Map Users to Groups

Add an LDAP server profile.

The profile defines how the firewall connects to the directory servers from which it collects group mapping information.

If you create multiple group mapping configurations that use the same base distinguished name (DN) or LDAP server, the group mapping configurations cannot contain overlapping groups (for example, the Include list for one group mapping configuration cannot contain a group that is also in a different group mapping configuration).

Select
Device
Server Profiles
LDAP
and
Add
a server profile.
Enter a
Profile Name
to identify the server profile.
Add
the LDAP servers. You can add up to four servers to the profile but they must be the same
Type
. For each server, enter a
Name
(to identify the server),
LDAP Server
IP address or FQDN, and server
Port
(default 389).
Select the server
Type
.
Based on your selection (such as
active-directory
), the firewall automatically populates the correct LDAP attributes in the group mapping settings. However, if you customized your LDAP schema, you might need to modify the default settings.
For the
Base DN
, enter the Distinguished Name (DN) of the LDAP tree location where you want the firewall to start searching for user and group information.
For the
Bind DN
,
Password
and
Confirm Password
, enter the authentication credentials for binding to the LDAP tree.
The
Bind DN
can be a fully qualified LDAP name (such as
cn=administrator,cn=users,dc=acme,dc=local
) or a user principal name (such as
administrator@acme.local
).
Enter the
Bind Timeout
and
Search Timeout
in seconds (default is 30 for both).
Click
OK
to save the server profile.

Configure the server settings in a group mapping configuration.

Select
Device
User Identification
Group Mapping Settings
.
Add
the group mapping configuration.
Enter a unique
Name
to identify the group mapping configuration.
Select the LDAP
Server Profile
you just created.
(
Optional
) Specify the
Update Interval
(in seconds). Enter a value (range is 60—86400, default is 3600) based on how often the firewall should be check the LDAP source for updates to the group mapping configuration. If the LDAP source contains many groups, a value that is too low may not allow enough time to map all the groups.
(
Optional
) By default, the
User Domain
field is blank: the firewall automatically detects the domain names for Active Directory (AD) servers. If you enter a value, it overrides any domain names that the firewall retrieves from the LDAP source. For most configurations, if you need to enter a value, enter the NetBIOS domain name (for example,
example
not
example.com
).
If you use Global Catalog, entering a value replaces the domain name for all users and groups from this server, including those from other domains.
(
Optional
) To filter the groups that the firewall tracks for group mapping, in the Group Objects section, enter a
Search Filter
(LDAP query) and
Object Class
(group definition).
(
Optional
) To filter the users that the firewall tracks for group mapping, in the User Objects section, enter a
Search Filter
(LDAP query), and
Object Class
(user definition).
Make sure the group mapping configuration is
Enabled
(default is enabled).

(Optional)

Define User and Group Attributes to collect for user and group mapping. This step is required if you want to map users based on directory attributes other than the domain.

If your User-ID sources only send the username and the username is unique across the organization, select
Device
User Identification
User Mapping
Setup
and
Edit
the Setup section to
Allow matching usernames without domains
to allow the firewall to check if unique usernames collected from the LDAP server during group mapping match the users associated with a policy and avoid overwriting the domain in your source profile.
Before enabling this option, configure group mapping for the LDAP group containing the User-ID source (such as GlobalProtect or Authentication Portal) that collects the mappings. After you commit the changes, the User-ID source populates the usernames without domains. Only usernames collected during group mapping can be matched without a domain. If your User-ID sources send user information in multiple formats and you enable this option, verify that the attributes collected by the firewall have a unique prefix. To ensure users are identified correctly if you enable this option, all attributes for group mapping should be unique. If the username is not unique, the firewall logs an error in the Debug logs.
Select
Device
User Identification
Group Mapping Settings
Add
User and Group Attributes
User Attributes
and enter the
Directory Attribute
you want to collect for user identification. Specify a
Primary Username
to identify the user on the firewall and to represent the user in reports and logs that will override any other format the firewall receives from the User-ID source.
When you select the Server Profile
Type
, the firewall auto-populates the values for the user and group attributes. Based on the user information that your User-ID sources send, you may need to configure the correct attributes:
User Principal Name (UPN)
:
userPrincipalName
NetBios Name
:
sAMAccountName
Email ID
: Directory attribute for that email
Multiple formats
: Retrieve the user mapping attributes from the user directory before enabling your User-ID sources.
If you do not specify a primary username, the firewall uses the following default values for each server profile type:
Attribute	Active Directory	Novell eDirectory or Sun ONE Directory Server
Primary Username	sAMAccountName	uid
E-Mail	mail	mail
Alternate Username 1	userPrincipalName	None.
Group Name	name	cn
Group Member	member	member
(Optional)
Specify an
E-Mail
address format and up to three
Alternate Username
formats.
Select
Device
User Identification
Group Mapping Settings
Add
User and Group Attributes
Group Attributes
and specify the
Group Name
,
Group Member
, and
E-Mail
address formats.
You must commit before the firewall collects the directory attributes from the LDAP server.

Limit which groups will be available in policy rules.

Required only if you want to limit policy rules to specific groups. The combined maximum for the

Group Include List

and

Custom Group

list is 640 entries per group mapping configuration. Each entry can be a single group or a list of groups. By default, if you don’t specify groups, all groups are available in policy rules.

Any custom groups you create will also be available in the Allow List of authentication profiles (Configure an Authentication Profile and Sequence).

Add existing groups from the directory service:
Select
Group Include List
.
Select the Available Groups you want to appear in policy rules and add (
) them to the Included Groups.
If you want to base policy rules on user attributes that don’t match existing user groups, create custom groups based on LDAP filters:
Select
Custom Group
and
Add
the group.
Enter a group
Name
that is unique in the group mapping configuration for the current firewall or virtual system.
If the
Name
has the same value as the Distinguished Name (DN) of an existing AD group domain, the firewall uses the custom group in all references to that name (such as in policies and logs).
Specify an
LDAP Filter
of up to 2,048 UTF-8 characters and click
OK
.
The firewall doesn’t validate LDAP filters, so it’s up to you to ensure they are accurate.
To minimize the performance impact on the LDAP directory server, use only indexed attributes in the filter.
Click
OK
to save your changes.
You must commit before custom groups will be available in policies and objects.

Commit

your changes.

You must commit before you can use custom groups in policies and objects and before the firewall can collect the attributes from the LDAP server.

After configuring the firewall to retrieve group mapping information from an LDAP server, but before configuring policies based on the groups it retrieves, the best practice is to either wait for the firewall to refresh its group mappings cache or refresh the cache manually. To verify which groups you can currently use in policies, access the firewall CLI and run the

show user group

command. To determine when the firewall will next refresh the group mappings cache, run the

show user group-mapping statistics

command and check the

Next Action

. To manually refresh the cache, run the

debug user-id refresh group-mapping all

command.

Verify that the user and group mapping has correctly identified users.

Select

Device

User Identification

Group Mapping

Group Include List

to confirm the firewall has fetched all of the groups.

To verify that all of the user attributes have been correctly captured, use the following CLI command:

show user user-attributes user all

The normalized format for the User Principal Name (UPN), primary username, email attributes, and any configured alternate usernames display for all users:

admin@PA-VM-8.1> show user user-attributes user all

Primary: nam\sam-user   Email: sam-user@nam.com

Alt User Names:1) nam.com\sam-user

2) nam\sam-user-upn

3) sam-user-upn@nam.local

4) sam-user@nam.com

Verify that the usernames are correctly displayed in the

Source User

column under

Monitor

Logs

Traffic

.

Verify that the users are mapped to the correct usernames in the

User Provided by Source

column under

Monitor

Logs

User-ID

.