PCNSA Policy Evaluation and Management Practice Question
A company has a Palo Alto Networks firewall in production. They recently configured a new security policy rule to allow outbound HTTPS traffic from the internal network (10.0.0.0/8) to the internet. The rule is placed after a block rule that denies all traffic from 10.0.0.0/8 to any external destination. After committing, users report that HTTPS access is still blocked. The administrator checks the firewall logs and sees that the traffic is being denied by the block rule. The administrator verifies the rule order: the new allow rule is at position 5, and the block rule is at position 3. The administrator also checks that the source zone (Trust) and destination zone (Untrust) are correct. What is the most likely cause of the issue?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is that candidates may focus on misconfigurations like NAT or application settings, overlooking the fundamental rule order evaluation in PAN-OS, which is a common point of confusion in the PCNSA exam.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
The allow rule is placed below the block rule, so the block rule is evaluated first.
The Palo Alto Networks firewall evaluates security policy rules in sequential order from top to bottom. Since the block rule at position 3 is evaluated before the allow rule at position 5, traffic matching the block rule is denied immediately, and the allow rule is never reached. This is the most likely cause of the issue, as the rule order directly determines which rule is applied first.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
There is a NAT policy that is interfering with the allow rule.
Why it's wrong here
NAT policies are evaluated after security policies; this would not cause the block rule to match first.
- ✗
The allow rule has an incorrect application (e.g., ssl instead of web-browsing).
Why it's wrong here
While application mismatch could be an issue, the log shows the traffic is denied by the block rule, not by the allow rule.
- ✗
The allow rule has the wrong source address (e.g., 10.0.0.0/8 is correct).
Why it's wrong here
The source address appears correct; the issue is rule order.
- ✓
The allow rule is placed below the block rule, so the block rule is evaluated first.
Why this is correct
Firewall rules are processed top-down; the block rule at position 3 matches before the allow rule at position 5.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PCNSA practice question is part of Courseiva's free Palo Alto Networks certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the PCNSA exam.