NSE4 Practice Test 2 — 30 Questions

Question 1

A FortiGate administrator configures SSL deep inspection on a policy using a self-signed CA certificate. Users report that they see a certificate warning in their browsers when accessing HTTPS sites. What is the most effective solution to eliminate these warnings?

Choose an answer to begin — your selection is scored in the full session.

Accepted Answer

Install the FortiGate's CA certificate on all client machines in the trusted root store. The certificate warning occurs because the browser does not trust the FortiGate's self-signed CA certificate. By installing the FortiGate's CA certificate into the trusted root store on each client machine, the browser will trust certificates signed by that CA, eliminating the warning. This is the standard approach for self-signed CA certificates in SSL deep inspection environments.

Answer

Use a publicly trusted CA certificate for the FortiGate

Answer

Disable deep inspection and use certificate inspection only

Answer

Add the websites to the exemption list in the SSL/SSH profile

Question 2

An administrator configures SSL deep inspection with a CA certificate. Users accessing an internal site (internal.company.com) receive a certificate error. The administrator wants to avoid the error without disabling deep inspection. What should be done?

Accepted Answer

Add internal.company.com to the SSL/SSH inspection exemption list. Adding internal.company.com to the SSL/SSH inspection exemption list tells the FortiGate to bypass deep inspection for that specific site, allowing the internal CA certificate to be used without triggering a certificate error. This avoids the error while keeping deep inspection enabled for all other traffic, which is the administrator's goal.

Answer

Replace the CA certificate with a self-signed one

Answer

Use certificate inspection instead of deep inspection

Answer

Disable certificate validation in the deep inspection profile

Question 3

An administrator wants to block users from uploading sensitive documents through webmail. Which security profile should be configured on the FortiGate to achieve this goal?

Accepted Answer

Data Leak Prevention (DLP). Data Leak Prevention (DLP) is the correct security profile because it is specifically designed to inspect content (e.g., file names, patterns, or keywords) in traffic such as webmail uploads and block sensitive data from leaving the network. DLP sensors can be configured with rules to match patterns like credit card numbers, social security numbers, or custom keywords, and then take action such as blocking or logging the session.

Answer

Antivirus

Answer

Application control

Answer

Web filter

Question 4

A company has a web server in the DMZ that must be accessible from the internet on both HTTP and HTTPS. The admin configures a VIP to map the public IP to the server's private IP. However, external users can only reach HTTP. What is the MOST likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The VIP is configured for port forwarding only for HTTP (port 80). The VIP (Virtual IP) configuration on a FortiGate maps a public IP and port to a private IP and port. If the VIP is configured only for port forwarding on TCP 80 (HTTP), it will not translate traffic for TCP 443 (HTTPS). This is the most likely cause because external users can reach HTTP but not HTTPS, indicating the VIP itself is not handling HTTPS traffic.

Answer

The web server is not listening on HTTPS

Answer

The VIP is using overload mode instead of one-to-one

Answer

The firewall policy allowing traffic to the VIP only permits HTTP

Question 5

A FortiGate administrator is configuring a hub-and-spoke IPsec VPN. The hub has multiple Phase 2 selectors for each spoke. What is the recommended way to simplify configuration on the hub when adding new spokes?

Accepted Answer

Use a single Phase 2 selector with 0.0.0.0/0.0.0.0 for both local and remote. Using a single Phase 2 selector with 0.0.0.0/0.0.0.0 for both local and remote simplifies hub configuration because it allows the hub to accept traffic for any subnet from any spoke without needing to define specific selectors per spoke. This is recommended in hub-and-spoke topologies to avoid manual updates when adding new spokes, as the hub's Phase 2 configuration becomes generic and automatically matches all spoke traffic.

Answer

Configure each spoke in a separate VDOM

Answer

Use aggressive mode for Phase 1

Answer

Use policy-based VPN instead of route-based

Question 6

A FortiGate administrator is configuring IPsec VPN between two sites. The Phase 1 negotiation fails with the error 'no proposal chosen'. Which two settings must match on both VPN peers?

Accepted Answer

Encryption algorithm and authentication algorithm. The 'no proposal chosen' error during IPsec Phase 1 negotiation indicates that the two VPN peers cannot agree on a common set of security parameters for the IKE (Internet Key Exchange) SA. The encryption algorithm (e.g., AES-256, 3DES) and authentication algorithm (e.g., SHA-256, MD5) are mandatory components of the Phase 1 proposal; if they do not match on both peers, the IKE negotiation fails immediately.

Answer

Pre-shared key and local ID

Answer

Dead peer detection interval and retry count

Answer

Remote gateway IP and Phase 2 selectors

Question 7

An admin wants to block all traffic from a specific geographic region. Which address object type should be used in the firewall policy source?

Accepted Answer

Geography. FortiGate firewalls include a built-in Geography address object type that allows policies to match traffic based on the source or destination IP address's registered country or region. This object uses GeoIP databases to classify IP addresses, enabling administrators to block or allow traffic from entire geographic areas without needing to manually list individual subnets or ranges.

Answer

FQDN

Answer

Subnet

Answer

IP range

Question 8

An administrator is configuring a VIP to map a public IP to an internal server. The server hosts both HTTP and HTTPS services. The admin creates a VIP with port forwarding for port 80 to internal port 80, and another VIP for port 443 to internal port 443. Both VIPs use the same public IP. Users can access HTTP but not HTTPS. What is the most likely issue?

Accepted Answer

The firewall policy for HTTPS traffic is missing or has incorrect destination. The most likely issue is that the firewall policy for HTTPS traffic is missing or has an incorrect destination. Even with a correctly configured VIP, traffic must be allowed by a firewall policy that matches the destination (the VIP's public IP and port 443) and the action must be set to ACCEPT. Without this policy, the FortiGate will drop the HTTPS packets, while HTTP traffic works because its corresponding policy exists.

Answer

The server's HTTPS service is not running

Answer

VIPs cannot share the same public IP address

Answer

The HTTPS VIP is configured with the wrong internal port

Question 9

An administrator sees the following CLI output when checking an IPS sensor: 'config ips sensor edit test config entries edit 1 set severity medium set action block set target default end'. However, attacks with severity medium are still passing. The IPS sensor is applied to a policy with flow-based inspection. What is the likely issue?

Accepted Answer

The IPS sensor rule has 'target' set to 'default' which may not apply to the traffic direction. The 'set target default' command in the IPS sensor configuration means the rule is applied to traffic that matches the default target, which is typically the 'client-to-server' direction. If the attack traffic is flowing in the opposite direction (server-to-client), the rule will not trigger. This is a common misconfiguration when using flow-based inspection, where the target direction must match the actual traffic flow for the action to be enforced.

Answer

The IPS sensor is not enabled in the policy

Answer

The FortiGate needs a FortiSandbox for IPS to work

Answer

The severity level is set too high

Question 10

An administrator configures a DLP profile to detect credit card numbers in email traffic. The DLP rule uses a regular expression. However, the DLP sensor is not triggering on emails containing credit card numbers. What is a likely reason?

Accepted Answer

SSL deep inspection is not enabled on the policy. DLP sensors inspecting email traffic require SSL deep inspection to decrypt the SMTP traffic if it is encrypted via TLS (STARTTLS). Without SSL deep inspection enabled on the firewall policy, the FortiGate cannot see the plaintext content of encrypted emails, so the DLP regular expression will never match credit card numbers. This is the most likely reason the DLP sensor is not triggering.

Answer

The regular expression is case-sensitive and credit card numbers are lowercase

Answer

The DLP sensor is configured to 'monitor' only

Answer

The DLP profile is applied to the inbound policy only

Question 11

An admin configures a VIP to map public IP 203.0.113.10 to internal server 10.0.1.100 on port 80. External users can reach the server via the public IP. However, internal users cannot access the server using the public IP. What is the MOST likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The VIP does not have NAT reflection enabled. The most likely cause is that NAT reflection (also known as hairpin NAT or NAT loopback) is not enabled on the VIP. When an internal user sends a request to the public IP (203.0.113.10), the FortiGate must translate the source IP back to the internal network and loop the traffic back through the VIP to reach the internal server (10.0.1.100). Without NAT reflection, the FortiGate drops the packet because it sees the destination as the VIP's public IP but the source is from the same internal subnet, causing asymmetric routing or no reply.

Answer

The server is not responding to internal requests

Answer

The firewall policy for internal to VIP is missing

Answer

The VIP is configured on a different interface

Question 12

A FortiGate with multiple VDOMs is configured for FSSO with Active Directory polling. Users in VDOM1 are authenticated correctly, but users in VDOM2 are not. What should be checked FIRST?

Accepted Answer

The FSSO collector agent settings for VDOM2. In a multi-VDOM FSSO setup with Active Directory polling, each VDOM requires its own FSSO collector agent configuration to map domain users to the correct VDOM. Since VDOM1 works but VDOM2 does not, the most likely cause is that the FSSO collector agent settings for VDOM2 are missing or misconfigured, such as the collector agent IP, port, or shared secret. This is the first item to verify because FSSO polling relies on per-VDOM agent communication to deliver user-to-IP mappings.

Answer

The DNS resolution for the domain controller in VDOM2

Answer

The firewall policy ordering in VDOM2

Answer

The LDAP server configuration in VDOM2

Question 13

A client connects to a FortiGate SSL VPN in web mode. The user can access internal web applications but cannot ping or RDP to servers. The administrator wants to allow these services. What must be changed?

Accepted Answer

Change the SSL VPN type from web mode to tunnel mode. Web mode SSL VPN only provides application-layer access through a web portal, typically using HTTP/HTTPS. It does not create a virtual network interface on the client, so lower-layer protocols like ICMP (ping) and RDP (TCP/3389) cannot be routed through the VPN. To support these services, the VPN must operate in tunnel mode, which assigns a virtual IP to the client and creates a full Layer 3 tunnel, allowing all IP-based traffic to traverse the FortiGate.

Answer

Enable split tunneling on the SSL VPN portal

Answer

Add the server IP addresses to the portal's bookmarks

Answer

Configure a firewall policy allowing the client's IP to the servers

Question 14

An admin configures a policy-based NAT rule (central SNAT) to translate source IPs from 10.0.0.0/24 to a dynamic IP pool of 203.0.113.1-203.0.113.10 with overload enabled. Users report that some connections are dropped. What is the MOST likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The port range for each IP in the pool is exhausted. With overload enabled (Port Address Translation), the firewall translates multiple internal IPs to a single public IP by using unique source ports. Each public IP can handle up to 65,535 ports, but the actual usable port range is often smaller due to reserved ports and system limits. When all ports on all IPs in the pool are consumed, new connections are dropped because no port can be allocated for the translation.

Answer

The firewall policy has 'set nat enable' disabled

Answer

The route to the internet is missing

Answer

The pool does not have enough IPs to cover all users

Question 15

A FortiGate admin wants to ensure that traffic from the internal network (192.168.1.0/24) to the internet uses a specific public IP (203.0.113.10) for source NAT, and that the same public IP is also used for inbound connections to an internal web server (10.0.1.10) on port 443. Which TWO configurations are required? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Configure an IP Pool with type Overload using 203.0.113.10. An IP Pool with type Overload allows multiple internal hosts to share a single public IP (203.0.113.10) for source NAT when traffic goes to the internet. This is the standard method for PAT (Port Address Translation) in FortiGate, enabling many-to-one NAT.

Answer

Create a firewall policy with source NAT enabled and the IP Pool selected

Answer

Configure Central SNAT with the same public IP

Question 16

A FortiGate administrator needs to allow inbound HTTPS traffic to a web server located at 192.168.1.10. The public IP is 203.0.113.5. The administrator wants to translate the destination to the internal server and also translate the source port to a fixed range for logging purposes. Which THREE configuration elements are required?

Accepted Answer

Create a Virtual IP (VIP) mapping 203.0.113.5 to 192.168.1.10. To allow inbound HTTPS to an internal server with destination NAT, a Virtual IP (VIP) mapping 203.0.113.5 to 192.168.1.10 is required. A firewall policy from WAN to DMZ allowing HTTPS and referencing the VIP as destination permits the traffic and applies the NAT. Additionally, to translate the source port to a fixed range for logging, an IP pool with fixed port range is needed. Thus, options A, B, and D are all required.

Answer

Configure Central SNAT to translate the server's source IP for return traffic

Answer

Enable 'allow source port translation' on the VIP

Question 17

You run 'diagnose sys session filter dport 443' and see the following output:
proto=6 proto_state=01 duration=3600 expire=3599
What does this indicate about the session?

Accepted Answer

The session is a TCP session to port 443 that has been active for 3600 seconds and will expire in 3599 seconds.. The output shows 'proto=6', which is the protocol number for TCP, and 'dport=443' indicates the destination port is HTTPS. The 'duration=3600' means the session has been active for 3600 seconds, and 'expire=3599' means it will expire in 3599 seconds. The 'proto_state=01' is a TCP state code, confirming this is a TCP session.

Answer

The session is an ICMP session with state 01 and expires in 1 second.

Answer

The session is a UDP session to port 443 and has been active for 3600 seconds.

Answer

The session is a TCP session that has timed out and will be removed in 3599 seconds.

Question 18

An admin wants to block access to malicious websites using FortiGuard Web Filtering. Which policy configuration is necessary to apply the web filter profile to HTTP/HTTPS traffic?

Accepted Answer

Create an allow policy for HTTP/HTTPS and apply a web filter profile. FortiGate requires an explicit allow policy for HTTP/HTTPS traffic to pass through the firewall before a web filter profile can inspect and block malicious URLs. The web filter profile is applied as a security policy feature on an allow policy, not on a deny policy, since deny policies drop traffic before inspection can occur. Without an allow policy, the traffic would be blocked by default, and the web filter would never see the traffic to apply its filtering rules.

Answer

Configure a DNS filter instead of a web filter

Answer

Create a policy with action DENY and a web filter profile

Answer

Use an application control profile to block malicious sites

Question 19

An administrator needs to configure a FortiGate to allow remote management via HTTPS from the internet. Which configuration step is required?

Accepted Answer

Enable HTTPS access on the WAN interface and create a firewall policy allowing inbound HTTPS from any to the FortiGate's IP.. Remote HTTPS management of a FortiGate from the internet requires two steps: enabling HTTPS access on the WAN interface (under config system interface) and creating a firewall policy that allows inbound HTTPS traffic (TCP/443) from any source to the FortiGate's own IP address. Without the explicit policy, the traffic is dropped by the implicit deny rule, even if the interface is configured to listen for HTTPS.

Answer

Create a firewall policy from WAN to LAN with HTTPS service and set action to ACCEPT.

Answer

Enable SSH access on the WAN interface instead of HTTPS.

Answer

Configure a port forwarding rule to redirect HTTPS from WAN to the internal management IP.

Question 20

An admin is configuring ECMP (Equal Cost Multi-Path) on a FortiGate with two ISPs. Which TWO conditions must be met for ECMP to load balance traffic across both links? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

The routes must have the same priority. ECMP requires that multiple routes to the same destination have equal cost. On FortiGate, the cost is determined by administrative distance (AD) and priority (which is the route metric). Both routes must have the same AD and the same priority to be considered equal-cost and eligible for load balancing. If either value differs, one route will be preferred over the other, and ECMP will not activate.

Answer

The routes must be configured with the same metric

Answer

The FortiGate must be in transparent mode

Answer

The routes must point to different next-hop IP addresses