PCNSE Manage, Monitor and Operate Practice Question
A large organization has a PA-5250 firewall pair in active/passive HA mode. The firewalls are managed by Panorama. The security team recently created a new security policy rule to block a specific application (app-block-rule) and pushed the configuration from Panorama. After the push, the active firewall shows the new rule in the security policy list, but traffic matching the rule is not being blocked. The administrator checks the traffic logs and sees that the traffic is being allowed by a different rule with a higher priority. The administrator also notices that the 'app-block-rule' has an 'any' source and destination zone, but the allowed rule has specific zones. The administrator runs 'show session info' and sees that the sessions are being created before the policy push. The administrator wants to ensure that existing sessions are subject to the new policy. Which action should the administrator take?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often think moving the rule to the top of the policy (Option C) will fix the issue, but they overlook that existing sessions are not re-evaluated after a policy change unless session re-aging is enabled.
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
✓
Enable session re-aging and set a short timeout for the application
Session re-aging forces the firewall to re-evaluate existing sessions against the current security policy. When a new policy is pushed, sessions established before the push continue to match the old policy until they expire. By enabling session re-aging and setting a short timeout, the firewall will age out those sessions sooner, causing them to be re-matched against the new 'app-block-rule' and thus be blocked.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Disable session re-aging on the firewall
Why it's wrong here
Disabling re-aging would keep old sessions unaffected.
- ✗
Commit the configuration on the active firewall
Why it's wrong here
Committing does not affect existing sessions.
- ✗
Move the new rule to the top of the security policy
Why it's wrong here
Rule order does not affect existing sessions.
- ✓
Enable session re-aging and set a short timeout for the application
Why this is correct
Session re-aging forces new policy check on existing sessions.
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JA
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.