PCNSE Core Concepts and Architecture Practice Question
A company implements SSL Forward Proxy decryption. Users complain that accessing certain websites, such as video streaming and software updates, is slow. Which action should the administrator take to improve performance?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is that candidates often focus on optimizing TLS handshake performance (session cache or reuse) rather than recognizing that the primary bottleneck is the decryption of large data payloads, which is unaffected by handshake optimizations.
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
✓
Exclude known high-traffic sites from decryption.
Excluding known high-traffic sites (e.g., video streaming and software update servers) from SSL Forward Proxy decryption reduces the processing overhead on the firewall. Decrypting and re-encrypting high-volume traffic consumes significant CPU and memory resources, causing latency. By bypassing decryption for these sites, the firewall can forward traffic directly, improving performance without sacrificing security for other traffic.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Increase the SSL session cache to 1024.
Why it's wrong here
Increasing the cache may help slightly but not significantly for high-traffic sites.
- ✗
Upgrade the firewall to a higher model.
Why it's wrong here
Upgrading the firewall model addresses raw throughput limits, but the bottleneck here is the decryption workload itself, not interface capacity. SSL Forward Proxy decrypts every connection, taxing the CPU for cryptographic operations; a higher model still performs the same per-packet decryption, so latency from processing each handshake persists. This option tempts because hardware upgrades commonly resolve bandwidth saturation, and would be correct if users reported general congestion rather than decryption-specific slowdowns.
- ✓
Exclude known high-traffic sites from decryption.
Why this is correct
Best practice is to exclude categories like streaming and updates from decryption to reduce load.
- ✗
Enable SSL session re-use.
Why it's wrong here
Session re-use can improve performance but is not as effective as excluding high-traffic sites.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PCNSE 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 PCNSE exam.