Use a device onboarding rule to automate parts of the Palo Alto Networks NGFW onboarding to Strata Cloud Manager whether you are manually onboarding Palo Alto Networks NGFW or onboarding using Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP). This allows you to associate the firewall with a folder and apply predefined configuration when the firewall first connects to Strata Cloud Manager. You can create multiple device onboarding rules to define different match criteria that apply to different Palo Alto Networks NGFW. Device onboarding rules are designed to simplify and greatly reduce the time spent onboarding new Palo Alto Networks NGFW at scale and ensure the correct configuration is applied to newly onboarded Palo Alto Networks NGFW.

Device onboarding rules use

Match Criteria

to define which Palo Alto Networks NGFW the rule applies to. This includes information such as the firewall

Model

and any

Labels

applied to the firewall during the onboarding process. You can define the rule

Action

to specify a

Target Folder

one or more Palo Alto Networks NGFW are added to and the

Snippet Association

define any firewall-specific snippet configurations that need to be applied. Additionally, if you use SD-WAN or Cloud Identity Engine (CIE) you can also define and apply those necessary configurations in the device onboarding rule to ensure all required connectivity and user-based visibility and policy enforcement immediately after onboarding.

You can now configure a web proxy on the firewalls you're managing with Strata Cloud Manager. That means that if you plan to use an NGFW as a proxy device to secure your network, you can now configure your proxy settings across your deployment from a simple, unified management interface.

This interface includes an in-app proxy auto-configuration (PAC) file editor so that you can edit your proxy settings and modify your PAC file all in one place whenever network changes arise.

The web proxy supports two methods for routing traffic:

You can push web proxy configurations to the following platforms:

Get clarity on the configuration elements that are applicable for a particular scope and whether they are inherited from a common configuration scope or generated by the system.

The color-coded configuration indicators help you understand where the configurations are inherited from, and also visually distinguish the object types for easy scanning.

Enable integration between Prisma Access deployments and on-premises NGFWs deployed as external gateways.

In the Prisma Access configuration, when setting up the hybrid Prisma Access deployment with security service edge (SSE) and on-premises NGFWs, you can now configure the NGFWs as external gateways by referencing the NGFWs' GlobalProtect gateway IP addresses. This eliminates manual configuration and minimizes the risk of misconfiguration.

The Strata Cloud Manager Command Center

is your new NetSec homepage; it is your first stop to assess the health, security, and efficiency of your network. In a single view, the command center shows you all users and IoT devices accessing the internet, SaaS applications, and private apps, and how Prisma Access, your NGFWs, and your security services are protecting them.

The command center provides you with four different views, each with its own tracked data, metrics, and actionable insights to examine and interact with:

Summary:
A high-level look at all your network and security infrastructure. Monitor the traffic between your sources (users, IoT) and applications (private, SaaS), and see metrics onboarded security subscriptions.
Threats:
Dig deeper into anomalies on your network and block threats that are impacting your users. Review the traffic inspected on your network and see how threats are being detected and blocked around the clock by your Cloud-Delivered Security subscriptions.
Operational Health:
Review incidents of degraded user experience on your network and see root-cause analysis of the issues and remediation recommendations.
Data Security:
Find high-risk sensitive data and update data profiles to further secure your network. Review the sensitive data flow across your network and SaaS applications.

When the command center surfaces an issue through one of these views that you should address or investigate (an anomaly, a security gap, a degraded user experience, something that impacts the security and health of your network), it provides a path to where you can take actions to further secure your network.

For example, if you are looking at the Threats view and would like more information about Command and Control threats on your network, you can click C2 in the Blocked and Alerted Threats table and jump to Activity Insights, where you can drill down and investigate details about all the Command and Control threats, such as the threat name, severity, and change the action from Alert to Drop.

Activity Insights gives you an in-depth view of your network activities across Prisma Access and NGFW deployments. Activity Insights brings together visualization, monitoring, and reporting capabilities from these dashboards and provides all this data to you in a single, consolidated view.

Activity Insights pairs with the new Strata Cloud Manager Command Center home page; for anomalies, security gaps, degraded user experiences, impacts on security and health of your network that the home page surfaces, you can drill down into Activity Insights and other dashboards to investigate and assess next steps.

Activity Insights has these different tabs.

Each of these tabs provides an unified view of network data in relation to applications, users, threats, URLs, and network usage. You can also view the performance of Prisma SD-WAN applications with details on health score over a time range, transaction statistics, and bandwidth utilization metrics. The dashboard has advanced filters on these tabs to help you focus on the security aspects that matter to your deployment.

The advanced reporting functionality enables you to

download, share, and schedule reports

that cover the data in the Overview tab. The report presents data separately for each filter applied in Activity Insights.

In Identity and Access Management, the

View Only Administrator

role is extended to include support for the Cortex Data Lake application.

You can use the Trusted IP List to restrict access to Strata Cloud Manager by specifying IP addresses that are allowed on a per tenant basis. This feature is available in

Strata Cloud Manager

Settings

Trusted IP List

.