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Troubleshooting practice questions

Practise Palo Alto Networks Certified Network Security Administrator PCNSA Troubleshooting practice questions — original exam-style scenarios with answer choices, explanations, and analysis of common mistakes.

Courseiva uses original exam-style practice questions designed for learning and revision. The goal is to understand the concepts, recognise exam patterns, and improve through explanations — not memorise copied exam dumps.

Reviewed byJohnson Ajibi· MSc IT Security
20 questionsDomain: Troubleshooting

What the exam tests

What to know about Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting questions test whether you can apply the concept in context, not just recognise a definition.

How the topic appears in realistic exam-style scenarios.

Which detail in the question changes the correct answer.

How to eliminate plausible but wrong options.

How to connect the question back to the wider exam objective.

Watch out for

Common Troubleshooting exam traps

  • Answering from memory before reading the full scenario.
  • Missing a constraint such as cost, availability, security, scope or command context.
  • Choosing a broad answer when the question asks for the most specific fix.
  • Ignoring why the wrong options are tempting.

Practice set

Troubleshooting questions

20 questions · select your answer, then reveal the explanation

A Palo Alto firewall administrator wants to monitor SSL decryption efficiency. Which log type provides the most detailed information about decryption actions and reasons for not decrypting?

A security administrator is troubleshooting an issue where users cannot access a specific website. The security policy allows web-browsing from the internal zone to the external zone. Which TWO actions should the administrator take to verify the traffic is being matched and allowed?

An administrator is troubleshooting why a policy is not being matched. Which THREE of the following are valid reasons a security rule might not be hit? (Choose three.)

Question 4mediummultiple choice
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A decryption policy is configured to decrypt traffic to a specific external server. The admin notices that the traffic is not being decrypted. What is the first step in troubleshooting?

Question 5hardmultiple choice
Review the full OSPF breakdown →

Your organization has deployed a Palo Alto Networks PA-5250 firewall in a high-availability active/passive configuration. The firewall is connected to two ISPs for redundancy. The internal network uses OSPF with the firewall as an ASBR redistributing a default route. Recently, users reported intermittent connectivity to external resources. During troubleshooting, you notice that the active firewall's management interface has high CPU usage, and the show session all command displays many sessions in the 'active' state but with minimal data transfer. The passive firewall shows no such issues. The OSPF neighbor relationships are stable. What is the most likely cause of the intermittent connectivity?

A security team wants to inspect traffic to and from a critical application server. They configure an inbound decryption rule to decrypt traffic destined to the server's IP address. After deploying, they find that traffic is not being decrypted. What is the first step to troubleshoot?

Which THREE are valid methods to test security policy effectiveness before deployment?

Which THREE factors should be considered when troubleshooting a 'deny' rule that is unexpectedly blocking traffic? (Choose three.)

Which TWO actions are recommended for monitoring decrypted traffic on a Palo Alto Networks firewall?

Question 10mediummultiple choice
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A network security engineer at a large enterprise is troubleshooting an issue where web traffic (HTTP and HTTPS) from the corporate LAN to the internet is being incorrectly classified by the Palo Alto Networks firewall. The firewall is running PAN-OS 10.2. The security policy has an App-ID based rule that allows 'web-browsing' and 'ssl' applications to the internet. However, legitimate web traffic is being blocked by a different rule that denies 'unknown-tcp' traffic. The engineer has verified that the firewall has internet connectivity and that the SSL decryption is not configured. The engineer also confirmed that the application override is not configured for any of the affected IPs. What is the most likely reason for the misclassification, and what action should the engineer take to resolve the issue?

Question 11mediummultiple choice
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An administrator is troubleshooting why a rule is not being hit. The rule has source zone Trust, destination zone Untrust, source address 10.0.0.0/8, destination address any, application web-browsing, action allow, and log at session end. The traffic is coming from 10.1.1.1 to 1.2.3.4 on port 80, zone Trust to Untrust. The rule count shows zero hits. What could be the issue?

Question 12easymultiple choice
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During troubleshooting, an administrator needs to review firewall system events such as user logins, configuration changes, and commit failures. Which log type should be examined?

Question 13mediummultiple choice
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A security administrator is troubleshooting a rule that appears to be matching correctly but is not allowing traffic. The rule uses source zone 'Trust' and destination zone 'Untrust', and the action is 'allow'. The traffic source is in the 'DMZ' zone. What is the most likely reason the traffic is denied?

Question 14hardmultiple choice
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An administrator is troubleshooting why an application is being identified as 'incomplete' in the traffic log. What does this indicate?

A security analyst is troubleshooting a decryption issue. Which TWO logs are most useful for identifying decryption failures? (Choose two.)

Question 16hardmultiple choice
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An administrator wants to allow ping (ICMP) and SSH access on a data interface (e.g., ethernet1/1) for troubleshooting. Which configuration is required?

Which TWO management methods allow CLI access to a Palo Alto Networks firewall?

Question 18mediummultiple choice
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Refer to the exhibit. A firewall administrator is troubleshooting a performance issue. The number of half-open TCP connections is unusually high. What is a likely cause?

Exhibit

Refer to the exhibit.

admin@PA-500> show counter global | match tcp

tcp-conn-init           1500
tcp-conn-established    1200
tcp-conn-closed         1400
tcp-conn-failed         200
tcp-conn-reset          100
tcp-conn-half-open      50
tcp-conn-timeout        30

Which three of the following services are commonly permitted on the management interface? (Choose three.)

Question 20hardmultiple choice
Read the full Troubleshooting explanation →

During troubleshooting, a firewall shows a large number of SSL decryption failures with error 'certificate_unknown'. The firewall is configured for forward proxy decryption. What is the most likely cause?

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Related practice questions

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Frequently asked questions

What does the PCNSA exam test about Troubleshooting?
Troubleshooting questions test whether you can apply the concept in context, not just recognise a definition.
How should I use these practice questions?
Select your answer before revealing the explanation. Then read why each option is right or wrong — this active recall approach builds retention far faster than re-reading notes.
Can I practise just Troubleshooting questions in a focused session?
Yes — the session launcher on this page draws every question from the Troubleshooting domain. Use a 10-question session first to gauge your baseline, then move to 20 or 30 once the weak spots are clear.
Where can I practise other PCNSA topics?
Use the topic links above to move to related areas, or go back to the PCNSA question bank to see all topics.
Are these real exam questions or dumps?
These are original practice questions written to test the same concepts the PCNSA exam covers. They are not copied from any real exam or dump site.