Defining Policies on Panorama
Device Groups on Panorama™ allow you to centrally manage
firewall policies. You create policies on Panorama either as
Pre
Rules or
Post Rules; Pre Rules and Post Rules
allow you to create a layered approach for implementing policy.
You can define Pre rules and Post rules in a shared context,
as shared policies for all managed firewalls, or in a device group
context, to make the rules specific to a device group. Because you
define Pre rules and Post Rules on Panorama and then push them from
Panorama to the managed firewalls, you are able to view the rules on
the managed firewalls but you can edit the Pre Rules and Post Rules
only in Panorama.
Pre Rules—Rules that are added
to the top of the rule order and are evaluated first. You can use
pre-rules to enforce the Acceptable Use Policy for an organization.
For example, you can block access to specific URL categories or
allow DNS traffic for all users.
Post Rules—Rules that are added at
the bottom of the rule order and are evaluated after the pre-rules
and rules that are locally defined on the firewall. Post-rules typically
include rules to deny access to traffic based on the App-ID™, User-ID™,
or Service.
Default Rules—Rules that specify how
the firewall handles traffic that does not match any Pre Rules,
Post Rules, or local firewall rules. These rules are part of the
predefined Panorama configuration. To
Override and
enable editing of select settings in these rules, see
Overriding
or Reverting a Security Policy Rule.
Preview Rules to view a list of all rules
before you push the rules to the managed firewalls. Within each
rulebase, the hierarchy of rules is visually demarcated for each
device group (and managed firewall) to make it easier to scan through
a large numbers of rules.
When you add a new rule, static operational data for the rule
are displayed. The universally unique identifier (UUID) column displays
the 36-character UUID for the rule. The firewall generates the UUID
on a per-rule basis. However, if you are pushing rules from Panorama,
these rules have the same UUID, which is also displayed in the Combined
Rules Preview. The Created column displays
the time and date the rule was added to the rulebase. Additionally,
the Modified column displays the time and
date for the last time the rule was edited. If a policy rule was
created before upgrading to PAN-OS 9.0, the First Hit data
is used to establish the Created date. If
no First Hit data is available for the rule,
the time and date the firewall or Panorama management server was
upgraded to PAN-OS 9.0 is used to establish the Created date.
When you add or edit a rule in Panorama, a Target tab displays.
You can use this tab to apply the rule to specific firewalls or
descendant device groups of the Device Group (or
Shared location) where the rule is defined. In the Target tab,
you can select Any (default), which means
the rule applies to all the firewalls and descendant device groups.
To target specific firewalls or device groups, deselect Any and
select specific firewalls or device groups by name. To exclude specific
firewalls or device groups, deselect Any,
select the specific firewalls and device groups by name, and select Target
to all but these specified devices. If the list of device
groups and firewalls is long, you can apply Filters to search the
entries by attributes (such as Platforms) or by a text string for
matching names.
After you successfully add and push a rule in Panorama,
Rule Usage displays
whether the rule is Used by all devices in the device group, Partially
Used by some devices in the device group, or Unused by devices in
the device group. Panorama determines rule usage based on managed
firewalls with Policy Rule Hit Count (enabled by default). In the
Panorama context, you can view the rule usage for a Shared policy
rule across all device groups. Additionally, you can change the
context to an individual device group and view the total policy
rule usage across all devices in the device group.
Preview
Rules will show the
Hit Count,
Last
Hit, and
First Hit for each policy
rule for the device group. The total traffic hit count, as well
as the first and last hits timestamps, persist through reboot, upgrade,
and dataplane restart events. See
Monitor Policy Rule Usage.
Group Rules by Tag to apply a tag that
allows you to group like policy rules for better visualization of
rule functions and provides easier management of policy rules across
your rulebase. Rules grouped by tags show the list of tag groups,
but maintain the rule priority listing. You can append rules to
the end of a tag group, move rules to a different tag group, apply
additional tags to rules in a tag group, and filter or search using
the group tag.
To track changes to policy rules, add an Audit Comment to
describe the changes you make to and why a rule was created or modified.
After you enter an audit comment is entered and configuration change
is committed, the audit comment is preserved in the Audit
Comment Archive where you can view all previous audit
comments for the selected rule. You can search for the audit comment
in Global Find. The Audit Comment Archive is read-only.
Administrative users who have access to the Policies tab can
export the policy rules that are displayed on the web interface
as
PDF/CSV. See
Export Configuration Table Data.
To create policies, see the relevant section for each rulebase:
