Start by integrating the firewall into your network, segmenting your network into zones, setting up a basic security policy, assessing network traffic, and reviewing the best practices.

The prerequisites include minimum PAN-OS versions supported, supported NGFW models, ports, licenses, and other hard-stop requirements for using your NGFWs with Strata Cloud Manager.

Create device onboarding rules to easily associate your NGFWs with folders and then onboard your NGFWs, including ZTP onboarding and VM-Series NGFWs funded by Software NGFW Credits.

After you successfully onboard your NGFWs to Strata Cloud Manager, you have the option to configure and specify the general firewall management settings. The general settings include the following: domain name, login banner, certificates, time zones, locales, coordinates, and tunnel acceleration.

Define the general and VPN session settings, and as well the session timeout settings, for your firewall.

The local configuration management feature eliminates the need for context switching from central management to individual firewalls for managing local configurations.

After you complete these steps, you can start managing your NGFWs with Strata Cloud Manager.