Get Started with Advanced WildFire

Get your Advanced WildFire or WildFire subscription. If you do not have a subscription, you can still forward PEs for WildFire analysis.
Decide which of the Advanced WildFire Deployments works for you:
Advanced WildFire Public Cloud—Forward samples to a Palo Alto Networks-hosted Advanced WildFire public cloud.
WildFire U.S. Government cloud—Forward samples to a Palo Alto Networks-hosted WildFire U.S. Government cloud.
If you are deploying a WildFire private or hybrid cloud, refer to the WildFire Appliance administration.
Confirm your license is active on the firewall.
Log in to the firewall.
Select
Device
Licenses
and check that the WildFire License is active.
If the WildFire License is not displayed, select one of the License Management options to activate the license.
Connect the firewall to WildFire and configure WildFire settings.
Select
Device
Setup
WildFire
and edit General Settings.
Use
WildFire Public Cloud
field to forward samples to the Advanced WildFire public cloud.
Define the size limits for files the firewall forwards and configure WildFire logging and reporting settings.
It is a Advanced WildFire Best Practices to set the
File Size
for PEs to the maximum size limit of 10 MB, and to leave the
File Size
for all other file types set to the default value.
Click
OK
to save the WildFire General Settings.
Enable the firewall to forward decrypted SSL traffic for Advanced WildFire analysis.
This is a recommended Advanced WildFire best practice.
Start submitting samples for analysis.
Define traffic to forward for WildFire analysis. (Select
Objects
Security Profiles
WildFire Analysis
and modify or
Add
a WildFire Analysis profile).
As a best practice, use the WildFire Analysis default profile to ensure complete coverage for traffic the firewall allows. If you still decide to create a custom WildFire Analysis profile, set the profile to forward
Any
file type—this enables the firewall to automatically start forwarding newly-supported file types for analysis.
For each profile rule, set
public-cloud
as the
Destination
to forward samples to the Advanced WildFire cloud for analysis.
Attach the WildFire analysis profile to a security policy rule. Traffic matched to the policy rule is forwarded for WildFire analysis (
Policies
Security
and
Add
or modify a security policy rule).
Enable the firewall to get the latest Advanced WildFire signatures.
New Advanced WildFire signatures are retrieved in real-time to detect and identify malware. If you are operating PAN-OS 9.1 or earlier, you can receive new signatures every five minutes.
PAN-OS 9.1 and earlier
Select
Device
Dynamic Updates
:
Check that
WildFire
updates are displayed.
Select
Check Now
to retrieve the latest signature update packages.
Set the
Schedule
to download and install the latest Advanced WildFire signatures.
Use the
Recurrence
field to set the frequency at which the firewall checks for new updates to
Every Minute
.
As new WildFire signatures are available every five minutes, this setting ensures the firewall retrieves these signatures within a minute of availability.
Enable the firewall to
Download and Install
these updates as the firewall retrieves them.
Click
OK
.
PAN-OS 10.0 and later
Select
Device
Dynamic Updates
:
Check that the
WildFire
updates are displayed.
Select Schedule to configure the update frequency and then use the
Recurrence
field to configure the firewall to retrieve WildFire signatures in
Real-time
.
Click
OK
.
Start scanning traffic for threats, including malware that Advanced WildFire identifies.
Attach the
default
Antivirus profile to a security policy rule to scan traffic the rules allows based on WildFire antivirus signatures (select
Policies
Security
and add or a modify the defined
Actions
for a rule).
Control site access to web sites where Advanced WildFire has identified the associated link as malicious or phishing.
This option requires a PAN-DB URL Filtering license. Learn more about URL Filtering and how it enables you to control web site access and corporate credential submissions (to prevent phishing attempts) based on URL category.
To configure URL Filtering:
Select
Objects
Security Profiles
URL Filtering
and
Add
or modify a URL Filtering profile.
Select
Categories
and define
Site Access
for the phishing and malicious URL categories.
Block
users from accessing sites in these categories altogether, or instead, allow access but generate an
Alert
when users access sites in these categories, to ensure you have visibility into such events.
Enable credential phishing prevention to stop users from submitting credentials to untrusted sites, without blocking their access to these sites.
Apply the new or updated URL Filtering profile, and attach it to a security policy rule to apply the profile settings to allowed traffic:
Select
Policies
Security
and
Add
or modify a security policy rule.
Select
Actions
and in the Profile Setting section, set the
Profile Type
to profiles.
Attach the new or updated
URL Filtering
profile to the security policy rule.
Click
OK
to save the security policy rule.
Confirm that the firewall is successfully forwarding samples.
If you enabled logging of benign files, select
Monitor
WildFire Submissions
and check that entries are being logged for benign files submitted for analysis. (If you’d like to disable logging of benign files after confirming that the firewall is connected to a WildFire cloud, select
Device
Setup
WildFire
and clear
Report Benign Files
).
Other options to allow you to confirm that the firewall forwarded a specific sample, view samples the firewall forwards according to file type, and to view the total number of samples the firewall forwards.
Test a Sample Malware File to test your complete WildFire configuration.
Investigate analysis results.
Find analysis results:
Use the firewall to monitor malware and view WildFire analysis reports for a sample.
View reports on the Advanced WildFire portal for all samples submitted to the Advanced WildFire public cloud, including samples that you manually submitted to the WildFire public cloud.
Use the Advanced WildFire API to retrieve sample verdicts and reports from a WildFire appliance.
Next step:
Review and implement Advanced WildFire Best Practices.