PCNSA Decryption and Monitoring Practice Question
A firewall is experiencing high CPU utilization due to SSL decryption. The administrator wants to reduce the load without completely disabling decryption. Which action should be taken?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse decryption mirroring with offloading decryption, not realizing that mirroring only duplicates traffic for analysis and does not reduce the firewall's decryption workload.
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
✓
Create a decryption bypass for traffic to high-bandwidth sites with low security risk.
Creating a decryption bypass for traffic to high-bandwidth, low-risk sites reduces the CPU load from SSL decryption by exempting that traffic from decryption, while still allowing decryption for higher-risk traffic. This targeted approach maintains security posture without completely disabling decryption, aligning with best practices for managing decryption resources on Palo Alto Networks firewalls.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Use decryption mirroring to offload decryption to a dedicated appliance.
Why it's wrong here
Decryption mirroring is passive and does not offload decryption processing.
- ✗
Change decryption policy to 'no-decrypt' for all traffic.
Why it's wrong here
This disables all decryption, not desired.
- ✗
Enable SSL/TLS protocol settings to disable weak ciphers.
Why it's wrong here
Disabling weak ciphers can reduce negotiation overhead but not the main load.
- ✓
Create a decryption bypass for traffic to high-bandwidth sites with low security risk.
Why this is correct
Selectively bypassing low-risk traffic reduces CPU load.
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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.