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    3. Features Introduced in PAN-OS 11.2
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    Networking Features

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    Networking Features

    What new Networking features are in PAN-OS 11.2?
    The following section describes new networking features introduced in PAN-OS 11.2.

    Support for HTTP/2 Networking

    August 2025
    • Introduced in PAN-OS 11.2.8.
    The NGFW management plane now supports the HTTP/2 network protocol, in addition to the currently supported HTTP/1.1 network protocol. HTTP/2 enables more efficient web communication by utilizing features like multiplexing, header compression, server push functionality, and prioritization support, leading to improved page load times and overall performance. When you manually enable HTTP/2 through the CLI, HTTP/1.1 is automatically disabled and includes no fallback capability. The lack of fallback capability is to maintain compliance with certain security safeguards (for example, to protect against request smuggling, response queue poisoning, other HTTP/1.1 downgrade-related risks, and mandated encryption through TLS), as well as various Federal standards. As such, you may need to specify which protocol to use in environments with compatibility issues or if there are security concerns requiring specific mitigation strategies.

    Preventing DoS Attacks with Enhanced DoS and PBP Configurations

    September 2024
    • Introduced in PAN-OS 11.2.3.
    Due to the large number of source IP addresses on the internet, best practice has been to configure DoS Protection policy rules using IP addresses that you classify based only on their destination IP address (destination-ip-only). This method eliminates the need to account for every source IP address that has the potential to connect to your internet-facing zones. However, this also causes your firewalls to unintentionally block traffic that isn’t a threat or, worse, it can leave your firewalls exposed.
    With enhanced DoS protection and packet buffer protection (PBP), you can now configure your edge zones (those that connect directly to the internet) using both the destination and source IP addresses (source-ip-only and src-dest-ip-both). This helps you to block DoS attacks more efficiently and without accidentally blocking safe traffic from reaching your network.
    By using the software and hardware block tables, you're now able to more effectively protect against these attacks.
    We introduced the following improvements to help protect your Palo Alto Networks firewalls from DoS attacks:
    EnhancementBenefit
    Firewalls can now block source IP addresses using your software and hardware ACL blocking settings by classifying the IP address based on only the destination IP address method.
    You can now configure a DoS policy rule with a destination IP address only classification for internet-facing zones. This method strengthens the protection of your firewall from DoS attacks that originate from the internet.
    Improved packet buffer protection, which monitors session latency and buffer utilization concurrently and activates mitigation when exceeding either the latency or buffer threshold.
    You can now configure both the buffer-based and latency-based activation settings at the same time while configuring packet buffer protection. This protects your firewall resources by activating mitigation when they exceed either latency or buffer thresholds.
    Ability to increase or decrease the software block duration setting for software block table entries.
    Increased efficiency for software-based firewalls and, for hardware products, the software block table acts as additional protection along with the hardware block table.
    SNMP support for buffer and on-chip packet descriptor utilization.
    You can now monitor software tags (on-chip descriptors), buffer utilization (in percentage), and firewall resources from your SNMP server.

    IPv6 Support on Cellular Interface for PA-415-5G Firewall

    September 2024
    • Introduced in PAN-OS 11.2.3.
    The PA-415-5G firewall supports dynamic IPv6 addressing and dual-stack networking on a cellular interface. This is especially helpful when your cellular operator provides only IPv6 services or your location requires IPv6 connectivity. The cellular interface supports dynamically obtaining an IPv6 prefix from the 5G provider network.

    Encrypted DNS for DNS Proxy and the Management Interface

    July 2024
    • Introduced in PAN-OS 11.2.1.
    When you use DNS on your operating systems and web browsers, you can encrypt the DNS traffic to help maintain privacy and protect traffic from meddler (MitM) attacks. If you configure your PAN-OS firewall to act as a DNS proxy, you can enable encrypted DNS and configure the DNS proxy to accept one or more types of DNS communication from the client: DNS-over-HTTP (DoH), DNS-over-TLS (DoT), or cleartext.
    To enforce encryption, you specify the type of encryption that the DNS proxy should use to communicate with DNS servers. If a DNS server rejects encrypted DNS or the DNS proxy does not receive a response from the primary or secondary server within the timeout period, you can configure the DNS proxy to fall back to unencrypted DNS communications with the server.
    Additionally, you can enable encrypted DNS on the management interface of the firewall so that DNS requests use DoH, DoT, or fall back to unencrypted DNS.

    Post Quantum Hybrid Key Exchange VPN

    May 2024
    • Introduced in PAN-OS 11.2.
    Post Quantum Hybrid Key Exchange VPN extends your PAN-OS post-quantum VPN security by adding the ability to create post-quantum cryptographic (PQC) hybrid keys using the NIST round 3 and round 4 cryptographic suites. You can future proof your VPN encryption keys and safeguard against harvest now, decrypt later (HNDL) attacks by combining multiple key exchange mechanisms (KEM) with full crypto agility.
    The hybrid key technology is based on RFC 9242 and RFC 9370, and allows you to add up to seven additional key exchange mechanisms (KEM). With each additional KEM added, the level of quantum resistance increases as the attacker needs all used KEMs to become vulnerable before the key can be broken. You can apply the hybrid key technology to both IKEv2's key exchange and IPSec's rekey key exchange to ensure all VPN key exchanges are quantum resistant.
    To provide in-depth quantum defense, you can also enable both of its post quantum VPN technologies together. If both the RFC 8784 post quantum pre-shared key (released with PAN-OS 11.1) and this new PQ Hybrid Key feature are enabled, PAN-OS generates the hybrid key and then mixes in the static pre-shared key.

    Increased Maximum Number of Security Rules for the PA-3400 Series Firewall

    May 2024
    • Introduced in PAN-OS 11.2.
    (PA-3410 and PA-3420 firewalls only) The maximum number of security rules supported has increased from 2,500 to 10,000.

    Authenticate LSVPN Satellite with Serial Number and IP Method

    February 2024
    • Introduced in PAN-OS 10.2.8 and later 10.2 releases.
    May 2024
    • Available in PAN-OS 11.2.0 and later releases.
    • Available in PAN-OS 11.1.3 and later releases.
    Beginning with PAN-OS 10.1 and later releases, we support Username/password and Satellite Cookie Authentication method for a satellite to authenticate to the portal. This method requires user intervention to get satellites authenticated by a portal that prevents automating the deployment of remote satellites and adds difficulty and complexity for the administrators to perform software upgrade and deploy new firewalls.
    To remove the user intervention while onboarding a remote satellite and to enable automating the deployment of remote satellites, we introduce a new authentication method called Serial number and IP address Authentication. You can now onboard a remote satellite using the combination of serial number and IP address in addition to the username/password and satellite cookie authentication method. This authentication method reduces the complexity by enabling you to deploy new firewalls without manual intervention.
    However, Username/password and Satellite Cookie Authentication remains as a default authentication method.
    Before enabling the Serial number and IP address Authentication method, configure the satellite serial number at the portal as one of the authentication verification conditions.
    • Configure the satellite IP address as an IP allow list at the portal using the set global-protect global-protect-portal portal <portal_name> satellite-serialnumberip-auth satellite-ip-allowlist entry <value> command to add a satellite device IP address on the GlobalProtect portal.
    • Enable the Serial number and IP address Authentication method using the set global-protect satellite-serialnumberip-auth enable CLI command. After you enable this method, the satellite continuously attempts to authenticate with the portal for the configured retry interval (in seconds) after power-on until the portal explicitly instructs the satellite to stop.
    Upon successfully configuring a satellite device allowed IP address list per portal, and configuring the satellite serial number on the GlobalProtect portal, the satellite can initiate the connection to the portal.

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