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PCNSA Practice Question: A small business uses a single PA-220 firewall…
A small business uses a single PA-220 firewall for internet access and has three internal zones: Trust, DMZ, and Guest. Users in the Trust zone report intermittent connectivity to a public cloud application. The firewall administrator checks the traffic logs and sees that sessions to the cloud application show "Application: ssl" and "Action: allow". The administrator suspects the issue might be related to decryption. The firewall currently has a decryption policy that decrypts all outbound HTTPS traffic for threat inspection. The cloud application uses certificate pinning and breaks when decrypted. What is the best solution to allow this application to function while still decrypting other traffic?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to think disabling decryption entirely is the simplest fix, but they overlook the need to maintain security for other traffic, or they mistakenly believe hardware upgrades can solve application-layer compatibility issues like certificate pinning.
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 exclusion rule for the specific cloud application by source or URL category.
Creating a decryption exclusion rule for the specific cloud application (by source IP, URL category, or destination) allows the firewall to bypass decryption for that traffic while continuing to decrypt all other outbound HTTPS traffic. This resolves the certificate pinning issue without compromising security for other traffic. Decryption exclusion rules are a standard feature in PAN-OS for handling applications that break under decryption.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Upgrade the firewall to a model that supports certificate key protection.
Why it's wrong here
Certificate key protection does not address certificate pinning issues.
- ✓
Create a decryption exclusion rule for the specific cloud application by source or URL category.
Why this is correct
Exclusion rules allow bypassing decryption for specific traffic.
- ✗
Disable SSL decryption entirely.
Why it's wrong here
This would remove protection for all other traffic.
- ✗
Change the decryption policy to decrypt only inbound traffic.
Why it's wrong here
This would not solve the outbound issue and leaves outbound traffic unprotected.
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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.