3. the interval in milliseconds between hello packets

4. the frequency at which the HA peers check link or path availability

53. Which two factors should be considered when sizing a decryption firewall deployment? (Choose two.)

1. Number of security zones in decryption policies

2. Encryption algorithm

3. TLS protocol version

4. Number of blocked sessions

54. Which server platforms can be monitored when a company is deploying User-ID through server monitoring in an environment with diverse directory services?

1. Novell eDirectory, Microsoft Terminal Server, and Microsoft Active Directory

2. Red Hat Linux, Microsoft Exchange, and Microsoft Terminal Server

3. Novell eDirectory, Microsoft Exchange, and Microsoft Active Directory

4. Red Hat Linux, Microsoft Active Directory, and Microsoft Exchange

55. Which feature detects the submission of corporate login information into website forms?

1. App-ID

2. File Blocking profile

3. Data Filtering profile

4. Credential Phishing

56. An administrator has configured PAN-OS SD-WAN and has received a request to find out the reason for a session failover for a session that has already ended. Where would you find this in Panorama or firewall logs?

1. System Logs

2. Session Browser

3. You cannot find failover details on closed sessions

4. Traffic Logs

57. The firewall determines if a packet is the first packet of a new session or if a packet is part of an existing session using which kind of match?

1. 6-tuple match: Source IP Address, Destination IP Address, Source Port, Destination Port, Protocol, and Source Security Zone

2. 5-tuple match: Source IP Address, Destination IP Address, Source Port, Destination Port, Protocol

3. 7-tuple match: Source IP Address, Destination IP Address, Source Port, Destination Port, Source User, URL Category, and Source Security Zone

4. 9-tuple match: Source IP Address, Destination IP Address, Source Port, Destination Port, Source User, Source Security Zone, Destination Security Zone, Application, and URL Category

58. Which two actions must an engineer take to configure SSL Forward Proxy decryption? (Choose two.)

1. 86Configure the decryption profile

2. Configure SSL decryption rules

3. Define a Forward Trust Certificate

4. Configure a SSL / TLS service profile

59. A network security engineer is attempting to peer a virtual router on a PAN-OS firewall with an external router using the BGP protocol. The peer relationship is not establishing. What command could the engineer run to see the current state of the BGP state between the two devices?

1. show routing protocol bgp rib-out

2. show routing protocol bgp peer

3. show routing protocol bgp summary

4. show routing protocol bgp state

60. An administrator is troubleshooting why video traffic is not being properly classified. If this traffic does not match any QoS classes, what default class is assigned?

1. 1

2. 2

3. 3

4. 4

61. Which CLI command can be used to export the tcpdump capture?

1. scp export tcpdump from mgmt.pcap to < username@host:path>

2. scp extract mgmt-pcap from mgmt.pcap to < username@host:path>

3. scp export mgmt-pcap from mgmt.pcap to < username@host:path>

4. download mgmt-pcap

62. What happens, by default, when the GlobalProtect app fails to establish an IPSec tunnel to the GlobalProtect gateway?

1. It tries to establish a tunnel to the GlobalProtect portal using SSL/TLS

2. It stops the tunnel-establishment processing to the GlobalProtect gateway immediately

3. It tries to establish a tunnel to the GlobalProtect gateway using SSL/TLS

4. It keeps trying to establish an IPSec tunnel to the GlobalProtect gateway

63. Which option is part of the content inspection process?

1. Packet forwarding process

2. SSL Proxy re-encrypt

3. IPsec tunnel encryption

4. Packet egress process

64. The UDP-4501 protocol-port is used between which two GlobalProtect components?

1. GlobalProtect app and GlobalProtect satellite

2. GlobalProtect app and GlobalProtect portal

3. GlobalProtect app and GlobalProtect gateway

4. GlobalProtect portal and GlobalProtect gateway

65. What are three prerequisites to enable Credential Phishing Prevention over SSL? (Choose three.)

1. Create a URL filtering profile

2. Create an anti-virus profile

3. Enable User-ID

4. Configure a URL profile to block the phishing category

5. Create a decryption policy rule

66. A system administrator runs a port scan using the company tool as part of vulnerability check. The administrator finds that the scan is identified as a threat and is dropped by the firewall. After further investigating the logs the administrator finds that the scan is dropped in the Threat Logs. What should the administrator do to allow the tool to scan through the firewall?

1. Add the tool IP address to the reconnaissance protection source address exclusion in the DoS Protection profile

2. Add the tool IP address to the reconnaissance protection source address exclusion in the Zone Protection profile

3. Remove the Zone Protection profile from the zone setting

4. Change the TCP port scan action from Block to Alert in the Zone Protection profile

67. After some firewall configuration changes, an administrator discovers that application identification has started failing. The administrator investigates further and notices that a high number of sessions were going to a discard state with the application showing as unknown-tcp. Which possible firewall change could have caused this issue?

1. enabling Forward segments that exceed the TCP App-ID inspection queue in Device > Setup > Content-ID > Content-ID Settings

2. enabling Forward segments that exceed the TCP content inspection queue in Device > Setup > Content-ID > Content-ID Settings

3. Jumbo frames were enabled on the firewall, which reduced the App-ID queue size and the number of available packet buffers

4. Jumbo frames were disabled on the firewall, which reduced the queue sizes dedicated for out-of-order and application identification

68. Where is information about packet buffer protection logged?

1. All entries are in the System log

2. All entries are in the Alarms log

3. Alert entries are in the Alarms log. Entries for dropped traffic, discarded sessions, and blocked IP address are in the Threat log

4. Alert entries are in the System log. Entries for dropped traffic, discarded sessions, and blocked IP addresses are in the Threat log

69. An administrator has a requirement to export decrypted traffic from the Palo Alto Networks NGFW to a third-party, deep-level packet inspection appliance. Which interface type and license feature are necessary to meet the requirement?

1. Decryption Mirror interface with the Threat Analysis license

2. Virtual Wire interface with the Decryption Port Export license

3. Tap interface with the Decryption Port Mirror license

4. Decryption Mirror interface with the associated Decryption Port Mirror license

70. What would allow a network security administrator to authenticate and identify a user with a new BYOD-type device that is not joined to the corporate domain?

1. a Security policy with 'known-user' selected in the Source User field

2. a Security policy with 'unknown' selected in the Source User field

3. an Authentication policy with 'known-user' selected in the Source User field

4. an Authentication policy with 'unknown' selected in the Source User field

71. Which operation will impact the performance of the management plane?

1. Enabling DoS protection

2. Enabling packet buffer protection

3. Decrypting SSL sessions

4. Generating a Saas Application report

72. Which GlobalProtect Client connect method requires the distribution and use of machine certificates?

1. At-boot

2. Pre-logon

3. User-logon (Always on)

4. On-demand

73. Which two methods can be used to verify firewall connectivity to AutoFocus? (Choose two.)

1. Verify AutoFocus status using the CLI "test" command

2. Check the WebUI Dashboard AutoFocus widget

3. Check for WildFire forwarding logs

4. Check the license

5. Verify AutoFocus is enabled below Device Management tab

74. Which statement is true regarding a Best Practice Assessment?

1. It runs only on firewalls

2. It provides a set of questionnaires that help uncover security risk prevention gaps across all areas of network and security architecture

3. It shows how your current configuration compares to Palo Alto Networks recommendations

4. When guided by an authorized sales engineer, it helps determine the areas of greatest risk where you should focus prevention activities

75. What can be used as an Action when creating a Policy-Based Forwarding (PBF) policy?

1. Deny

2. Allow

3. Discard

4. Next VR

FAQs

1. What is the Palo Alto Networks Certified Network Security Engineer (PCNSE) certification?

The PCNSE certification validates advanced skills in designing, deploying, and managing Palo Alto Networks security platforms to protect enterprise networks effectively.

2. How do I become PCNSE certified?

To earn the PCNSE certification, you must pass the PCNSE exam, which tests your knowledge of network security, firewall management, and advanced threat prevention using Palo Alto products.

3. What are the prerequisites for the Palo Alto PCNSE certification exam?

There are no mandatory prerequisites, but it’s recommended to have hands-on experience with Palo Alto Networks products and prior completion of the PCNSA certification.

4. How much does the Palo Alto PCNSE certification exam cost?

The PCNSE exam costs around $175 USD, though pricing may differ slightly depending on your country or currency.

5. What topics are covered in the PCNSE certification exam?

The exam covers firewall configuration, Panorama management, VPNs, threat prevention, advanced routing, and troubleshooting concepts.

6. How difficult is the Palo Alto PCNSE exam?

The PCNSE is an advanced-level certification, requiring strong practical knowledge and experience with Palo Alto’s security solutions.

7. How long does it take to prepare for the PCNSE certification exam?

Most candidates take about 6–10 weeks to prepare, depending on their existing knowledge and professional experience.

8. How long is the PCNSE certification valid?

The PCNSE certification is valid for two years from the date of passing the exam.

9. What career opportunities are available after earning the PCNSE certification?

PCNSE certified professionals can work as Network Security Engineers, Firewall Specialists, Cybersecurity Analysts, or Security Architects in leading IT and security firms.

10. What is the average salary for a Palo Alto Networks PCNSE certified professional?

On average, PCNSE-certified professionals earn between $95,000 and $130,000 per year, depending on experience, region, and job role.