PCNSA Practice Test 20 — 15 Questions

Question 1

Refer to the exhibit. Based on the session information, which type of NAT is being performed?

Accepted Answer

Source NAT. Option A is correct because the source IP is translated from a private IP to a public IP, indicating source NAT (SNAT). Option B is wrong because destination NAT would show a change in destination IP. Option C is wrong because no port information is shown to indicate PAT specifically; the term 'source NAT' encompasses address translation. Option D is wrong because no IPs are being hidden in the sense of typical network terminology.

Answer

No NAT is being performed

Answer

Port Address Translation (PAT)

Answer

Destination NAT

Question 2

Two Palo Alto Networks firewalls are deployed in an active/passive high availability pair. The passive firewall does not synchronize configuration changes. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

Configuration synchronization is not enabled.. Option D is correct. If session synchronization is enabled but configuration synchronization is not, the passive unit will not receive config changes. Option A is wrong because HA requires both to be the same model and PAN-OS version. Option B is wrong because link monitoring does not affect config sync. Option C is wrong because the passive unit must be configured as part of the HA pair.

Answer

Link monitoring is disabled.

Answer

The passive firewall is not configured as a peer.

Answer

The firewalls are different models.

Question 3

Refer to the exhibit. An administrator observes that HTTP requests from the 10.0.0.0/24 network to the 172.16.1.0/24 network are being logged but the logs show that the action taken is 'deny'. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

A different rule with higher priority is matching the traffic and denying it. Option B is correct because the rule has 'log-start' enabled, which generates a log entry before the actual action is determined. If another rule with higher priority denies the traffic, the log will show the result of the first matching rule. Option A is wrong because the rule itself has action allow, so if it matches, it would allow. Option C is wrong because even if the rule is disabled, it would not produce a log. Option D is wrong because the rule explicitly allows web-browsing.

Answer

The rule 'Allow-Web' is disabled

Answer

The application 'web-browsing' is not correctly identified

Answer

The rule 'Allow-Web' is configured with action 'deny'

Question 4

Users report that some internal services are not accessible when connected via VPN, but they work when on the local network. The firewall has a policy allowing all traffic from the VPN zone to the internal zone. What should the administrator check first?

Accepted Answer

Check if there are NAT rules that affect the VPN zone traffic, such as missing reverse NAT.. Option A is correct. NAT rules can cause issues if return traffic is not handled properly, especially if the destination NAT is only applied to a specific zone. Option B is wrong because the policy is already allowing traffic. Option C is wrong because zone protection profiles are not likely to cause this selective issue. Option D is wrong because decryption is usually for outbound traffic, not internal service access.

Answer

Check if SSL decryption is breaking the traffic.

Answer

Check if the zone protection profile is dropping traffic.

Answer

Check if the security policy rule order is correct.

Question 5

Refer to the exhibit. An administrator notices that SSH traffic from the trust zone to the untrust zone is being blocked. The administrator expected it to be allowed by rule 2. What is the most likely reason?

Accepted Answer

Rule 1 matches the traffic and is evaluated before rule 2. Option A is correct because rule 1 has source and destination zones 'any' and matches all SSH traffic, and it is placed before rule 2. Option B is wrong because the action of rule 1 is deny, not allow. Option C is wrong because the rule explicitly denies SSH. Option D is wrong because the rule 2 does allow SSH but never gets evaluated due to rule 1.

Answer

Rule 2's application is set to 'ssh' but the service is not 'application-default'

Answer

Rule 1 is configured with action 'allow'

Answer

Rule 2's source zone is incorrectly set to 'dmz'

Question 6

Which TWO are valid methods for authenticating administrative users on Palo Alto Networks firewalls? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Local authentication using local user database. Options A and C are correct. The firewall supports local authentication and RADIUS. Option B is wrong because TACACS is not supported (TACACS+ is, but not TACACS). Option D is wrong because LDAP is used for directory services, not authentication directly (though it can be used for captive portal, but not admin auth). Option E is wrong because SAML is supported for SSO but not typically as a direct admin authentication method.

Answer

TACACS

Answer

SAML

Answer

LDAP

Question 7

A network administrator notices that traffic from the internal zone to the external zone is being denied, even though a security policy allowing all outbound traffic exists. The internal zone is configured with a zone protection profile that has Flood Protection enabled. What is the most likely cause of the denial?

Accepted Answer

The zone protection profile has Flood Protection thresholds set too low, causing legitimate traffic to be dropped.. Option A is correct because the zone protection profile's Flood Protection can erroneously block legitimate traffic if threshold values are too low. Option B is wrong because logging profiles do not affect traffic flow. Option C is wrong because schedule settings would either allow or deny traffic at certain times, but the policy is set to allow always. Option D is wrong because the zone protection profile with Flood Protection is the most likely cause, not the security policy itself.

Answer

The security policy is set to deny due to an implicit deny rule.

Answer

The security policy has a logging profile attached that is blocking traffic.

Answer

The security policy has a schedule configured that is currently outside the allowed time.

Question 8

Which THREE actions can improve firewall performance by reducing CPU load? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

Enable hardware acceleration for packet processing. Options B, D, E are correct. Disabling unused features frees up resources. Enabling hardware acceleration offloads processing. Reducing logging volume lowers I/O. Option A is wrong because enabling SSL decryption increases CPU load. Option C is wrong because using reactive policies (e.g., dynamic updates) adds overhead.

Answer

Use reactive policy updates via API

Answer

Enable SSL decryption for all traffic

Question 9

Refer to the exhibit. A user in the trust zone attempts to access https://www.example.com. The traffic matches rule 2 first. What is the expected behavior?

Accepted Answer

The traffic is denied because of rule 2.. Option B is correct. HTTPS traffic is identified as application ssl, which matches rule 2 (deny). Since rule 2 has no schedule, it matches immediately, and the traffic is denied. Rule 3 (allow for web-browsing) is not evaluated because rule 2 matched first. Option A is wrong because rule 2 matches. Option C is wrong because there is a deny rule. Option D is wrong because the session is not allowed; it is denied.

Answer

The traffic is allowed due to the implicit allow at the end.

Answer

The traffic is allowed because rule 3 allows web-browsing.

Answer

The traffic is allowed because no explicit deny is configured.

Question 10

Refer to the exhibit. A packet arrives with source IP 192.168.1.10, destination IP 203.0.113.10, destination port 80, from zone trust. After this NAT rule is applied, what will be the destination IP and port of the packet?

Accepted Answer

Destination IP 10.0.0.5, Destination port 80. Option C is correct. The destination NAT rule translates the destination IP from 203.0.113.10 to 10.0.0.5, and the destination port remains 80 (as specified). Option A is wrong because source IP is not changed by this rule (no source NAT configured). Option B is wrong because the port changes to 8080 is not configured. Option D is wrong because the source port is not modified.

Answer

Destination IP 10.0.0.5, Destination port 80, Source IP changed to firewall IP

Answer

Destination IP 203.0.113.10, Destination port 8080

Answer

Destination IP 203.0.113.10, Destination port 80, Source port changed to 5000

Question 11

A network administrator wants to allow HTTP and HTTPS traffic from untrust zone to DMZ zone for a web server, but block all other traffic. What is the most efficient way to achieve this with a single rule?

Accepted Answer

Create a security policy with source zone Untrust, destination zone DMZ, application set to web-browsing and ssl, action allow.. Option A is correct because using application-based rules is more secure and efficient than service-based. Option B is less secure as it relies on ports. Option C allows all default applications, too broad. Option D allows all traffic.

Answer

Create a security policy with source zone Untrust, destination zone DMZ, application default, action allow.

Answer

Create a security policy with source zone Untrust, destination zone DMZ, service any, application any, action allow.

Answer

Create a security policy with source zone Untrust, destination zone DMZ, service tcp/80 and tcp/443, action allow.

Question 12

A company is experiencing performance issues due to large amounts of encrypted traffic. They want to offload decryption to a dedicated appliance but still maintain visibility. Which feature should they configure on the Palo Alto Networks firewall?

Accepted Answer

SSL Decryption with a dedicated decryption broker.. Option C is correct because the decryption broker offloads decryption to a dedicated appliance. Option A is decryption mirroring, not offloading. Option B is just a protocol version. Option D is port mirroring, not decryption offloading.

Answer

SSL Forward Proxy with decryption mirroring.

Answer

Decryption port mirroring.

Answer

TLS 1.3 decryption.

Question 13

An organization has a security policy that allows all traffic from the corporate user zone to the internet, but they want to block access to social media sites only for a specific group of users in the HR department. What is the best approach?

Accepted Answer

Use user-ID to identify HR users and create a deny rule with source zone corporate, source user HR, application social-media, action deny, and place it before the allow rule.. Option D is correct because rules are evaluated top-down; the deny rule must come before the allow rule to block the targeted users. Option A lacks user-ID. Option B order is wrong. Option C places deny after allow, so it will never be hit.

Answer

Create an allow rule for all users, then a deny rule for HR with application social-media.

Answer

Create a deny rule for the HR user group with application social-media before the allow rule.

Answer

Use user-ID to identify HR users and create a deny rule with source zone corporate, source user HR, application social-media, action deny, and place it after the allow rule.

Question 14

A firewall administrator wants to ensure that all traffic from the inside zone to the outside zone is inspected for threats, but without causing a bottleneck. Which profile group should be applied to the security rule?

Accepted Answer

Security profile group that includes antivirus, anti-spyware, vulnerability protection, and URL filtering.. Option B is correct because a security profile group combines multiple profiles (antivirus, anti-spyware, vulnerability protection, URL filtering) for comprehensive inspection without significant performance impact. Options A and C are incomplete. Option D is wrong as default does not inspect.

Answer

URL filtering profile only.

Answer

No profile is needed; default settings suffice.

Answer

Antivirus profile only.

Question 15

A company uses Palo Alto Networks firewall and wants to configure NAT to allow internal users to access the internet using a public IP address pool. Which NAT type should be used?

Accepted Answer

Dynamic IP and Port (DIPP) with source NAT.. Option A is correct because Dynamic IP and Port (DIPP) allows many internal IPs to share a pool of public IPs using port address translation. Option B is for static 1-to-1 mapping. Option C is for inbound traffic. Option D is for two-way NAT.

Answer

Bidirectional NAT.

Answer

Static NAT with source NAT.

Answer

Destination NAT with port forwarding.

PCNSA Practice Test 20 — 15 Questions

Exhibit

PCNSA Practice Test 20 — 15 Questions

Exhibit