Sorting and Filtering Security Policy Rules
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Next-Generation Firewall

Sorting and Filtering Security Policy Rules

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Sorting and Filtering Security Policy Rules

Use application usage information to prioritize which rules to migrate from port-based to app-based rules or to clean up (remove unused apps) first.
Where Can I Use This?What Do I Need?
  • Prisma Access
  • Next-Generation Firewall
This is a core Network Security feature for NGFWs and Prisma Access; no prerequisites needed.
You can filter Security policy rules to see the port-based rules, which are rules with no applications configured on them (PoliciesSecurityPolicy OptimizerNo App Specified). You can also filter to see the rules that have applications configured on them, but traffic only matches some of the configured applications—the rule is over-provisioned and includes applications that aren’t seen on the rule (PoliciesSecurityPolicy OptimizerUnused Apps). In addition, if you have a SaaS Security Inline license, you can use the New App Viewer to filter rules that have seen new App-ID Cloud Engine (ACE) applications (see the ACE documentation for how to do this). You can sort the filtered policy rules based on different types of statistics to help prioritize which rules to convert from port-based to application-based rules or to clean up first.
You can’t filter or sort rules in PoliciesSecurity because that would change the order of the policy rules in the rulebase. Filtering and sorting PoliciesSecurityPolicy OptimizerNo App Specified, PoliciesSecurityPolicy OptimizerUnused Apps, and PoliciesSecurityPolicy OptimizerNew App Viewer (if you have a SaaS Inline Security subscription) does not change the order of the rules in the rulebase.
You can sort the applications seen on the rule by all six of the Apps Seen statistics (Apps Seen is not updated in real time and takes an hour or longer to update, depending on the volume of traffic and number of rules).
  • Applications—Alphabetical by application name. If you configure specific ports or port ranges for a rule’s Service (the Service cannot be any), and there are standard (application default) ports for the application, and the configured ports don’t match the application-default ports, then a yellow, triangular warning icon appears next to the application.
  • Subcategory—Alphabetical by application subcategory, derived from the application content metadata.
  • Risk—According to the risk rating of the application.
  • First Seen—The first day the application was seen on the rule. The time stamp resolution is by the day only (not hourly).
  • Last Seen—The last day the application was seen on the rule. The time stamp resolution is by the day only (not hourly).
  • Traffic (30 days)—Traffic in bytes that matched the rule over the last 30 days is the default sorting method.
Set the Timeframe to display statistics for a particular time period—Anytime, the Past 7 days, the Past 15 days, or the Past 30 days.
Traffic (30 days) always displays only the last 30 days of traffic in bytes. Changing the Timeframe does not change the duration of the Traffic (30 days) bytes measurement.
Clicking the column header orders the display and clicking the same column again reverses the order. For example, click Risk to sort applications from low risk to high risk. Click Risk again to sort applications from high risk to low risk.
The firewall doesn’t report application usage statistics in real time for Policy Optimizer, so it isn’t a replacement for running reports.
  • The firewall updates Apps Allowed, Apps Seen, and the applications listed in Applications & Usage approximately every hour, not in real time. If there is a large amount of traffic or a large number of rules, updates may take longer. After you add an application to a rule, wait at least an hour before running Traffic logs to see the application’s log information.
    The firewall updates Apps Seen approximately every hour. However, if there is a large volume of application traffic or a large number of rules, it may take longer than an hour to update. After you add an application to a rule, wait at least an hour before running Traffic logs to see the application’s log information.
  • The firewall updates Days with No New Apps and also First Seen and Last Seen on Applications & Usage once per day, at midnight device time.
  • For rules with large numbers of applications seen, it may take longer to process application usage statistics.
  • For Security policy rulebases with large numbers of rules that have many applications, it may take longer to process application usage statistics.
  • For firewalls managed by Panorama, application usage data is visible only for rules Panorama pushes to the firewalls, not for rules configured locally on individual firewalls.