Secure Inbound Access to Remote Networks (Cloud Management)
Secure access to internet applications that are hosted
at remote networks sites.
If your organization hosts internet-accessible
applications at a remote network site, providing access to those
applications exposes your network to all the threats the open internet
poses. Here’s how you can use Prisma Access to secure access to
these applications.
Set It Up — Secure Inbound Access
Here’s how to make an application accessible
from a remote network site to all internet-connected users (not
just Prisma Access users).
- If you haven’t already, review the inbound access remote network guidelines.
- Gather the application details you’ll need to get started.Make a list of the applications to which you want to provide access, and assign a private IP, port number, and protocol combination for each application. If you use the same IP address for multiple applications, the port/protocol combination must be unique for each application; if you use the same port/protocol combination for multiple applications, each IP address must be unique.
- Log in to Cloud Managed Prisma Access.Go to .
- Choose theNumber of Public IPsyou want to use for the applications, either five or ten.Each public IP allocation takes bandwidth from your Remote Networks license, in addition to the license cost for the remote network. 5 IP addresses take 150 MB from your remote network license allocation, and 10 IP addresses take 300 MB.
- Add theInbound Access Applicationsfor which you want to secure access.Add the associated private IP / port number / protocol combination for the application.
- Decide how you want to map applications to the public IP addresses.By default, Prisma Access assigns the public IP addresses to the applications you specify, and multiple applications can be assigned to a single IP address. If you need to map a single application to a single public IP address, you canAssign Dedicated IPduring system configuration. You can configure up to 100 inbound applications for each group of provisioned public IP addresses (either 5 or 10).
- Finish setting up the inbound access remote network as you would a regular remote network site.
Guidelines
— Secure Inbound Access
Consider these guidelines to configure a remote network
to use secure inbound access.
Use these guidelines to configure a remote network to
use secure inbound access:
- The following locations are supported:
- Australia Southeast
- Belgium
- Brazil South
- Canada East
- Finland
- Germany Central
- Hong Kong
- India West
- Japan Central
- Netherlands Central
- Singapore
- Switzerland
- Taiwan
- UK
- US Central
- US East
- US Northwest
- US Southeast
- US Southwest
- You cannot modify an existing remote network to provide secure inbound access; instead, create a new remote network.
- The inbound access feature is not available on remote networks that use ECMP load balancing.
- Application port translation is not supported.
- Do not use remote network inbound access with traffic forwarding rules with service connections.
- Outbound traffic originating at the branch is not allowed on the inbound remote network.
- User-ID and application authentication are not supported.
- Prisma Access enforces the following rate limiting thresholds to provide flood protection, and measures the rate in connections per second (CPS):Flood Protection TypeAlarm Rate in CPSActivate Rate in CPS10000150002020
- Remote networks that are configured for secure inbound access can only be used for that purpose. If you require outbound access as well as inbound access for a remote network site, create two remote network sites in the same location—one for inbound access and one for outbound access—as shown in the following figure. In this example, User 1 uses Remote Network 1 for inbound access to www.example.com, while User 2 uses Remote Network 2 for outbound internet access from the remote network location.
When to Use It — Secure Inbound Access
Prisma Access for remote networks allows outbound access
to internet-connected applications. In some cases, your organization
might have a requirement to provide inbound access to an application
or website at a remote site, and provide secure access to that application
for any internet-connected user—not just users who are protected
by Prisma Access. For example:
- You host a public-facing custom application or portal at a remote network site.
- You have a lab or staging environment for which you want to provide secure access.
- You have a need to provide access to an application or website to users who are not members or an organizational domain.
- You have IoT devices that require access to an internal asset management, tracking, or status application.
To do this, create a remote network that allows secure inbound
access. If you require outbound access as well as inbound access
for a remote network site, you’ll need to create two remote network
sites in the same location—one for inbound access and one for outbound
access.
While this solution can provide access for up to 50,000
concurrent inbound sessions per remote network, Palo Alto Networks
does not recommend using this solution to provide access to a high-volume
application or website.
Examples — Secure Inbound Access
Here are inbound access examples, along with the IP addresses
that Prisma Access assigns in various deployments.
Here are inbound access examples, along with the IP
addresses that Prisma Access assigns in various deployments.
The following example shows a sample configuration to enable
inbound access for an application (www.example.com) at a remote
network site. You assign an IP address of 10.10.10.2, a port of
443, and a protocol of TCP to the application. You then enter these
values in Prisma Access when you configure inbound access. After you
save and commit your changes, Prisma Access assigns a public IP
address to the application you defined, in this case 52.1.1.1.
Prisma Access performs source network address translation (source
NAT) on the packets by default. If the IPSec-capable device at your
remote network site is capable of performing symmetric return (such
as a Palo Alto Networks next-generation firewall), you can disable
source NAT.
The following figure shows the traffic flow from users to applications.
Since source NAT is enabled, the source IP address in the routing
table changes from the IP of the user’s device (34.1.1.1) to the
remote network’s EBGP routing address. (172.1.1.1).
The following figure shows the return path of traffic with source
NAT enabled.
If you disable source NAT, Prisma Access still performs destination
NAT, but the source IP address of the request is unchanged.
For return traffic, SNAT is disabled, and the destination address
for all routing tables is user’s IP address (34.1.1.1).
