Enhanced Application Logs for Palo Alto Networks Cloud Services
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Enhanced Application Logs for Palo Alto Networks Cloud Services

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Enhanced Application Logs for Palo Alto Networks Cloud Services

The firewall can collect data that increases visibility into network activity for Palo Alto Networks apps and services, like Cortex XDR and IoT Security. These enhanced application logs are designed strictly for Palo Alto Networks apps and services to consume and process; you cannot view enhanced application logs on the firewall or Panorama. Only firewalls sending logs to the logging service can generate enhanced application logs.
Follow these procedures to enable log forwarding for enhanced application logs for Cortex XDR and IoT Security:

Cortex XDR

Examples of the types of data that enhanced application logs gather includes records of DNS queries, the HTTP header User Agent field that specifies the web browser or tool used to access a URL, and information about DHCP automatic IP address assignment. With DHCP information, for example, Cortex XDR™ can alert on unusual activity based on hostname instead of IP address. This allows the security analyst using Cortex XDR to meaningfully assess whether the user’s activity is within the scope of his or her role, and if not, to more quickly take action to stop the activity.
To benefit from the most comprehensive set of enhanced application logs, you should enable User-ID; deployments for the Windows-based User-ID agent and the PAN-OS integrated User-ID agent both collect some data that is not reflected in the firewall User-ID logs but that is useful towards associating network activity with specific users.
To start forwarding enhanced application logs to Cortex Data Lake, turn on enhanced application logging globally, and then enable it on a per-security rule basis (using a Log Forwarding profile). The global setting is required and captures data for traffic that is not session-based (ARP requests, for example). The per-security policy rule setting is strongly recommended; the majority of enhanced application logs are gathered from the session-based traffic that your security policy rules enforce.
  1. Enhanced application logging requires a Cortex Data Lake subscription and User-ID is also recommended. Here are steps to get started with Cortex Data Lake and enable User-ID.
  2. To
    Enable Enhanced Application Logging
    on the firewall, select
    Device
    Setup
    Management
    Cortex Data Lake
    and edit Cortex Data Lake Settings.
  3. Continue to enable enhanced application logging for the security policy rules that control the traffic into which you want extended visibility.
    1. Select
      Objects
      Log Forwarding
      and
      Add
      or modify a log forwarding profile.
    2. Update the profile to
      Enable enhanced application logging to Cortex Data Lake (including traffic and url logs)
      .
      Notice that when you enable enhanced application logging in a Log Forwarding profile, match lists that specify the log types required for enhanced application logging are automatically added to the profile.
    3. Click
      OK
      to save the profile and continue to update as many profiles as needed.
    4. Ensure that the Log Forwarding profile that you’ve updated is attached to a security policy rule, to trigger log generation and forwarding for the traffic matched to the rule.
      1. Select
        Policies
        Security
        to view the profiles attached to each security policy rule.
      2. To update the log forwarding profile attached to a rule,
        Add
        or edit a rule and select
        Policies
        Security
        Actions
        Log Forwarding
        and select the Log Forwarding profile enabled with enhanced application logging.

IoT Security

One part of the firewall setup for IoT Security involves creating a Log Forwarding profile and applying it to Security policy rules. Although you can apply a profile to each rule individually, a simpler approach is to select a predefined Log Forwarding profile and apply it to as many rules as you like in bulk. The following steps explain this approach to adding the predefined Log Forwarding profile to Security policy rules in bulk.
To use this workflow, you must have already configured Security policy rules, enabled logging on the rules, and enabled logging services with enhanced application logging.
  1. Apply a Log Forwarding profile for IoT Security to Security policy rules.
    1. Log in to your next-generation firewall and select
      Policies
      Log Forwarding for Security Services
      in the Policy Optimizer section.
    2. To view all your Security policy rules—including those with a Log Forwarding profile and those without it—choose
      All
      for Log Forwarding Profile.
    3. Select the rules for which you want to forward logs to the logging service.
    4. Attach Log Forwarding Profile
      at the bottom of the page.
    5. To apply the default Log Forwarding profile to your rules, choose
      IoT Security Default Profile - EAL Enabled
      and
      OK
      .
      The default profile is preconfigured to provide IoT Security with all the log types it requires, including enhanced application logs (EALs).
      You don’t have to
      Enable Enhanced IoT Logging
      because enhanced application logging (EAL) is already enabled on IoT Security Default Profile.
      or
      To add the forwarding of EALs to an existing Log Forwarding profile that doesn’t already have it, choose it from the Log Forwarding Profile list, select
      Enable Enhanced IoT Logging
      and then
      OK
      .
      When you
      Enable Enhanced IoT Logging
      , PAN-OS updates the chosen Log Forwarding profile itself and thereby enables enhanced log forwarding on all rules that use the same Log Forwarding profile.
      PAN-OS adds the chosen Log Forwarding profile to those rules that don’t already have one and replaces previously assigned profiles with this one.
  2. Commit
    your changes.

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