Career Prospects

Palo Alto Networks is one of the leading security platform providers in the world. Many companies have already applied this platform to protect their corporate information from security threats and that is why there is an increased demand for those professionals who are able to operate with this technology. Some of the job roles that the certified specialists can go for include:

• Network Operations Engineer
• Palo Alto Engineer
• Security Operations (SecOps) Engineer
• IT System Administrator
• Network Administrator
• Network Architect
• Network Security Engineer
• Technical Solutions Architect

Besides offering vast career opportunities, the PCNSA certification can also significantly boost your earning potential. According to PayScale.com, the average income of the certificate holders amounts to $94,136 per annum, with many job roles exceeding this figure. Thus, as a Network Security Engineer, you can earn as much as $103,000 per year, and as a Network Architect, you are able to get $120,000.

What Areas PCNSA Assesses You on?

There are six different domains covered under this certification exam. These areas and their details are as follows:

• Traffic Visibility

  Traffic visibility concerns rules for security and this covers application shifts, dependent applications, and implicit applications as well as determining them. Such a topic is also about application filters or groups, application characteristics, properties, timeouts, and tools for optimizing security policies. The last part concerns features for streamlining policy creation for App-ID such as application tags and dependencies and explicit app dependency resolution targeting workflows.

• Identifying Users

  The PCNSA exam also looks at user identification and maps different IP addresses for them. Additionally, it considers controlling access to particular URLs by utilizing custom filtering categories for URL and identifying the proper user ID agent to be deployed. Also, it connects to how the mapping of firewalls to user groups is done and the ID configuration options for users.

• Palo Alto Networks Cybersecurity Portfolio Core

  First, this topic is concerned with identifying the components alongside operations targeting the architecture of Single-Pass Parallel Processing. In addition, candidates will learn more about Strata Security for organizations, Prismas Security for the Cloud, and Cortex Security Operational procedures. The next area to be covered here is centered on the stages of the lifecycle of a cyberattack as well as the firewall mitigations which are capable of preventing attacks. To finalize, this domain describes the Zero Trust model as well as traffic moving via networks.

• Deployment Optimization

  This topic engages the advantages as well as differences occurring between the PBA reports and Heatmap. In particular, it includes the Heatmap component that analyzes the deployment of Palo Alto Networks and filters the data by making use of various group devices. To know more, this area also covers the feature section for Zone mapping, which helps you identify the best traffic to use by choosing the appropriate zone.

• Simply Passing Traffic

  To start is the subsection on identifying and configuring management interfaces for the firewall. It covers access to the firewalls for Palo Alto Networks, steps to gaining access to firewall, methods for managing firewall, services for firewall, etc. Managing firewall features is next with a focus on configurations for candidates, running, last saved, saved name configuration snapshot, export and import device states, and more. There is also configuring internal as well as external services targeting account administration, administrative roles, authentication sequence, configuration logs, etc. What follows further is the domain of firewall interfaces that include Ethernet, Virtual, Layer 2, Tap, Layer 3, and aggregate. Some parts cover security zones and virtual routers while others focus on the function of specific types of security, followed by identifying and configuring conditions, logging options, security policies. Also, implicit in addition to explicit rules and security rule hit count are to be covered by the PCNSA test. Finally, are the matters of NAT solution implementation covering NAT types, configuring source NAT, and more.

• Securing Traffic

  This objective covers risk scenarios and how the appropriate profile can be applied. Included here are threat logs, security profiles, and customization for antivirus, anti-spyware, vulnerability protection, URL filtering, and file blocking. Also, there is a safe search and HTTP header logging. The next part is about firewall protection against packet & protocol attacks. Included within this topic are protections like Denial-of-Service, zone, flood attack, SYN cookies, UDP, ICMP, reconnaissance attack, packet-based attack, etc. What comes after is how cloud DNS security can be used by the firewall in controlling domains based on traffic and how the PAN-DB database can be used by the firewall for controlling websites based on traffic. At last, in this section, candidates will get equipped with the knowledge of URL filtering components and how to monitor access to them.

PCNSA Exam Overview

The official PCNSA exam is an 80-minute test consisting of 50 questions. The question types to be expected in the main test include multiple-choice, matching, and scenarios with graphics. The certification exam is delivered through Pearson VUE and is available in English only.

To take the PCNSA exam, the candidates are required to pay a fee of $140. It is to be noted that retakes are also paid and the overall cost of this exam may vary depending on the country and its value-added tax.

Reference: https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/services/education/certification#pcnsa

Knowledge Tested in PCNSA

Overall, the PCNSA test will check your expertise in the following domains:

• Configuration of firewalls;
• App-ID;
• User-ID;
• Reporting alongside monitoring, etc.
• Filtering for URL;
• Content-ID;
• Best practices for security;