Best Practices


At Palo Alto Networks, it’s our mission to develop products and services that help you, our customer, detect and prevent successful cyberattacks. We’ve developed our best practice documentation to help you do just that. Whether you’re looking for the best way to secure administrative access to your next-gen firewalls and Panorama, create best practice security policy to safely enable application access at the internet gateway and the data center, or learn the best way roll out a decryption policy to prevent threats from sneaking into your network, you will find the guidance you need here in our best practice documentation. And, our best practice library keeps growing and evolving to keep up with the ever-changing threat landscape, so be sure to check back often!

Spotlight

Transition to Best Practices


Documents, checklists, videos, webinars, best practice assessment tools, and more help you learn about and apply security best practices.

Best Practices for Managing Firewalls with Panorama


Use the Panorama Best Practices to help manage and secure your firewalls.

Best Practices Assessment (BPA)

Administrative Access Best Practices


Firewalls and Panorama centralized management servers are the gatekeepers and protectors of your network. To prevent attackers from gaining access to these devices and reconfiguring them to permit malicious access to your network, follow these best practices to secure administrative access.

Documentation

Best Practices for Managing Firewalls with Panorama


Learn the best practices for managing firewalls centrally using Panorama.

Decryption Best Practices


You can't defend against threats you can’t see. By enabling decryption on your next-gen firewalls you can inspect and control SSL/TLS and SSH traffic so that you can detect and prevent threats that would otherwise remain hidden in encrypted traffic. Use the best practice guidelines in this site to learn how to plan for and deploy decryption in your organization.

Best Practices for Migrating to Application-Based Policy


Convert port-based Security policy to application-based Security policy safely when you migrate to the next-generation firewall.

Security Lifecycle Review (SLR)


Internet Gateway Best Practice Security Policy


Internet access exposes your network to risk from malicious websites, phishing scams, and other types of cyberattacks. Create best practices internet gateway security policy to safely enable applications, users, and content while protecting your network.

Starting Best Practices with the BPA and Security Assurance


DoS and Zone Protection Best Practices


Protect against DoS attacks that try to take down your network and critical devices using a layered approach that defends your network perimeter, zones, and individual devices.

Best Practices Implementing Zero Trust with Palo Alto Networks


Eliminate implicit trust from your enterprise and continuously validate every stage of a digital transaction to secure your enterprise.

Security Policy Best Practices


Security policy best practices for rule construction, including profiles and logging, rulebase order, Policy Optimizer, the App-ID Cloud Engine (ACE), and SaaS and IoT Policy Recommendation.

Administrative Access Best Practices


Firewalls and Panorama centralized management servers are the gatekeepers and protectors of your network. To prevent attackers from gaining access to these devices and reconfiguring them to permit malicious access to your network, follow these best practices to secure administrative access.

WildFire Best Practices


Learn the best practices for using WildFire as part of your network threat detection and prevention solution.

PAN-OS Best Practices for Applications and Threats Content Updates


Learn the best practices for keeping application and threat content signatures up-to-date seamlessly.

IoT Security Best Practices


Apply best practices during the planning, deployment, and maintenance of your IoT Security implementation.

User-ID Best Practices


Learn the best practices for implementing User-ID so that you know and control every user on your network.

URL Filtering Best Practices


Use the URL Filtering best practices to guide you how to reduce your exposure to web-based threats, without limiting your users’ access to web content that they need.

Best Practices for Securing Your Network from Layer 4 and Layer 7 Evasions


To monitor and protect your network from most Layer 4 and Layer 7 attacks, follow our best practice recommendations.

Recommended Topics

Internet Gateway Best Practice Security Policy


Block malicious traffic, including viruses, vulnerability exploits, bad file types, bad websites, and more.

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Tech Docs: SSL Decryption Best Practices Light Up Hidden Malware

Ways to Strengthen Your Internet Gateway


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Policy Optimizer Webinar: Strengthen Your Security Rule Set

Translated Best Practices Documentation


GlobalProtect Best Practices Webinar

Videos

Introduction to the Best Practice Assessment Plus (BPA+) Tool

Learn about how to check and improve your best practice network security posture using the BPA+.

Best Practice Assessment Plus (BPA+) Tool Demo

View the BPA+ demo, which shows you how to check your PAN-OS best practice configuration and update it if necessary.

Strengthen Your Internet Gateway

See your network from the vantage point of an attacker and learn what attackers do to achieve their objectives. Learn how to map the specific steps an attacker takes to prevention technologies available on a next-generation firewall. Based on this understanding, you will know how to defend your networks using App-ID, User-ID, Decryption, Threat Prevention and WildFire.

How To Implement App-ID on Your Next-Generation Firewall

Watch the video to learn how to implement App-ID on your next-generation firewall to protect against increasingly evasive threats and prevent successful cyber breaches.

How To Implement User-ID on your Next-Gen Firewall

Watch the video to learn how to implement User-ID on your next-generation firewall to maximize your security investments and defend your business from successful cyber attacks.

Find the Hidden Threats in Your Traffic

Next-generation firewalls from Palo Alto Networks® decrypt, inspect and then re-encrypt network traffic before it is sent to its destination.

BPA+ YouTube Channel


Click "View BPA+ Playlist" to access all of the BPA+ videos, including best practice network security checks and a demo.

Use Policy Optimizer to Improve your Security Posture

Moving from port-based legacy firewall rules to App-ID™ technology-based ones greatly reduces the opportunity for attack. However, that transformation takes time, effort and resources. The new Policy Optimizer makes it easy. It uses simple workflows and intelligence gathered by PAN-OS to move from legacy rules to App-ID based controls and strengthen your security.

What is Zero Trust?

Traditional cybersecurity models classify users as “trusted” and “untrusted.” However, trust can be exploited. For example, 80% of data breaches today are caused by misuse of privileged credentials. The increasing sophistication of attackers requires a comprehensive Zero Trust strategy to "remove trust and reduce overall cybersecurity risk across the network, endpoints and cloud.

Webinars

Policy Optimizer - Strengthen Your Security Rule Set and Save Time

About this webinar

App-ID increases the value of our next-generation firewalls by making it easier and faster to determine the exact identity of applications traversing the network, enabling teams to set and enforce the right policies.

Join Palo Alto Networks experts and learn how you can use the New Policy Optimizer capability to migrate your legacy rule set to App-ID based rules. In this webcast, you will:

  • Learn best practices for rule management
  • Find out how Policy Optimizer can help you achieve a more secure and easier to manage security rule set
  • Learn how App-ID can reduce complexity and minimize human error, the leading cause of data breaches
  • Get your questions answered in our live Q&A



How to Prevent Breaches through Application Controls

About this webinar

Employees are accessing any application they want, using work or personal devices, regardless of the business and security risks involved.

Join the webinar and discover:

  • How attackers use apps to infect and exfiltrate data 
  • How to use app control the right way to prevent breaches 
  • How to extend visibility and control to SaaS apps



How to Implement User-Based Controls for Cybersecurity

About this webinar

Visibility and policy control based on users is critical for cybersecurity. User-based policies readily show their business relevance, are more secure, easier to manage, and allow better forensics. In this webinar you will:

  • Learn the value of user-based controls using real-life data breach examples 
  • Discover a step-by-step approach for implementing User-IDTM on your Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewall



Enabling and Deploying Your SSL Decryption

About this webinar

The growth in SSL/TLS encrypted traffic traversing the internet is on an explosive upturn. Given the primary benefits associated with encryption, the private and secure exchange of information over the internet, compliance with certain privacy and security regulations – such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, or HIPAA and PCI DSS – the trend in SSL adoption is expected to continue to rise.

Watch as our Palo Alto Networks® team of experts presents the “hows and whys” of SSL decryption. In this webcast, you will:

  • Learn why you need to enable decryption and the key metrics to support your case
  • Find out how to address internal logistics and legal considerations
  • Discover how to effectively plan and deploy decryption