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Mode Description
If you use Kerberos SSO, you must use Redirect mode
because the browser will provide credentials only to trusted
sites. Redirect mode is also required if you use Multi-Factor
Authentication to authenticate Authentication Portal users.
Configure Authentication Portal
The following procedure shows how to set up Authentication Portal authentication by configuring
the PAN-OS integrated User-ID agent to redirect web requests that match an Authentication
Policy rule to a firewall interface (redirect host).
SSL Inbound Inspection does not support Authentication Portal redirect. To use
Authentication Portal redirect and decryption, you must use SSL Forward Proxy.
Based on their sensitivity, the applications that users access through Authentication Portal require
different authentication methods and settings. To accommodate all authentication requirements,
you can use default and custom authentication enforcement objects. Each object associates an
Authentication rule with an authentication profile and an Authentication Portal authentication
method.
• Default authentication enforcement objects—Use the default objects if you want to associate
multiple Authentication rules with the same global authentication profile. You must configure
this authentication profile before configuring Authentication Portal, and then assign it
in the Authentication Portal Settings. For Authentication rules that require Multi-Factor
Authentication (MFA), you cannot use default authentication enforcement objects.
• Custom authentication enforcement objects—Use a custom object for each Authentication
rule that requires an authentication profile that differs from the global profile. Custom objects
are mandatory for Authentication rules that require MFA. To use custom objects, create
authentication profiles and assign them to the objects after configuring Authentication Portal—
when you Configure Authentication Policy.
Keep in mind that authentication profiles are necessary only if users authenticate through a
Authentication Portal Web Form or Kerberos SSO. Alternatively, or in addition to these methods,
the following procedure also describes how to implement Client Certificate Authentication.
If you use Authentication Portal without the other User-ID functions (user mapping and
group mapping), you don’t need to configure a User-ID agent.
STEP 1 | Configure the interfaces that the firewall will use for incoming web requests, authenticating
users, and communicating with directory servers to map usernames to IP addresses.
When the firewall connects to authentication servers or User-ID agents, it uses the
management interface by default. As a best practice, isolate your management network by
configuring service routes to connect to the authentication servers or User-ID agents.
1. (MGT interface only) Select Device > Setup > Interfaces, edit the Management interface,
select User-ID, and click OK.
2. (Non-MGT interface only) Assign an Interface Management Profile to the Layer 3
interface that the firewall will use for incoming web requests and communication
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with directory servers. You must enable Response Pages and User-ID in the Interface
Management profile.
3. (Non-MGT interface only) Configure a service route for the interface that the firewall
will use to authenticate users. If the firewall has more than one virtual system (vsys),
the service route can be global or vsys-specific. The services must include LDAP and
potentially the following:
• Kerberos, RADIUS, TACACS+, or Multi-Factor Authentication—Configure a service
route for any authentication services that you use.
• UID Agent—Configure this service only if you Enable User- and Group-Based Policy.
4. (Redirect mode for IPv4 only) Create a DNS address (A) record that maps the IPv4
address on the Layer 3 interface to the redirect host. If you use Kerberos SSO, you must
also add a DNS pointer (PTR) record that performs the same mapping.
5. (Redirect mode for IPv6 only) If you want to create a DNS address (AAAA) record
that maps the IPv6 address on the Layer 3 interface to the redirect host, use the CLI
commands to configure the FQDN of the redirect host.
IPv6 is supported for deployments using SAML authentication or LDAP with
MFA. Support for these commands is available in PAN-OS version 10.2.9.
• Enter the debug user-id cp-redirect-host-v6 value <redirect-hostFQDN> CLI command on the firewall (where <redirect-host-FQDN> represents the
FQDN of the redirect host that uses IPv6).
• To view the currently configured IPv6 redirect host, use the debug user-id cpredirect-host-v6 show CLI command on the firewall.
• To remove the currently configured IPv6 redirect host, use the debug user-id
cp-redirect-host-v6 clear CLI command on the firewall.
Depending on whether you configure your redirect host for IPv4, IPv6, or both,
make sure to include the necessary IP addresses as DNS attributes in the SAN
fields for the certificate or certificates that you configure for the Authentication
Portal.
If your network doesn’t support access to the directory servers from any firewall interface, you
must Configure User Mapping Using the Windows User-ID Agent.
STEP 2 | Make sure Domain Name System (DNS) is configured to resolve your domain controller
addresses.
To verify proper resolution, ping the server FQDN. For example:
admin@PA-220> ping host dc1.acme.com
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STEP 3 | Configure clients to trust Authentication Portal certificates.
Required for redirect mode—to transparently redirect users without displaying certificate
errors. You can generate a self-signed certificate or import a certificate that an external
certificate authority (CA) signed.
To use a self-signed certificate, create a root CA certificate and use it to sign the certificate
you will use for Authentication Portal:
1. Select Device > Certificate Management > Certificates > Device Certificates.
2. Create a Self-Signed Root CA Certificate or import a CA certificate (see Import a
Certificate and Private Key).
3. Generate a Certificate to use for Authentication Portal. Be sure to configure the
following fields:
• Common Name—Enter the DNS name of the intranet host for the Layer 3 interface.
• Signed By—Select the CA certificate you just created or imported.
• Certificate Attributes—Click Add, for the Type select IP and, for the Value, enter the
IP address of the Layer 3 interface to which the firewall will redirect requests.
4. Configure an SSL/TLS Service Profile. Assign the Authentication Portal certificate you
just created to the profile.
If you don’t assign an SSL/TLS Service Profile, the firewall uses TLS 1.2 by
default. To use a different TLS version, configure an SSL/TLS Service Profile for
the TLS version you want to use.
5. Configure clients to trust the certificate:
1. Export the CA certificate you created or imported.
2. Import the certificate as a trusted root CA into all client browsers, either by manually
configuring the browser or by adding the certificate to the trusted roots in an Active
Directory (AD) Group Policy Object (GPO).
STEP 4 | (Optional) Configure Client Certificate Authentication.
You don’t need an authentication profile or sequence for client certificate
authentication. If you configure both an authentication profile/sequence and
certificate authentication, users must authenticate using both.
1. Use a root CA certificate to generate a client certificate for each user who will
authenticate through Authentication Portal. The CA in this case is usually your enterprise
CA, not the firewall.
2. Export the CA certificate in PEM format to a system that the firewall can access.
3. Import the CA certificate onto the firewall: see Import a Certificate and Private Key.
After the import, click the imported certificate, select Trusted Root CA, and click OK.
4. Configure a Certificate Profile.
• In the Username Field drop-down, select the certificate field that contains the user
identity information.
• In the CA Certificates list, click Add and select the CA certificate you just imported.
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STEP 5 | (Optional) Configure Authentication Portal for the Apple Captive Network Assistant.
This step is only required if you are using Authentication Portal with the Apple Captive
Network Assistant (CNA). To use Authentication Portal with CNA, perform the following steps.
1. Verify you have specified an FQDN for the redirect host (not just an IP address).
2. Select an SSL/TLS service profile that uses a publicly-signed certificate for the specified
FQDN.
3. Enter the following command to adjust the number of requests supported for
Authentication Portal: set deviceconfig setting ctd cap-portal-askrequests <threshold-value>
By default, the firewall has a rate limit threshold for Authentication Portal that limits
the number of requests to one request every two seconds. The CNA sends multiple
requests that can exceed this limit, which can result in a TCP reset and an error from the
CNA. The recommended threshold value is 5 (default is one). This value will allow up to
5 requests every two seconds. Based on your environment, you may need to configure
a different value. If the current value is not sufficient to handle the number of requests,
increase the value.
STEP 6 | Configure the Authentication Portal settings.
1. Select Device > User Identification > Authentication Portal Settings and edit the
settings.
2. Enable Authentication Portal (default is enabled).
3. Specify the Timer, which is the maximum time in minutes that the firewall retains
an IP address-to-username mapping for a user after that user authenticates through
Authentication Portal (default is 60; range is 1 to 1,440). After the Timer expires, the
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firewall removes the mapping and any associated Authentication Timestamps used to
evaluate the Timeout in Authentication policy rules.
When evaluating the Authentication Portal Timer and the Timeout value in each
Authentication policy rule, the firewall prompts the user to re-authenticate for
whichever setting expires first. Upon re-authenticating, the firewall resets the
time count for the Authentication Portal Timer and records new authentication
timestamps for the user. Therefore, to enable different Timeout periods for
different Authentication rules, set the Authentication Portal Timer to a value the
same as or higher than any rule Timeout.
4. Select the SSL/TLS Service Profile you created for redirect requests over TLS. See
Configure an SSL/TLS Service Profile.
5. Select the Mode (in this example, Redirect).
6. (Redirect mode only) Specify the Redirect Host, which is the intranet hostname (a
hostname with no period in its name) that resolves to the IP address of the Layer 3
interface on the firewall to which web requests are redirected.
If users authenticate through Kerberos single sign-on (SSO), the Redirect Host must be
the same as the hostname specified in the Kerberos keytab.
7. Select the fall back authentication method to use:
• To use client certificate authentication, select the Certificate Profile you created.
• To use global settings for interactive or SSO authentication, select the Authentication
Profile you configured.
• To use Authentication policy rule-specific settings for interactive or SSO
authentication, assign authentication profiles to authentication enforcement objects
when you Configure Authentication Policy.
8. Click OK and Commit the Authentication Portal configuration.
STEP 7 | Next steps...
The firewall does not display the Authentication Portal web form to users until you Configure
Authentication Policy rules that trigger authentication when users request services or
applications.
Configure User Mapping for Terminal Server Users
Individual terminal server users appear to have the same IP address and therefore an IP addressto-username mapping is not sufficient to identify a specific user. To identify specific users on
Windows-based terminal servers, the Palo Alto Networks Terminal Server agent (TS agent)
allocates a port range to each user. The TS agent then notifies every connected firewall about
the allocated port range, which allows the firewall to create an IP address-port-user mapping
table and enable user- and group-based security policy enforcement. For non-Windows terminal
servers, configure the PAN-OS XML API to extract user mapping information. The following
values apply for both methods:
• Default port range: 1025 to 65534
• Per user block size: 200
• Maximum number of multi-user systems: 2,500
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For information about the terminal servers supported by the TS agent and the number of TS
agents supported on each firewall model, refer to the Palo Alto Networks Compatibility Matrix
and the Product Comparison Tool.
The following sections describe how to configure user mapping for terminal server users:
• Configure the Palo Alto Networks Terminal Server (TS) Agent for User Mapping
• Retrieve User Mappings from a Terminal Server Using the PAN-OS XML API
Configure the Palo Alto Networks Terminal Server (TS) Agent for User Mapping
Use the following procedure to install and configure the TS agent on the terminal server. To map
all your users, you must install the TS agent on all terminal servers to which your users log in.
If you are using TS agent 7.0 or a later version, disable any Sophos antivirus software on
the TS agent host. Otherwise, the antivirus software overwrites the source ports that the
TS agent allocates.
For information about default values, ranges, and other specifications, refer to Configure
User Mapping for Terminal Server Users. For information about the terminal servers
supported by the TS agent and the number of TS agents supported on each firewall model,
refer to the Palo Alto Networks Compatibility Matrix.
STEP 1 | Download the TS agent installer.
1. Log in to the Palo Alto Networks Customer Support Portal.
2. Select Updates > Software Updates.
3. Set Filter By to Terminal Services Agent and select the version of the agent you want
to install from the corresponding Download column. For example, to download TS agent
9.0, select TaInstall-9.0.msi.
4. Save the TaInstall.x64-x.x.x-xx.msi or TaInstall-x.x.x-xx.msi file on
the systems where you plan to install the agent; be sure to select the appropriate version
based on whether the Windows system is running a 32-bit or a 64-bit OS.
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STEP 2 | Run the installer as an administrator.
1. Open the Windows Start menu, right-click the Command Prompt program, and Run as
administrator.
2. From the command line, run the .msi file you downloaded. For example, if you saved the
TaInstall-9.0.msi file to the Desktop, then enter the following:
C:\Users\administrator.acme>cd Desktop
C:\Users\administrator.acme\Desktop>TaInstall-9.0.0-1.msi
3. Follow the setup prompts to install the agent using the default settings. The setup
installs the agent in C:\ProgramFiles\Palo Alto Networks\Terminal Server
Agent.
To ensure correct port allocation, you must use the default Terminal Server
agent installation folder location.
4. When the installation completes, Close the setup dialog.
If you are upgrading to a TS agent version that has a newer driver than the
existing installation, the installation wizard prompts you to reboot the system
after you upgrade.
STEP 3 | Define the range of ports for the TS agent to allocate to end users.
The System Source Port Allocation Range and System Reserved Source Ports specify
the range of ports that are allocated to non-user sessions. Make sure the values in
these fields do not overlap with the ports you designate for user traffic. These values
can be changed only by editing the corresponding Windows registry settings. The TS
agent does not allocate ports for network traffic emitted by session 0.
1. Open the Windows Start menu and select Terminal Server Agent to launch the Terminal
Server agent application.
2. Configure (side menu) the agent.
3. Enter the Source Port Allocation Range (default is 20,000-39,999). This is the full range
of port numbers that the TS agent will allocate for user mapping. The port range you
specify cannot overlap the System Source Port Allocation Range.
4. (Optional) If there are ports or port ranges within the source port allocation that
you do not want the TS agent to allocate to user sessions, specify them as Reserved
Source Ports. To include multiple ranges, use commas with no spaces (for example:
2000-3000,3500,4000-5000).
5. Specify the number of ports to allocate to each individual user upon login to the terminal
server (Port Allocation Start Size Per User); default is 200.
6. Specify the Port Allocation Maximum Size Per User, which is the maximum number of
ports the Terminal Server agent can allocate to an individual user.
7. Specify whether to continue processing traffic from the user if the user runs out of
allocated ports. The Fail port binding when available ports are used up option is enabled
by default, which indicates that the application will fail to send traffic when all ports are
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used. To enable users to continue using applications when they run out of ports, disable
(clear) this option, but if you do, this traffic may not be identified with User-ID.
8. If the terminal server stops responding when you attempt to shut it down, enable the
Detach agent driver at shutdown option.
STEP 4 | (Optional) Assign your own certificates for mutual authentication between the TS agent and
the firewall.
1. Obtain your certificate for the TS agent from your enterprise PKI or generate one
on your firewall. The private key of the server certificate must be encrypted and the
certificate must be uploaded in PEM file format. Perform one of the following tasks to
upload a certificate:
• Generate a Certificate and export it.
• Export a certificate from your enterprise certificate authority (CA).
2. Add a server certificate to the TS agent.
1. On the TS agent, select Server Certificate and Add a new certificate.
2. Enter the path and name of the certificate file received from the CA or browse to the
certificate file.
3. Enter the private key password.
4. Click OK.
5. Commit your changes.
The TS agent uses a self-signed certificate on port 5009 with following
information:Issuer: CN=Terminal Server Agent, OU=Engineering, O=Palo Alto
Networks, L=Santa Clara, S=California, C=USSubject: CN=Terminal Server
Agent, OU=Engineering, O=Palo Alto Networks, L=Santa Clara, S=California,
C=US
3. Configure and assign the certificate profile for the firewall.
1. Select Device > Certificate Management > Certificate Profile to Configure a
Certificate Profile.
You can assign only one certificate profile for Windows User-ID agents and
TS agents. Therefore, your certificate profile must include all certificate
authorities that issued certificates uploaded to connected Windows User-ID
and TS agents.
2. Select Device > User Identification > Connection Security.
3. Edit ( ) and select the certificate profile you configured in the previous step as the
User-ID Certificate Profile.
4. Click OK.
5. Commit your changes.
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STEP 5 | Configure the firewall to connect to the Terminal Server agent.
Complete the following steps on each firewall you want to connect to the Terminal Server
agent to receive user mappings:
1. Select Device > User Identification > Terminal Server Agents and Add a new TS agent.
2. Enter a Name for the Terminal Server agent.
3. Enter the hostname or IP address of the Windows Host on which the Terminal Server
agent is installed.
The hostname or IP address must resolve to a static IP address. If you change the
existing hostname, the TS agent resets when you commit the changes to resolve the new
hostname. If the hostname resolves to multiple IP addresses, the TS agent uses the first
address in the list.
4. (Optional) Enter the hostname or IP address for any Alternative IP Addresses that can
appear as the source IP address for the outgoing traffic.
The hostname or IP address must resolve to a static IP address. You can enter up to 8 IP
addresses or hostnames.
5. Enter the Port number on which the agent will listen for user mapping requests. This
value must match the value configured on the Terminal Server agent. By default, the
port is set to 5009 on the firewall and on the agent. If you change it on the firewall, you
must also change the Listening Port on the Terminal Server agent Configure dialog to
the same port.
6. Make sure that the configuration is Enabled and then click OK.
7. Commit your changes.
8. Verify that the Connected status displays as connected (a green light).
STEP 6 | Verify that the Terminal Server agent is successfully mapping IP addresses to usernames and
that the firewalls can connect to the agent.
1. Open the Windows Start menu and select Terminal Server Agent.
2. Verify that the firewalls can connect by making sure the Connection Status of each
firewall in the Connection List is Connected.
3. Verify that the Terminal Server agent is successfully mapping port ranges to usernames
(Monitor in the side menu) and confirm that the mapping table is populated.
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STEP 7 | (Windows 2012 R2 servers only) Disable Enhanced Protected Mode in Microsoft Internet
Explorer for each user who uses that browser.
This task is not necessary for other browsers, such as Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.
To disable Enhanced Protected Mode for all users, use Local Security Policy.
Perform these steps on the Windows Server:
1. Start Internet Explorer.
2. Select Settings > Internet options > Advanced and scroll to the Security section.
3. Disable (clear) the Enable Enhanced Protected Mode option.
4. Click OK.
In Internet Explorer, Palo Alto Networks recommends that you do not disable
Protected Mode, which differs from Enhanced Protected Mode.
Retrieve User Mappings from a Terminal Server Using the PAN-OS XML API
The PAN-OS XML API uses standard HTTP requests to send and receive data. API calls can be
made directly from command line utilities such as cURL or using any scripting or application
framework that supports RESTful services.
To enable a non-Windows terminal server to send user mapping information directly to the
firewall, create scripts that extract the user login and logout events and use them for input to
the PAN-OS XML API request format. Then define the mechanisms for submitting the XML
API request(s) to the firewall using cURL or wget and providing the firewall’s API key for secure
communication. Creating user mappings from multi-user systems such as terminal servers requires
use of the following API messages:
• <multiusersystem>—Sets up the configuration for an XML API Multi-user System on the
firewall. This message allows for definition of the terminal server IP address (this will be the
source address for all users on that terminal server). In addition, the <multiusersystem>
setup message specifies the range of source port numbers to allocate for user mapping and
the number of ports to allocate to each individual user upon login (called the block size). If you
want to use the default source port allocation range (1025-65534) and block size (200), you do
not need to send a <multiusersystem> setup event to the firewall. Instead, the firewall will
automatically generate the XML API Multi-user System configuration with the default settings
upon receipt of the first user login event message.
• <blockstart>—Used with the <login> and <logout> messages to indicate the starting
source port number allocated to the user. The firewall then uses the block size to determine
the actual range of port numbers to map to the IP address and username in the login message.
For example, if the <blockstart> value is 13200 and the block size configured for the multiuser system is 300, the actual source port range allocated to the user is 13200 through 13499.
Each connection initiated by the user should use a unique source port number within the
allocated range, enabling the firewall to identify the user based on its IP address-port-user
mappings for enforcement of user- and group-based security rules. When a user exhausts
all the ports allocated, the terminal server must send a new <login> message allocating a
new port range for the user so that the firewall can update the IP address-port-user mapping.
In addition, a single username can have multiple blocks of ports mapped simultaneously.
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When the firewall receives a <logout> message that includes a <blockstart> parameter,
it removes the corresponding IP address-port-user mapping from its mapping table.
When the firewall receives a <logout> message with a username and IP address, but no
<blockstart>, it removes the user from its table. And, if the firewall receives a <logout>
message with an IP address only, it removes the multi-user system and all mappings associated
with it.
The XML files that the terminal server sends to the firewall can contain multiple message
types and the messages do not need to be in any particular order within the file. However,
upon receiving an XML file that contains multiple message types, the firewall will process
them in the following order: multiusersystem requests first, followed by logins, then
logouts.
The following workflow provides an example of how to use the PAN-OS XML API to send user
mappings from a non-Windows terminal server to the firewall.
STEP 1 | Generate the API key that will be used to authenticate the API communication between
the firewall and the terminal server. To generate the key you must provide login credentials
for an administrative account; the API is available to all administrators (including role-based
administrators with XML API privileges enabled).
Any special characters in the password must be URL/ percent-encoded.
From a browser, log in to the firewall. Then, to generate the API key for the firewall, open a
new browser window and enter the following URL:
https://<Firewall-IPaddress>/api/?
type=keygen&user=<username>&password=<password>
Where <Firewall-IPaddress> is the IP address or FQDN of the firewall and <username>
and <password> are the credentials for the administrative user account on the firewall. For
example:
https://10.1.2.5/api/?type=keygen&user=admin&password=admin
The firewall responds with a message containing the key, for example:
<response status="success">
<result>
<key>k7J335J6hI7nBxIqyfa62sZugWx7ot%2BgzEA9UOnlZRg=</key>
</result>
</response>
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STEP 2 | (Optional) Generate a setup message that the terminal server will send to specify the port
range and block size of ports per user that your Terminal Server agent uses.
If the Terminal Server agent does not send a setup message, the firewall will automatically
create a Terminal Server agent configuration using the following default settings upon receipt
of the first login message:
• Default port range: 1025 to 65534
• Per user block size: 200
• Maximum number of multi-user systems: 1,000
The following shows a sample setup message:
<uid-message>
<payload>
<multiusersystem>
<entry ip="10.1.1.23" startport="20000" endport="39999"
blocksize="100/">
</multiusersystem>
</payload>
<type>update</type>
<version>1.0</version>
</uid-message>
where entry ip specifies the IP address assigned to terminal server users, startport
and endport specify the port range to use when assigning ports to individual users, and
blocksize specifies the number of ports to assign to each user. The maximum blocksize is
4000 and each multi-user system can allocate a maximum of 1000 blocks.
If you define a custom blocksize and or port range, keep in mind that you must configure the
values such that every port in the range gets allocated and that there are no gaps or unused
ports. For example, if you set the port range to 1000–1499, you could set the block size to
100, but not to 200. This is because if you set it to 200, there would be unused ports at the
end of the range.
STEP 3 | Create a script that will extract the login events and create the XML input file to send to the
firewall.
Make sure the script enforces assignment of port number ranges at fixed boundaries with
no port overlaps. For example, if the port range is 1000–1999 and the block size is 200,
acceptable blockstart values would be 1000, 1200, 1400, 1600, or 1800. Blockstart values of
1001, 1300, or 1850 would be unacceptable because some of the port numbers in the range
would be left unused.
The login event payload that the terminal server sends to the firewall can contain
multiple login events.
The following shows the input file format for a PAN-OS XML login event:
<uid-message>
<payload>
<login>
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<entry name="acme\jjaso" ip="10.1.1.23" blockstart="20000">
<entry name="acme\jparker" ip="10.1.1.23" blockstart="20100">
<entry name="acme\ccrisp" ip="10.1.1.23" blockstart="21000">
</login>
</payload>
<type>update</type>
<version>1.0</version>
</uid-message>
The firewall uses this information to populate its user mapping table. Based on the mappings
extracted from the example above, if the firewall received a packet with a source address and
port of 10.1.1.23:20101, it would map the request to user jparker for policy enforcement.
Each multi-user system can allocate a maximum of 1,000 port blocks.
STEP 4 | Create a script that will extract the logout events and create the XML input file to send to
the firewall.
Upon receipt of a logout event message with a blockstart parameter, the firewall
removes the corresponding IP address-port-user mapping. If the logout message contains a
username and IP address, but no blockstart parameter, the firewall removes all mappings
for the user. If the logout message contains an IP address only, the firewall removes the
multi-user system and all associated mappings.
The following shows the input file format for a PAN-OS XML logout event:
<uid-message>
<payload>
<logout>
<entry name="acme\jjaso" ip="10.1.1.23" blockstart="20000">
<entry name="acme\ccrisp" ip="10.1.1.23">
<entry ip="10.2.5.4">
</logout>
</payload>
<type>update</type>
<version>1.0</version>
</uid-message>
You can also clear the multiuser system entry from the firewall using the following CLI
command: clear xml-api multiusersystem
STEP 5 | Make sure that the scripts you create include a way to dynamically enforce that the port
block range allocated using the XML API matches the actual source port assigned to the user
on the terminal server and that the mapping is removed when the user logs out or the port
allocation changes.
One way to do this would be to use netfilter NAT rules to hide user sessions behind the
specific port ranges allocated via the XML API based on the uid. For example, to ensure that a
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804 | User-ID
user with the user ID jjaso is mapped to a source network address translation (SNAT) value of
10.1.1.23:20000-20099, the script you create should include the following:
[root@ts1 ~]# iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -m owner --uid-owner
jjaso -p tcp -j SNAT --to-source 10.1.1.23:20000-20099
Similarly, the scripts you create should also ensure that the IP table routing configuration
dynamically removes the SNAT mapping when the user logs out or the port allocation changes:
[root@ts1 ~]# iptables -t nat -D POSTROUTING 1
STEP 6 | Define how to package the XML input files containing the setup, login, and logout events
into wget or cURL messages for transmission to the firewall.
To apply the files to the firewall using wget:
> wget --post file <filename> “https://<FirewallIPaddress>/api/?type=user-id&key=<key>&filename=<input_filename.xml>&client=wget&vsys=<VSYS_name>”
For example, the syntax for sending an input file named login.xml to the firewall at 10.2.5.11
using key k7J335J6hI7nBxIqyfa62sZugWx7ot%2BgzEA9UOnlZRg using wget would look
as follows:
> wget --post file login.xml “https://10.2.5.11/api/?type=userid&key=k7J335J6hI7nBxIqyfa62sZugWx7ot%2BgzEA9UOnlZRg&filename=login.xml&client=wget&vsys=vsys1”
To apply the file to the firewall using cURL:
> curl --form file=@<filename> https://<Firewall-IPaddress>/api/?
type=user-id&key=<key>&vsys=<VSYS_name>
For example, the syntax for sending an input file named login.xml to the firewall at 10.2.5.11
using key k7J335J6hI7nBxIqyfa62sZugWx7ot%2BgzEA9UOnlZRg using cURL would
look as follows:
> curl --form file@login.xml “https://10.2.5.11/api/?type=userid&key=k7J335J6hI7nBxIqyfa62sZugWx7ot%2BgzEA9UOnlZRg&vsys=vsys1”
STEP 7 | Verify that the firewall is successfully receiving login events from the terminal servers.
Verify the configuration by opening an SSH connection to the firewall and then running the
following CLI commands:
To verify if the terminal server is connecting to the firewall over XML:
admin@PA-5250> show user xml-api multiusersystem
Host Vsys Users Blocks
----------------------------------------
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10.5.204.43 vsys1 5 2
To verify that the firewall is receiving mappings from a terminal server over XML:
admin@PA-5250> show user ip-port-user-mapping all
Global max host index 1, host hash count 1
XML API Multi-user System 10.5.204.43
Vsys 1, Flag 3
Port range: 20000 - 39999
Port size: start 200; max 2000
Block count 100, port count 20000
20000-20199: acme\administrator
Total host: 1
Send User Mappings to User-ID Using the XML API
User-ID provides many out-of-the box methods for obtaining user mapping information.
However, you might have applications or devices that capture user information but cannot
natively integrate with User-ID. For example, you might have a custom, internally developed
application or a device that no standard user mapping method supports. In such cases, you can
use the PAN-OS XML API to create custom scripts that send the information to the PAN-OS
integrated User-ID agent or directly to the firewall. The PAN-OS XML API uses standard HTTP
requests to send and receive data. API calls can be made directly from command line utilities such
as cURL or using any scripting or application framework that supports POST and GET requests.
To enable an external system to send user mapping information to the PAN-OS integrated UserID agent, create scripts that extract user login and logout events and use the events as input
to the PAN-OS XML API request. Then define the mechanisms for submitting the XML API
requests to the firewall (using cURL, for example) and use the API key of the firewall for secure
communication. For more details, refer to the PAN-OS XML API Usage Guide.
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Enable User- and Group-Based Policy
After you Enable User-ID, you will be able to configure Security Policy that applies to specific
users and groups. User-based policy controls can also include application information (including
which category and subcategory it belongs in, its underlying technology, or what the application
characteristics are). You can define policy rules to safely enable applications based on users or
groups of users, in either outbound or inbound directions.
Examples of user-based policies include:
• Enable only the IT department to use tools such as SSH, telnet, and FTP on standard ports.
• Allow the Help Desk Services group to use Slack.
• Allow all users to read Facebook, but block the use of Facebook apps, and restrict posting to
employees in marketing.
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Enable Policy for Users with Multiple Accounts
If a user in your organization has multiple responsibilities, that user might have multiple
usernames (accounts), each with distinct privileges for accessing a particular set of services, but
with all the usernames sharing the same IP address (the client system of the user). However, the
User-ID agent can map any one IP address (or IP address and port range for terminal server users)
to only one username for enforcing policy, and you can’t predict which username the agent will
map. To control access for all the usernames of a user, you must make adjustments to the rules,
user groups, and User-ID agent.
For example, say the firewall has a rule that allows username corp_user to access email and a
rule that allows username admin_user to access a MySQL server. The user logs in with either
username from the same client IP address. If the User-ID agent maps the IP address to corp_user,
then whether the user logs in as corp_user or admin_user, the firewall identifies that user as
corp_user and allows access to email but not the MySQL server. On the other hand, if the UserID agent maps the IP address to admin_user, the firewall always identifies the user as admin_user
regardless of login and allows access to the MySQL server but not email. The following steps
describe how to enforce both rules in this example.
STEP 1 | Configure a user group for each service that requires distinct access privileges.
In this example, each group is for a single service (email or MySQL server). However, it is
common to configure each group for a set of services that require the same privileges (for
example, one group for all basic user services and one group for all administrative services).
If your organization already has user groups that can access the services that the user requires,
simply add the username that is used for less restricted services to those groups. In this
example, the email server requires less restricted access than the MySQL server, and corp_user
is the username for accessing email. Therefore, you add corp_user to a group that can access
email (corp_employees) and to a group that can access the MySQL server (network_services).
If adding a username to a particular existing group would violate your organizational
practices, you can create a custom group based on an LDAP filter. For this example, say
network_services is a custom group, which you configure as follows:
1. Select Device > User Identification > Group Mapping Settings and Add a group mapping
configuration with a unique Name.
2. Select an LDAP Server Profile and ensure the Enabled check box is enabled.
3. Select the Custom Group tab and Add a custom group with network_services as a Name.
4. Specify an LDAP Filter that matches an LDAP attribute of corp_user and click OK.
5. Click OK and Commit.
Later, if other users that are in the group for less restricted services are given
additional usernames that access more restricted services, you can add those
usernames to the group for more restricted services. This scenario is more
common than the inverse; a user with access to more restricted services usually
already has access to less restricted services.
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STEP 2 | Configure the rules that control user access based on the groups you just configured.
For more information, refer to Enable user- and group-based policy enforcement.
1. Configure a security rule that allows the corp_employees group to access email.
2. Configure a security rule that allows the network_services group to access the MySQL
server.
STEP 3 | Configure the ignore list of the User-ID agent.
This ensures that the User-ID agent maps the client IP address only to the username that is a
member of the groups assigned to the rules you just configured. The ignore list must contain all
the usernames of the user that are not members of those groups.
In this example, you add admin_user to the ignore list of the Windows-based User-ID agent
to ensure that it maps the client IP address to corp_user. This guarantees that, whether the
user logs in as corp_user or admin_user, the firewall identifies the user as corp_user and applies
both rules that you configured because corp_user is a member of the groups that the rules
reference.
1. Create an ignore_user_list.txt file.
2. Open the file and add admin_user.
If you later add more usernames, each must be on a separate line.
3. Save the file to the User-ID agent folder on the domain server where the agent is
installed.
If you use the PAN-OS integrated User-ID agent, see Configure User Mapping
Using the PAN-OS Integrated User-ID Agent for instructions on how to
configure the ignore list.
STEP 4 | Configure endpoint authentication for the restricted services.
This enables the endpoint to verify the credentials of the user and preserves the ability to
enable access for users with multiple usernames.
In this example, you have configured a firewall rule that allows corp_user, as a member of
the network_services group, to send a service request to the MySQL server. You must now
configure the MySQL server to respond to any unauthorized username (such as corp_user) by
prompting the user to enter the login credentials of an authorized username (admin_user).
If the user logs in to the network as admin_user, the user can then access the MySQL
server without it prompting for the admin_user credentials again.
In this example, both corp_user and admin_user have email accounts, so the email server won’t
prompt for additional credentials regardless of which username the user entered when logging
in to the network.
The firewall is now ready to enforce rules for a user with multiple usernames.
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Verify the User-ID Configuration
After you configure user and group mapping, enable User-ID in your Security policy, and
configure Authentication policy, you should verify that User-ID works properly.
STEP 1 | Access the firewall CLI.
STEP 2 | Verify that group mapping is working.
From the CLI, enter the following operational command:
> show user group-mapping statistics
STEP 3 | Verify that user mapping is working.
If you are using the PAN-OS integrated User-ID agent, you can verify this from the CLI using
the following command:
> show user ip-user-mapping-mp all
IP Vsys From User Timeout (sec)
------------------------------------------------------
192.168.201.1 vsys1 UIA acme\george 210
192.168.201.11 vsys1 UIA acme\duane 210
192.168.201.50 vsys1 UIA acme\betsy 210
192.168.201.10 vsys1 UIA acme\administrator 210
192.168.201.100 vsys1 AD acme\administrator 748
Total: 5 users
*: WMI probe succeeded
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810 | User-ID
STEP 4 | Test your Security policy rule.
• From a machine in the zone where User-ID is enabled, attempt to access sites and
applications to test the rules you defined in your policy and ensure that traffic is allowed
and denied as expected.
• You can also troubleshoot the running configuration to determine whether the policy is
configured correctly. For example, suppose you have a rule that blocks users from playing
World of Warcraft; you could test the policy as follows:
1. Select Device > Troubleshooting, and select Security Policy Match from the Select Test
drop-down.
2. Enter 0.0.0.0 as the Source and Destination IP addresses. This executes the policy
match test against any source and destination IP addresses.
3. Enter the Destination Port.
4. Enter the Protocol.
5. Execute the security policy match test.
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STEP 5 | Test your Authentication policy and Authentication Portal configuration.
1. From the same zone, go to a machine that is not a member of your directory, such as a
Mac OS system, and try to ping to a system external to the zone. The ping should work
without requiring authentication.
2. From the same machine, open a browser and navigate to a web site in a destination zone
that matches an Authentication rule you defined. The Authentication Portal web form
should display and prompt you for login credentials.
3. Log in using the correct credentials and confirm that you are redirected to the requested
page.
4. You can also test your Authentication policy using the test authenticationpolicy-match operational command as follows:
> test authentication-policy-match from corporate to internet
source 192.168.201.10 destination 8.8.8.8
Matched rule: 'authentication portal' action: web-form
STEP 6 | Verify that the log files display usernames.
Select a logs page (such as Monitor > Logs > Traffic) and verify that the Source User column
displays usernames.
STEP 7 | Verify that reports display usernames.
1. Select Monitor > Reports.
2. Select a report type that includes usernames. For example, the Denied Applications
report, Source User column, should display a list of the users who attempted to access
the applications.
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Deploy User-ID in a Large-Scale Network
A large-scale network can have hundreds of information sources that firewalls query to map
IP addresses to usernames and to map usernames to user groups. You can simplify UserID administration for such a network by aggregating the user mapping and group mapping
information before the User-ID agents collect it, thereby reducing the number of required agents.
A large-scale network can also have numerous firewalls that use the mapping information
to enforce policies. You can reduce the resources that the firewalls and information sources
use in the querying process by configuring some firewalls to acquire mapping information
through redistribution instead of direct querying. Redistribution also enables the firewalls to
enforce user-based policies when users rely on local sources for authentication (such as regional
directory services) but need access to remote services and applications (such as global data center
applications).
If you Configure Authentication Policy, your firewalls must also redistribute the Authentication
Timestamps associated with user responses to authentication challenges. Firewalls use the
timestamps to evaluate the timeouts for Authentication policy rules. The timeouts allow a user
who successfully authenticates to later request services and applications without authenticating
again within the timeout periods. Redistributing timestamps enables you to enforce consistent
timeouts for each user even if the firewall that initially grants a user access is not the same firewall
that later controls access for that user.
If you have configured multiple virtual systems, you can share IP address-to-username mapping
information across virtual systems by selecting a virtual system as a User-ID hub.
• Deploy User-ID for Numerous Mapping Information Sources
• Redistribute Data and Authentication Timestamps
• Share User-ID Mappings Across Virtual Systems
Deploy User-ID for Numerous Mapping Information Sources
You can use Windows Log Forwarding and Global Catalog servers to simplify user mapping and
group mapping in a large-scale network of Microsoft Active Directory (AD) domain controllers or
Exchange servers. These methods simplify User-ID administration by aggregating the mapping
information before the User-ID agents collect it, thereby reducing the number of required agents.
• Windows Log Forwarding and Global Catalog Servers
• Plan a Large-Scale User-ID Deployment
• Configure Windows Log Forwarding
• Configure User-ID for Numerous Mapping Information Sources
Windows Log Forwarding and Global Catalog Servers
Because each User-ID agent can monitor up to 100 servers, the firewall needs multiple UserID agents to monitor a network with hundreds of AD domain controllers or Exchange servers.
Creating and managing numerous User-ID agents involves considerable administrative overhead,
especially in expanding networks where tracking new domain controllers is difficult. Windows
Log Forwarding enables you to minimize the administrative overhead by reducing the number of
servers to monitor and thereby reducing the number of User-ID agents to manage. When you
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configure Windows Log Forwarding, multiple domain controllers export their login events to a
single domain member from which a User-ID agent collects the user mapping information.
You can configure Windows Log Forwarding for Windows Server versions 2012 and 2012
R2. Windows Log Forwarding is not available for non-Microsoft servers.
To collect group mapping information in a large-scale network, you can configure the firewall to
query a Global Catalog server that receives account information from the domain controllers.
The following figure illustrates user mapping and group mapping for a large-scale network
in which the firewall uses a Windows-based User-ID agent. See Plan a Large-Scale User-ID
Deployment to determine if this deployment suits your network.
Plan a Large-Scale User-ID Deployment
When deciding whether to use Windows Log Forwarding and Global Catalog servers for your
User-ID implementation, consult your system administrator to determine:
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814 | User-ID
Bandwidth required for domain controllers to forward login events to member servers.
The bandwidth is a multiple of the login rate (number of logins per minute) of the domain
controllers and the byte size of each login event.
Domain controllers won’t forward their entire security logs, they forward only the events that
the user mapping process requires per login: four events for Windows Server 2012 and MS
Exchange.
Whether the following network elements support the required bandwidth:
• Domain controllers—Must support the processing load associated with forwarding the
events.
• Member Servers—Must support the processing load associated with receiving the events.
• Connections—The geographic distribution (local or remote) of the domain controllers,
member servers, and Global Catalog servers is a factor. Generally, a remote distribution
supports less bandwidth.
Configure Windows Log Forwarding
To configure Windows Log Forwarding, you need administrative privileges for configuring group
policies on Windows servers. Configure Windows Log Forwarding on all the Windows Event
Collectors—the member servers that collect login events from domain controllers. The following is
an overview of the tasks; consult your Windows Server documentation for the specific steps.
STEP 1 | On each Windows Event Collector, enable event collection, add the domain controllers
as event sources, and configure the event collection query (subscription). The events you
specify in the subscription vary by domain controller platform:
• Windows Server 2012 (including R2) and 2016, or MS Exchange—The event IDs for the
required events are 4768 (Authentication Ticket Granted), 4769 (Service Ticket Granted),
4770 (Ticket Granted Renewed), and 4624 (Logon Success).
To forward events as quickly as possible, Minimize Latency when configuring the
subscription.
User-ID agents monitor the Security log on Windows Event Collectors, not the default
forwarded events location. To change the event logging path to the Security log, perform the
following steps on each Windows Event Collector.
1. Open the Event Viewer.
2. Right-click the Security log and select Properties.
3. Copy the Log path (default %SystemRoot%\System32\Winevt\Logs
\security.evtx) and click OK.
4. Right-click the Forwarded Events folder and select Properties.
5. Replace the default Log path (%SystemRoot%\System32\Winevt\Logs
\ForwardedEvents.evtx) by pasting the value from the Security log, and then click OK.
STEP 2 | Configure a group policy to enable Windows Remote Management (WinRM) on the domain
controllers.
STEP 3 | Configure a group policy to enable Windows Event Forwarding on the domain controllers.
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Configure User-ID for Numerous Mapping Information Sources
STEP 1 | Configure Windows Log Forwarding on the member servers that will collect login events.
Configure Windows Log Forwarding. This step requires administrative privileges for
configuring group policies on Windows servers.
STEP 2 | Install the Windows-based User-ID agent.
Install the Windows-Based User-ID Agent on a Windows server that can access the member
servers. Make sure the system that will host the User-ID agent is a member of the same
domain as the servers it will monitor.
STEP 3 | Configure the User-ID agent to collect user mapping information from the member servers.
1. Start the Windows-based User-ID agent.
2. Select User Identification > Discovery and perform the following steps for each member
server that will receive events from domain controllers:
1. In the Servers section, click Add and enter a Name to identify the member server.
2. In the Server Address field, enter the FQDN or IP address of the member server.
3. For the Server Type, select Microsoft Active Directory.
4. Click OK to save the server entry.
3. Configure the remaining User-ID agent settings (refer to Configure the Windows-Based
User-ID Agent for User Mapping).
4. If the User-ID sources provide usernames in multiple formats, specify the format for the
Primary Username when you Map Users to Groups.
The primary username is the username that identifies the user on the firewall and
represents the user in reports and logs, regardless of the format that the User-ID source
provides.
STEP 4 | Configure an LDAP server profile to specify how the firewall connects to the Global Catalog
servers (up to four) for group mapping information.
To improve availability, use at least two Global Catalog servers for redundancy.
You can collect group mapping information only for universal groups, not local domain groups
(subdomains).
1. Select Device > Server Profiles > LDAP, click Add, and enter a Name for the profile.
2. In the Servers section, for each Global Catalog, click Add and enter the server Name, IP
address (LDAP Server), and Port. For a plaintext or Start Transport Layer Security (Start
TLS) connection, use Port 3268. For an LDAP over SSL connection, use Port 3269. If
the connection will use Start TLS or LDAP over SSL, select the Require SSL/TLS secured
connection check box.
3. In the Base DN field, enter the Distinguished Name (DN) of the point in the Global
Catalog server where the firewall will start searching for group mapping information (for
example, DC=acbdomain,DC=com).
4. For the Type, select active-directory.
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STEP 5 | Configure an LDAP server profile to specify how the firewall connects to the servers (up to
four) that contain domain mapping information.
User-ID uses this information to map DNS domain names to NetBIOS domain names. This
mapping ensures consistent domain/username references in policy rules.
To improve availability, use at least two servers for redundancy.
The steps are the same as for the LDAP server profile you created for Global Catalogs in the
previous step, except for the following fields:
• LDAP Server—Enter the IP address of the domain controller that contains the domain
mapping information.
• Port—For a plaintext or Start TLS connection, use Port 389. For an LDAP over SSL
connection, use Port 636. If the connection will use Start TLS or LDAP over SSL, select the
Require SSL/TLS secured connection check box.
• Base DN—Select the DN of the point in the domain controller where the
firewall will start searching for domain mapping information. The value must
start with the string: cn=partitions,cn=configuration (for example,
cn=partitions,cn=configuration,DC=acbdomain,DC=com).
STEP 6 | Create a group mapping configuration for each LDAP server profile you created.
1. Select Device > User Identification > Group Mapping Settings.
2. Click Add and enter a Name to identify the group mapping configuration.
3. Select the LDAP Server Profile and ensure the Enabled check box is selected.
If the Global Catalog and domain mapping servers reference more groups than
your security rules require, configure the Group Include List and/or Custom
Group list to limit the groups for which User-ID performs mapping.
4. Click OK and Commit.
Insert Username in HTTP Headers
When you configure a secondary enforcement appliance with your Palo Alto Networks firewall
to enforce user-based policy, the secondary appliance may not have the IP address-to-username
mapping from the firewall. Transmitting user information to downstream appliances may require
deployment of additional appliances such as proxies or negatively impact the user’s experience
(for example, users having to log in multiple times). By sharing the user's identity in the HTTP
headers, you can enforce user-based policy without negatively impacting the user's experience or
deploying additional infrastructure.
When you configure this feature, apply the URL profile to your Security policy, and commit your
changes, the firewall:
1. Populates the user and domain values with the format of the primary username in the group
mapping for the source user.
2. Encodes this information using Base64.
3. Adds the Base64-encoded header to the payload.
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4. Routes the traffic to the downstream appliance.
If you want to include the username and domain only when the user accesses specific domains,
configure a domain list and the firewall inserts the header only when a domain in the list matches
the Host header of the HTTP request.
To share user information with downstream appliances, you must first enable User-ID and
configure group mapping.
To include the username and domain in the header, the firewall requires the IP address-tousername mapping for the user. If the user is not mapped, the firewall inserts unknown in
Base64 encoding for both the domain and username in the header.
To include the username and domain in headers for HTTPS traffic, you must first create a
decryption profile to decrypt HTTPS traffic.
This feature supports forward-proxy decryption traffic.
STEP 1 | Create or edit a URL Filtering Profile.
The firewall does not insert headers if the action for the URL filtering profile is block
for the domain.
STEP 2 | Create or edit an HTTP header insertion entry using predefined types.
You can define up to five headers for each profile.
STEP 3 | Select Dynamic Fields as the header Type.
STEP 4 | Add the Domains where you want insert headers. When the user accesses a domain in the
list, the firewall inserts the specified header.
STEP 5 | Add a new Header or select X-Authenticated-User to edit it.
STEP 6 | Select a header Value format (either ($domain)\($user) or WinNT://($domain)/
($user)) or enter your own format using the ($domain) and ($user) dynamic tokens
(for example, ($user)@($domain) for UserPrincipalName).
Do not use the same dynamic token (either ($user) or ($domain)) more than once
per value.
Each value can be up to 512 characters. The firewall populates the ($user) and ($domain)
dynamic tokens using the primary username in the group mapping profile. For example:
• If the primary username is the sAMAccountName, the value for ($user) is the
sAMAccountName and the value for ($domain) is the NetBios domain name.
• If the primary username is the UserPrincipalName, the ($user) the user account name
(prefix) and the ($domain) is the Domain Name System (DNS) name.
STEP 7 | (Optional) Select Log to enable logging for the header insertion.
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STEP 8 | Apply the URL filtering profile to the security policy rule for HTTP or HTTPS traffic.
STEP 9 | Select OK twice to confirm the HTTP header configuration.
STEP 10 | Commit your changes.
STEP 11 | Verify the firewall includes the username and domain in the HTTP headers.
• Use the show user user-ids all command to verify the group mapping is correct.
• Use the show counter global name ctd_header_insert command to view the
number of HTTP headers inserted by the firewall.
• If you configured logging in Step 7, check the logs for the inserted Base64 encoded
payload (for example, corpexample\testuser would appear in the logs as
Y29ycGV4YW1wbGVcdGVzdHVzZXI=).
Redistribute Data and Authentication Timestamps
In a large-scale network, instead of configuring all your firewalls to directly query the mapping
information sources, you can streamline resource usage by configuring some firewalls to collect
mapping information through redistribution.
You can redistribute user mapping information collected through any method except
Terminal Server (TS) agents. You cannot redistribute Group Mapping or HIP match
information.
If you use Panorama to manage firewalls and aggregate firewall logs, you can use
Panorama to manage User-ID redistribution. Leveraging Panorama is a simpler solution
than creating extra connections between firewalls to redistribute User-ID information.
If you Configure Authentication Policy, your firewalls must also redistribute the Authentication
Timestamps that are generated when users authenticate to access applications and services.
Firewalls use the timestamps to evaluate the timeouts for Authentication policy rules. The
timeouts allow a user who successfully authenticates to later request services and applications
without authenticating again within the timeout periods. Redistributing timestamps enables you to
enforce consistent timeouts across all the firewalls in your network.
Firewalls share data and authentication timestamps as part of the same redistribution flow; you
don’t have to configure redistribution for each information type separately.
• Firewall Deployment for Data Redistribution
• Configure Data Redistribution
Firewall Deployment for Data Redistribution
In a large-scale network, instead of configuring all your firewalls to directly query the data
sources, you can streamline resource usage by configuring some firewalls to collect data through
redistribution. Data redistribution also provides granularity, allowing you to redistribute only the
types of information you specify to only the devices you select. You can also filter the IP user
mappings or IP tag mappings using subnets and ranges to ensure the firewalls collect only the
mappings they need to enforce policy.
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Data redistribution can be unidirectional (the agent provides data to the client) or bidirectional,
where both the agent and the client can simultaneously send and receive data.
To redistribute the data, you can use the following architecture types:
• Hub and spoke architecture for a single region:
To redistribute data between firewalls, use a hub and spoke architecture as a best practice.
In this configuration, a hub firewall collects the data from sources such as Windows User-ID
agents, Syslog Servers, Domain Controllers, or other firewalls. Configure the redistribution
client firewalls to collect the data from the hub firewall.
For example, a hub (consisting of a pair of VM-50s for resiliency) could connect to the User-ID
sources for the user mappings. The hub would then be able to redistribute the user mappings
when the client firewalls that use the user mappings to enforce policy connect to the hub to
receive data.
• Multi-Hub and spoke architecture for multiple regions:
If you have firewalls deployed in multiple regions and want to distribute the data to the
firewalls in all of these regions so that you can enforce policy consistently regardless of where
the user logs in, you can use a multi-hub and spoke architecture for multiple regions.
Start by configuring a firewall in each region to collect data from the sources. This firewall acts
as a local hub for redistribution. This firewall collects the data from all sources in that region so
that it can redistribute it to the client firewalls. Next, configure the client firewalls to connect
to the redistribution hubs for their region and all other regions so that the client firewalls have
all data from all hubs.
As a best practice, enable bidirectional redistribution within a region if the firewalls need to
both send and receive data. For example, if a firewall is acting as a GlobalProtect gateway for
remote users and as a branch firewall for local users, the firewall must send the user mappings
it collects for remote users to the hub firewall as well as receive the user mappings of the local
users from the hub firewall.
• Hierarchical architecture:
To redistribute data, you can also use a hierarchical architecture. For example, to redistribute
data such as User-ID information, organize the redistribution sequence in layers, where each
layer has one or more firewalls. In the bottom layer, PAN-OS integrated User-ID agents
running on firewalls and Windows-based User-ID agents running on Windows servers map IP
addresses to usernames. Each higher layer has firewalls that receive the mapping information
and authentication timestamps from up to 100 redistribution points in the layer beneath it. The
top-layer firewalls aggregate the mappings and timestamps from all layers. This deployment
provides the option to configure policies for all users in top-layer firewalls and region- or
function-specific policies for a subset of users in the corresponding domains served by lowerlayer firewalls.
In this scenario, three layers of firewalls redistribute mappings and timestamps from local
offices to regional offices and then to a global data center. The data center firewall that
aggregates all the information shares it with other data center firewalls so that they can all
enforce policy and generate reports for users across your entire network. Only the bottom
layer firewalls use User-ID agents to query the directory servers.
The information sources that the User-ID agents query do not count towards the maximum
of ten hops in the sequence. However, Windows-based User-ID agents that forward mapping
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information to firewalls do count. Also in this example, the top layer has two hops: the first to
aggregate information in one data center firewall and the second to share the information with
other data center firewalls.
Configure Data Redistribution
Before you configure data redistribution:
Plan the redistribution architecture. Some factors to consider are:
• Which firewalls will enforce policies for all data types and which firewalls will enforce
region- or function-specific policies for a subset of data?
• How many hops does the redistribution sequence require to aggregate all data? The
maximum allowed number of hops for user mappings is ten and the maximum allowed
number of hops for IP address-to-username mappings and IP address-to-tag mappings is
one.
• How can you minimize the number of firewalls that query the user mapping information
sources? The fewer the number of querying firewalls, the lower the processing load is on
both the firewalls and sources.
Configure the data sources from which your redistribution agents obtain the data to
redistribute to their clients:
• user mappings from PAN-OS Integrated User-ID agents or Windows-based User-ID agents
• IP address-to-tag mappings for dynamic address groups
• username-to-tag mappings for dynamic user groups
• GlobalProtect for HIP-based Policy Enforcement
• data for device quarantine (Panorama only)
Configure Authentication Policy.
Data redistribution consists of:
• The redistribution agent that provides information
• The redistribution client that receives information
Perform the following steps on the firewalls in the data redistribution sequence.
STEP 1 | On a redistribution client firewall, configure a firewall, Panorama, or Windows User-ID agent
as a data redistribution agent.
1. Select Device > Data Redistribution > Agents.
2. Add a redistribution agent and enter a Name.
3. Confirm that the agent is Enabled.
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STEP 2 | Add the agent using its Serial Number or its Host and Port.
• To add an agent using a serial number, select the Serial Number of the firewall you want to
use as a redistribution agent.
• To add an agent using its host and port information:
1. Enter the information for the Host.
2. Select whether the host is an LDAP Proxy.
3. Enter the Port (default is 5007, range is 1—65535).
4. (Multiple virtual systems only) Enter the Collector Name to identify which virtual system
you want to use as a redistribution agent.
5. (Multiple virtual systems only) Enter and confirm the Collector Pre-Shared Key for the
virtual system you want to use as a redistribution agent.
STEP 3 | Select one or more Data Type for the agent to redistribute.
• IP User Mappings—IP address-to-username mappings for User-ID.
• IP Tags—IP address-to-tag mappings for dynamic address groups.
• User Tags—Username-to-tag mappings for dynamic user groups.
• HIP—Host information profile (HIP) data from GlobalProtect, which includes HIP objects
and profiles.
• Quarantine List—Devices that GlobalProtect identifies as quarantined.
STEP 4 | (Multiple virtual systems only) Configure a virtual system as a collector that can redistribute
data.
Skip this step if the firewall receives but does not redistribute data.
You can redistribute information among virtual systems on different firewalls or on the
same firewall. In both cases, each virtual system counts as one hop in the redistribution
sequence.
1. Select Device > Data Redistribution > Collector Settings.
2. Edit the Data Redistribution Agent Setup.
3. Enter a Collector Name and Pre-Shared Key to identify this firewall or virtual system as
a User-ID agent.
4. Click OK to save your changes.
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STEP 5 | (Optional but recommended) Configure which networks you want to include in data
redistribution and which networks you want to exclude from data redistribution.
You can include or exclude networks and subnetworks when redistributing either IP addressto-tag mappings or IP address-to-username mappings.
As a best practice, always specify which networks to include and exclude to ensure
that the agent is only communicating with internal resources.
1. Select Device > Data Redistribution > Include/Exclude Networks.
2. Add an entry and enter a Name.
3. Confirm that the entry is Enabled.
4. Select whether you want to Include or Exclude the entry.
5. Enter the Network Address for the entry.
6. Click OK.
STEP 6 | Configure the service route that the firewall uses to query other firewalls for User-ID
information.
Skip this step if the firewall only receives user mapping information from Windows-based
User-ID agents or directly from the information sources (such as directory servers) instead of
from other firewalls.
1. Select Device > Setup > Services.
2. (Firewalls with multiple virtual systems only) Select Global (for a firewall-wide service
route) or Virtual Systems (for a virtual system-specific service route), and then configure
the service route.
3. Click Service Route Configuration, select Customize, and select IPv4 or IPv6 based on
your network protocols. Configure the service route for both protocols if your network
uses both.
4. Select UID Agent and then select the Source Interface and Source Address.
5. Click OK twice to save the service route.
STEP 7 | Enable the firewall to respond when other firewalls query it for data to redistribute.
Skip this step if the firewall receives but does not redistribute data.
Configure an Interface Management Profile with the User-ID service enabled and assign the
profile to a firewall interface.
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STEP 8 | (Optional but recommended) Use a custom certificate from your enterprise PKI to establish a
unique chain of trust from the redistribution client to the redistribution agent.
1. On the redistribution client firewall, create a custom SSL certificate profile to use for
outgoing connections.
2. Select Device > Setup > Management > Secure Communication Settings.
3. Edit the settings.
4. Select the Customize Secure Server Communication option.
5. Select the Certificate Profile you created in Substep 1.
6. Click OK.
7. Customize Communication for Data Redistribution.
8. Commit your changes.
9. Enter the following CLI command to confirm the certificate profile (SSL config) uses
Custom certificates: show redistribution agent state <agent-name>
(where <agent-name> is the name of the redistribution agent or User-ID agent.
STEP 9 | (Optional but recommended) Use a custom certificate from your enterprise PKI to establish a
unique chain of trust from the redistribution agent to the redistribution client.
1. On the redistribution agent firewall, create a custom SSL/TLS service profile for the
firewall to use for incoming connections.
2. Select Device > Setup > Management > Secure Communication Settings.
3. Edit the settings.
4. Select the Customize Secure Server Communication option.
5. Select the SSL/TLS Service Profile you created in Step 1.
6. Click OK.
7. Commit your changes.
8. Enter the following CLI command to confirm the certificate profile (SSL config) uses
Custom certificates: show redistribution service status.
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STEP 10 | Verify the agents correctly redistribute data to the clients.
1. View the agent statistics (Device > Data Redistribution > Agents) and select Status
to view a summary of the activity for the redistribution agent, such as the number of
mappings that the client firewall has received.
2. Confirm that the Connected status is yes.
3. On the agent, access the CLI and enter the following CLI command to check the status
of the redistribution: show redistribution service status.
4. On the agent, enter the following CLI command to view the redistribution clients: show
redistribution service client all.
5. On the client, enter the following CLI command to check the status of the redistribution:
show redistribution service client all.
6. Confirm the Source Name in the User-ID logs (Monitor > Logs > User-ID) to verify that
the firewall receives the mappings from the redistribution agents.
7. On the client, view the IP-Tag log (Monitor > Logs > IP-Tag) to confirm that the client
firewall receives data.
8. On the client, enter the following CLI command and verify that the source the firewall
receives the mappings From is REDIST: show user ip-user-mapping all.
STEP 11 | (Optional) To troubleshoot data redistribution, enable the traceroute option.
When you enable the traceroute option, the firewall that receives the data appends its IP
address to the <route> field, which is a list of all firewall IP addresses that the data has
traversed. This option requires that all PAN-OS devices in the redistribution route use PANOS version 10.0. If a PAN-OS device in the redistribution route uses PAN-OS 9.1.x or earlier
versions, the traceroute information terminates at that device.
1. On the redistribution agent where the source originates, enter the following CLI
command: debug user-id test cp-login traceroute yes ip-address
<ip-address> user <username> (where <ip-address> is the IP address of the
IP address-to-username mapping you want to verify and <username> is the username
of the IP address-to-username mapping you want to verify.
2. On a client of the firewall where you configured the traceroute, verify the firewall
redistributes the data by entering the following CLI command: show user ip-usermapping all.
The firewall displays the timestamp for the creation of the mapping (SeqNumber) and
whether the user has GlobalProtect (GP User).
admin > show user ip-user-mapping-mp ip 192.0.2.0
IP address: 192.0.2.0 (vsys1)
User: jimdoe
From: REDIST
Timeout: 889s
Created: 11s ago
Origin: 198.51.100.0
SeqNumber: 15895329682-67831262
GP User: No
Local HIP: No
Route Node 0: 198.51.100.0 (vsys1)
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Route Node 1: 198.51.100.1 (vsys1)
Share User-ID Mappings Across Virtual Systems
To simplify User-ID™ source configuration when you have multiple virtual systems, configure
the User-ID sources on a single virtual system to share IP address-to-username mappings and
username-to-group mappings with all other virtual systems on the firewall.
Configuring a single virtual system as a User-ID hub simplifies user mapping by eliminating the
need to configure the sources on multiple virtual systems, especially if traffic will pass through
multiple virtual systems based on the resources the user is trying to access (for example, in an
academic networking environment where a student will be accessing different departments
whose traffic is managed by different virtual systems).
To map the user or group, the firewall uses the mapping table on the local virtual system and
applies the policy for that user or group. If the firewall does not find the mapping for a user or
group on the virtual system where that user’s traffic originated, the firewall queries the hub to
fetch the IP address-to-username information for that user or group mapping information for that
group. If the firewall locates the mapping on both the User-ID hub and the local virtual system,
the firewall uses the mapping it learns locally. If the mapping on the local firewall differs from the
mapping on the virtual system hub, the firewall uses the local mapping.
After you configure the User-ID hub, the virtual system can use the mapping table on the User-ID
hub when it needs to identify a user for user-based policy enforcement or to display the username
in a log or report but the source is not available locally. When you select a hub, the firewall retains
the mappings on other virtual systems so we recommend consolidating the User-ID sources on
the hub. However, if you don’t want to share mappings from a specific source, you can configure
an individual virtual system to perform user or group mapping.
STEP 1 | Assign the virtual system as a User-ID hub.
1. Select Device > Virtual Systems and then select the virtual system where you
consolidated your User-ID sources.
2. On the Resource tab, Make this vsys a User-ID data hub and click Yes to confirm. Then
click OK.
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STEP 2 | Click Yes to confirm.
STEP 3 | Select the Mapping Type that you want to share then click OK.
• IP User Mapping—Share IP address-to-username mapping information with other virtual
systems.
• User Group Mapping—Share group mapping information with other virtual systems.
You must select at least one mapping type.
STEP 4 | Consolidate your User-ID sources and migrate them to the virtual system that you want to
use as a User-ID hub.
This consolidates the User-ID configuration for operational simplicity. By configuring the hub
to monitor servers and connect to agents that were previously monitored by other virtual
systems, the hub collects the user mapping information instead of having each virtual system
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collect it independently. If you don’t want to share mappings from specific virtual systems,
configure those mappings on a virtual system that will not be used as the hub.
Use the same format for the Primary Username across virtual systems and firewalls.
1. Remove any sources that are unnecessary or outdated.
2. Identify all configurations for your Windows-based or integrated agents and any sources
that send user mappings using the XML API and copy them to the virtual system you
want to use as a User-ID hub.
On the hub, you can configure any User-ID source that is currently configured
on a virtual system. However, IP address-and-port-to-username mapping
information from Terminal Server agents are not shared between the User-ID
hub and the connected virtual systems.
3. Specify the subnetworks that User-ID should include in or exclude from mapping.
4. Define the Ignore User List.
5. On all other virtual systems, remove any sources that are on the User-ID hub.
STEP 5 | Commit the changes to enable the User-ID hub and begin collecting mappings for the
consolidated sources.
STEP 6 | Confirm the User-ID hub is mapping the users and groups.
1. Use the show user ip-user-mapping all command to show the IP address-tousername mappings and which virtual system provides the mappings.
2. Use the show user user-id-agent statistics command to show which virtual
system is serving as the User-ID hub.
3. Confirm the hub is sharing the group mappings by using the following CLI commands:
• show user group-mapping statistics
• show user group-mapping state all
• show user group list
• show user group name <group-name>
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To safely enable applications on your network, the Palo Alto Networks next-generation firewalls
provide both an application and web perspective—App-ID and URL Filtering—to protect against a
full spectrum of legal, regulatory, productivity, and resource utilization risks.
App-ID enables visibility into the applications on the network, so you can learn how they work
and understand their behavioral characteristics and their relative risk. This application knowledge
allows you to create and enforce security policy rules to enable, inspect, and shape desired
applications and block unwanted applications. When you define policy rules to allow traffic, AppID begins to classify traffic without any additional configuration.
New and modified App-IDs are released as part of Applications and Threat Content Updates—
follow the Best Practices for Applications and Threats Content Updates to seamlessly keep your
application and threat signatures up-to-date.
• App-ID Overview
• Streamlined App-ID Policy Rules
• App-ID and HTTP/2 Inspection
• Manage Custom or Unknown Applications
• Manage New and Modified App-IDs
• Use Application Objects in Policy
• Safely Enable Applications on Default Ports
• Applications with Implicit Support
• Security Policy Rule Optimization
• App-ID Cloud Engine
• SaaS App-ID Policy Recommendation
• Application Level Gateways
• Disable the SIP Application-level Gateway (ALG)
• Use HTTP Headers to Manage SaaS Application Access
• Maintain Custom Timeouts for Legacy Applications
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App-ID Overview
App-ID, a patented traffic classification system only available in Palo Alto Networks firewalls,
determines what an application is irrespective of port, protocol, encryption (SSH or SSL) or
any other evasive tactic used by the application. It applies multiple classification mechanisms
—application signatures, application protocol decoding, and heuristics—to your network traffic
stream to accurately identify applications.
Here's how App-ID identifies applications traversing your network:
• Traffic is matched against policy to check whether it is allowed on the network.
• Signatures are then applied to allowed traffic to identify the application based on unique
application properties and related transaction characteristics. The signature also determines if
the application is being used on its default port or it is using a non-standard port. If the traffic
is allowed by policy, the traffic is then scanned for threats and further analyzed for identifying
the application more granularly.
• If App-ID determines that encryption (SSL or SSH) is in use, and a decryption policy rule is in
place, the session is decrypted and application signatures are applied again on the decrypted
flow.
• Decoders for known protocols are then used to apply additional context-based signatures to
detect other applications that may be tunneling inside of the protocol (for example, Yahoo!
Instant Messenger used across HTTP). Decoders validate that the traffic conforms to the
protocol specification and provide support for NAT traversal and opening dynamic pinholes for
applications such as SIP and FTP.
• For applications that are particularly evasive and cannot be identified through advanced
signature and protocol analysis, heuristics or behavioral analysis may be used to determine the
identity of the application.
When the application is identified, the policy check determines how to treat the application, for
example—block, or allow and scan for threats, inspect for unauthorized file transfer and data
patterns, or shape using QoS.
Before you create an Application Override policy rule, make sure you understand that the set of
IPv4 addresses is treated as a subset of the set of IPv6 addresses, as described in detail in Policy.
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Streamlined App-ID Policy Rules
Safely enable a broad set of applications with common attributes using a single policy rule (for
example, give your users broad access to web-based applications or safely enable all enterprise
VoIP applications). Palo Alto Networks takes on the task of researching applications with common
attributes and delivers this through tags in dynamic content updates. This:
• Minimizes errors and saves time.
• Helps you to create policies that automatically update to handle newly released applications.
• Simplifies the transition toward an App-ID based rule set using Policy Optimizer.
Your firewall can then use your tag-based application filter to dynamically enforce new and
updated App-IDs without requiring you to review or update policy rules whenever new
applications are added. If you choose to exclude applications from a specific tag, new content
updates honor those exclusions. You can also use your own tags to define applications types
based on your policy requirements.
• Create an Application Filter Using Tags
• Create an Application Filter Based on Custom Tags
Create an Application Filter Using Tags
STEP 1 | Create an application filter using one or more tags.
If you select more than one tag, applications must match both tags to be included in the filter.
STEP 2 | (Optional) Exclude tags from your filter by selecting the check box in the Exclude column.
STEP 3 | Create a security policy rule and Add your new application filter on the Application tab.
STEP 4 | Commit your changes.
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Create an Application Filter Based on Custom Tags
STEP 1 | Create a custom tag and apply to App-IDs.
1. (Optional) Remove tags from an application.
2. Filter or search for applications, then select the specific applications to remove tags.
3. Edit Tags and select the tags to remove.
4. Click OK.
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STEP 2 | Create an application filter using one or more tags.
If you select more than one tag, applications must match both tags to be included in the filter.
STEP 3 | Create a security policy rule and Add your new application filter on the Application tab.
STEP 4 | Commit your changes.
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App-ID and HTTP/2 Inspection
You can now safely enable applications running over HTTP/2, without any additional
configuration on the firewall. As more websites continue to adopt HTTP/2, the firewall can
enforce security policy and all threat detection and prevention capabilities on a stream-by-stream
basis. This visibility into HTTP/2 traffic enables you to secure web servers that provide services
over HTTP/2, and allow your users to benefit from the speed and resource efficiency gains that
HTTP/2 provides.
The firewall processes and inspects HTTP/2 traffic by default when SSL decryption is enabled. For
HTTP/2 inspection to work correctly, the firewall must be enabled to use ECDHE (elliptic curve
Diffie-Hellman) as a key exchange algorithm for SSL sessions. ECDHE is enabled by default, but
you can check to confirm that it’s enabled by selecting Objects > Decryption > Decryption Profile
> SSL Decryption > SSL Protocol Settings.
When the Decryption logs introduced in PAN-OS 10.2 are enabled, you must enable
Tunnel Content Inspection to obtain the App-ID for HTTP/2 traffic.
You can disable HTTP/2 inspection for targeted traffic, or globally:
Disable HTTP/2 inspection for targeted traffic.
You’ll need to specify for the firewall to remove any value contained in the Application-Layer
Protocol Negotiation (ALPN) TLS extension. ALPN is used to secure HTTP/2 connections—
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when there is no value specified for this TLS extension, the firewall either downgrades HTTP/2
traffic to HTTP/1.1 or classifies it as unknown TCP traffic.
1. Select Objects > Decryption > Decryption Profile > SSL Decryption > SSL Forward
Proxy and then select Strip ALPN.
2. Attach the decryption profile to a decryption policy (Policies > Decryption) to turn off
HTTP/2 inspection for traffic that matches the policy.
3. Commit your changes.
Disable HTTP/2 inspection globally.
Use the CLI command: set deviceconfig setting http2 enable no and Commit
your changes. The firewall will classify HTTP/2 traffic as unknown TCP traffic.
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Manage Custom or Unknown Applications
Palo Alto Networks provides weekly application updates to identify new App-ID signatures.
By default, App-ID is always enabled on the firewall, and you don't need to enable a series of
signatures to identify well-known applications. Typically, the only applications that are classified
as unknown traffic—tcp, udp or non-syn-tcp—in the ACC and the traffic logs are commercially
available applications that have not yet been added to App-ID, internal or custom applications on
your network, or potential threats.
On occasion, the firewall may report an application as unknown for the following reasons:
• Incomplete data—A handshake took place, but no data packets were sent prior to the timeout.
• Insufficient data—A handshake took place followed by one or more data packets; however, not
enough data packets were exchanged to identify the application.
The following choices are available to handle unknown applications:
• Create security policies to control unknown applications by unknown TCP, unknown UDP or
by a combination of source zone, destination zone, and IP addresses.
• Request an App-ID from Palo Alto Networks—If you would like to inspect and control the
applications that traverse your network, for any unknown traffic, you can record a packet
capture. If the packet capture reveals that the application is a commercial application, you can
submit this packet capture to Palo Alto Networks for App-ID development. If it is an internal
application, you can create a custom App-ID and/or define an application override policy.
• Create a Custom Application with a signature and attach it to a security policy, or create a
custom application and define a custom timeout. Avoid creating Application Override policies
because they bypass layer 7 application processing and threat inspection, and use less secure
stateful layer 4 inspection instead. Instead, use custom timeouts so that you can control and
inspect the application traffic at layer 7.
A custom application allows you to customize the definition of the internal application—its
characteristics, category and sub-category, risk, port, and timeout—and to exercise granular
policy control and help eliminate unidentified traffic on your network. Creating a custom
application also allows you to correctly identify the application in the ACC and traffic logs,
and is useful in auditing/reporting on the applications on your network. To create a custom
application, specify a signature and a pattern that uniquely identifies the application and attach
it to a Security policy rule that allows or denies the application.
For example, if you build a custom application that triggers on a host header
www.mywebsite.com, the packets are first identified as web-browsing and then are matched
as your custom application (whose parent application is web-browsing). Because the parent
application is web-browsing, the custom application is inspected at Layer-7 and scanned for
content and vulnerabilities.
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Manage New and Modified App-IDs
New and modified App-IDs are delivered to the firewall as part of Applications and Threats
Content Updates. While new and modified App-IDs enable the firewall to enforce your security
policy with ever-increasing precision, changes in security policy enforcement that can occur
when a content update release is installed can impact application availability. For this reason,
you will need to think about how to best deploy content updates so that you can get the latest
threat prevention as it’s made available, and adjust your security policy to best leverage new and
modified App-IDs.
The following options enable you to assess the impact of new App-IDs on existing policy
enforcement, disable (and enable) App-IDs, and seamlessly update policy rules to secure and
enforce newly-identified applications:
• Workflow to Best Incorporate New and Modified App-IDs
• See the New and Modified App-IDs in a Content Release
• See How New and Modified App-IDs Impact Your Security Policy
• Ensure Critical New App-IDs are Allowed
• Monitor New App-IDs
• Disable and Enable App-IDs
• Enable and Monitor App-ID TSIDs
You can also take advantage of the Streamlined App-ID Policy Rules that use application tags
provided in the content updates.
Workflow to Best Incorporate New and Modified App-IDs
Refer to this master workflow to first set up Application and Threat content updates, and then
to best incorporate new and modified App-IDs into your security policy. Everything you need to
deploy content updates is referenced here.
STEP 1 | Align your business needs with an approach to deploying Application and Threat content
updates.
Learn how Applications and Threat Content Updates work, and identify your organization as
either mission-critical or security-first. Understanding which of these is most important to your
business will help you to decide how to best deploy content updates and apply best practices
to meet your business needs. You might find that you want to apply a mix of both approaches,
perhaps depending on firewall deployment (data center or perimeter) or office location (remote
or headquarters).
STEP 2 | Review and apply the Best Practices for Applications and Threats Content Updates based on
your organization’s network security and application availability requirements.
STEP 3 | Configure a security policy rule to always allow new App-IDs that might have network-wide
impact, like authentication or software development applications.
The New App-ID characteristic matches to only the App-IDs introduced in the latest content
release. When used in a security policy, this gives you a month’s time to fine tune your security
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policy based on new App-IDs while ensuring constant availability for App-IDs that fall into
critical categories (Ensure Critical New App-IDs are Allowed).
STEP 4 | Set the schedule to Deploy Application and Threat Content Updates; this includes the option
to delay new App-ID installation until you’ve had time to make necessary security policy
updates (using the New App-ID Threshold).
STEP 5 | After you’ve setup a content updates installation schedule, you’ll want to regularly check in
and See the New and Modified App-IDs in a Content Release.
STEP 6 | You can then See How New and Modified App-IDs Impact Your Security Policy, and make
adjustments to your security policy as needed.
STEP 7 | Monitor New App-IDs to get a view into new App-ID activity on your network, so that
you’re best equipped to make the most effective security policy updates.
See the New and Modified App-IDs in a Content Release
For both downloaded and installed content updates, you can see a list of the new and modified
App-IDs the update includes. Full application details are provided, and importantly, updates to
applications with network-wide impact (for example, LDAP or IKE) are prominently flagged as
a recommended for policy review. For modified App-IDs, application details also describe how
coverage is either now expanded or more precise.
STEP 1 | Select Device > Dynamic Updates and select Check Now to refresh the list of available
content updates.
STEP 2 | For either a downloaded or currently installed content release, click Review Apps link in the
Actions column to view details on newly-identified and modified applications in that release:
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STEP 3 | Review the App-IDs this content release introduces or modifies since the last content
version.
New and modified App-IDs are listed separately. Full application details are provided for each,
and App-IDs that Palo Alto Networks foresees as having network-wide impact are flagged as
recommended for policy review.
New App-ID details that you can use to assess possible impact to policy enforcement include:
• Depends on—Lists the application signatures that this App-ID relies on to uniquely identify
the application. If one of the application signatures listed in the Depends On field is
disabled, the dependent App-ID is also disabled.
• Previously Identified As—Lists the App-IDs that matched to the application before the new
App-ID was installed to uniquely identify the application.
• App-ID Enabled—All App-IDs display as enabled when a content release is downloaded,
unless you choose to manually disable the App-ID signature before installing the content
update.
For modified App-IDs, details include information on: Expanded Coverage, Remove False
Positive, and application metadata changes. The Expanded Coverage and Remove False
Positive fields both indicate how the application’s coverage has changed (it’s either more
comprehensive or has been narrowed) and a clock icon indicates a metadata change, where
certain application details are updated.
STEP 4 | Based on your findings, click Review Policies to see how the new and modified App-IDs
impact security policy enforcement: See How New and Modified App-IDs Impact Your
Security Policy.
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See How New and Modified App-IDs Impact Your Security Policy
Newly-categorized and modified App-IDs can change the way the firewall enforces traffic.
Perform a content update policy review to see how new and modified App-IDs impact your
security policy, and to easily make any necessary adjustments. You can perform a content update
policy review for both downloaded and installed content.
STEP 1 | Select Device > Dynamic Updates.
STEP 2 | See the New and Modified App-IDs in a Content Release to learn more about each App-ID
that a content release introduces or modifies.
STEP 3 | For a downloaded or currently installed content release, click Review Policies in the Action
column. The Policy review based on candidate configuration dialog allows you to filter by
Content Version and view either new or modified App-IDs introduced in a specific release
(you can also filter the policy impact of new App-IDs according to Rulebase, Virtual System,
and Application).
STEP 4 | Select an App-ID from the Application drop-down to view policy rules that currently enforce
the application. The rules displayed are based on the App-IDs that match to the application
before the new App-ID is installed (view application details to see the list of application
signatures that an application was Previously Identified As before the new App-ID).
STEP 5 | Use the detail provided in the policy review to plan policy rule updates to take effect when
the App-ID is installed, or if the content release version that included the App-ID is currently
installed, the changes you make take effect immediately.
You can Add app to selected policies or Remove app from selected policies.
Ensure Critical New App-IDs are Allowed
New App-IDs can cause a change in policy enforcement for traffic that is newly-identified as
belonging to a certain application. To mitigate any impact to security policy enforcement, you can
use the New App-ID characteristic in a security policy rule so that the rule always enforces the
most recently introduced App-IDs without requiring you to make configuration changes when
new App-IDs are installed. The New App-ID characteristic always matches to only the new AppIDs in the most recently installed content releases. When a new content release is installed, the
new App-ID characteristic automatically begins to match only to the new App-IDs in that content
release version.
You can choose to enforce all new App-IDs, or target the security policy rule to enforce certain
types of new App-IDs that might have network-wide or critical impact (for example, enforce only
authentication or software development applications). Set the security policy rule to Allow to
ensure that even if an App-ID release introduces expanded or more precise coverage for critical
applications, the firewall continues to allow them.
New App-IDs are released monthly, so a policy rule that allows the latest App-IDs gives you a
month’s time (or, if the firewall is not installing content updates on a schedule, until the next time
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you manually install content) to assess how newly-categorized applications might impact security
policy enforcement and make any necessary adjustments.
STEP 1 | Select Objects > Application Filters and Add a new application filter.
STEP 2 | Define the types of new applications for which you want to ensure constant availability
based on subcategory or characteristic. For example, select the category “auth-service”
to ensure that any newly-installed applications that are known to perform or support
authentication are allowed.
STEP 3 | Only after narrowing the types of new applications that you want to allow immediately upon
installation, select Apply to New App-IDs only.
STEP 4 | Select Policies > Security and add or edit a security policy rule that is configured to allow
matching traffic.
STEP 5 | Select Application and add the new Application Filter to the policy rule as match criteria.
STEP 6 | Click OK and Commit to save your changes.
STEP 7 | To continue to adjust your security policy to account for any changes to enforcement that
new App-IDs introduce:
• Monitor New App-IDs—Monitor and get reports on new App-ID activity.
• See the New and Modified App-IDs in a Content Release—See how the newly-installed
App-IDs impact your existing security policy rules.
Monitor New App-IDs
The New App-ID characteristic enables you to monitor new applications on your network, so
that you can better assess the security policy updates you might want to make. Use the New
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App-ID characteristic on the ACC to get visibility into the new applications on your network, and
to generate reports that detail newly-categorized application activity. What you learn can help
you make the right decisions about how you to update your security policy to enforce the most
recently-categorized App-IDs. Whether you’re using it on the ACC or to generate reports (or to
Ensure Critical New App-IDs are Allowed), the New App-ID characteristic always matches to only
the new App-IDs in the most recently installed content releases. When a new content release is
installed, the new App-ID characteristic automatically begins to match only to the new App-IDs in
that content release version.
Generate a report with details specifically regarding new applications (applications introduced
only in the latest content release).
Use the ACC to monitor new application activity: select ACC and under Global Filters, select
Application > Application Characteristics > New App-ID.
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Disable and Enable App-IDs
You can disable all App-IDs introduced in a content release if you want to immediately benefit
from the latest threat prevention, and plan to enable the App-IDs later, and you can disable AppIDs for specific applications.
Policy rules referencing App-IDs only match to and enforce traffic based on enabled App-IDs.
Certain App-IDs cannot be disabled and only allow a status of enabled. App-IDs that cannot
be disabled include application signatures that are implicitly used by other App-IDs (such as
unknown-tcp). Disabling a base App-ID could cause App-IDs which depend on the base App-ID to
also be disabled. For example, disabling facebook-base will disable all other Facebook App-IDs.
Disable all App-IDs in a content release or for scheduled content updates.
While this option allows you to be protected against threats, by giving you the option to
enable the App-ID at a later time, Palo Alto Networks recommends that instead of disabling
App-IDs on a regular basis, you should instead configure a security policy rule to Temporarily
Allow New App-IDs. This rule will always allow the new App-IDs introduced in only the latest
content release. Because content updates that include new App-IDs are released only once a
month, this gives you time to assess the new App-IDs and adjust your security policy to cover
the new App-IDs if needed, all the while ensuring that availability for critical applications is not
affected.
• To disable all new App-IDs introduced in a content release, select Device > Dynamic
Updates and Install an Application and Threats content release. When prompted, select
Disable new apps in content update. Select the check box to disable apps and continue
installing the content update.
• On the Device > Dynamic Updates page, select Schedule. Choose to Disable new apps in
content update for downloads and installations of content releases.
Disable App-IDs for one application or multiple applications at a single time.
• To quickly disable a single application or multiple applications at the same time, click
Objects > Applications. Select one or more application check box and click Disable.
• To review details for a single application, and then disable the App-ID for that application,
select Objects > Applications and Disable App-ID. You can use this step to disable both
pending App-IDs (where the content release including the App-ID is downloaded to the
firewall but not installed) or installed App-IDs.
Enable App-IDs.
Enable App-IDs that you previously disabled by selecting Objects > Applications. Select one or
more application check box and click Enable or open the details for a specific application and
click Enable App-ID.
Enable and Monitor App-ID TSIDs
Palo Alto Networks provides a preview version of App-IDs to allow users to test and validate
modified and new App-IDs in the form of Threat Signature Indicators (TSIDs). These TSIDs
are delivered as vulnerability signatures using the category: app-id-change and are, by default,
configured on the firewall with a severity level of Informational and an action of Allow. The
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non-invasive setting provides monitoring capabilities while preventing unwanted changes from
blocking access to key applications in a production environment.
The App-ID TSIDs are packaged with Applications and Threats content updates and include TSID
entries for App-IDs that are slated for official release one month later. For example, an AppID TSID released in the first week of March will include TSIDs for App-IDs that are scheduled
for release in the first week of April. This one month probationary period is to allow time for
testing/validation and updates to any security policies. You can refer to the Notices section of the
Applications and Threats Content Release Notes for more details about the nature of the TSIDs.
The name of the App-ID TSID (contained in the Threat ID/name field) correlates to the name of
the upcoming App-ID to
STEP 1 | Log in to the PAN-OS web interface.
STEP 2 | Verify that you have an active Advanced Threat Prevention / Threat Prevention subscription.
To verify subscriptions for which you have currently-active licenses, select Device > Licenses
and verify that the appropriate licenses are available and have not expired.
STEP 3 | Verify that Applications and Threats content update 8783 or later is installed on your
firewall to access the new Vulnerability Signature category. To view the currently installed
Application and Threats content version, select Dashboard and refer to the Application
Version entry located in the Generation Information pane.
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STEP 4 | Enable App-ID TSID visibility by adding a Vulnerability Protection Rule in your Vulnerability
Protection security profile.
1. Update or create a new Vulnerability Protection security profile (Objects > Security Profiles
> Vulnerability Protection).
If you want to update an existing Vulnerability Security Profile, select one from the list
of available profiles. If you want to Add a new one, refer to Security Profile: Vulnerability
Protection
.
2. Add a new Vulnerability Protection Rule and configure it using the following settings:
Palo Alto Networks recommends using the following settings to enable matching
App-ID TSIDs in order to generate corresponding Threat Logs for future App-ID
changes.
• Action—Alert
• Severity—Informational
• Category—app-id-change
3. Click OK to exit the Vulnerability Protection Rule configuration dialog.
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STEP 5 | Change the Vulnerability Protection rule precedence using the controls at the bottom of the
Vulnerability Protection profile configuration page so that the new rule is at the top.
STEP 6 | Test the new rule by selecting the rule and Find Matching Signatures. This will return
currently available App-ID TSIDs. If you do not see any results or the results do not appear
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to indicate App-ID TSIDs, verify that app-id-change has been selected in the Vulnerability
Protection Rule.
STEP 7 | Click on the Threat Name of one of the results for more details about the App-ID TSID.
STEP 8 | Click OK to save your Vulnerability Protection profile.
STEP 9 | Configure your Vulnerability Protection profile to the Security Policy rule(s) you want to
monitor for potential App-ID changes. This can be done by applying the specific Vulnerability
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Protection profile in the Security Policy rule(s) or in a Security Profile Group and using that
group in the Security Policy rule(s), based on how your policies are constructed.
• Vulnerability Profile applied directly to a Security Policy rule:
1. Go to Policies > Security and select a security policy rule that you want monitored for
App-ID changes.
2. Navigate to the Actions tab and select Profiles from the Profile Type drop down.
3. In the Vulnerability Protection drop down, select the updated or newly created
Vulnerability Protection profile created in step 4.
4. Click OK to save the changes.
5. Repeat the above process for other security policy rules that you want monitored for
App-ID changes.
• Vulnerability Profile applied to a Security Profile Group that is referenced by a Security
Policy rule
1. Go to Objects > Security Profile Groups and select an existing security profile group or
Add a new one.
2. In the Vulnerability Protection Profile drop down, select the updated or newly created
Vulnerability Protection profile created in step 4 and then click OK to save the changes.
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3. Go to Policies > Security and select a security policy rule that you want monitored for
App-ID changes.
4. Navigate to the Actions tab and select Group from the Profile Type drop down.
5. In the Group Profile drop down, select the newly updated security profile group.
6. Click OK to save the changes.
7. Repeat the above process for other security policy rules that you want monitored for
App-ID changes.
STEP 10 | Search for activity on the firewall for queries that match against the App-ID TSID criteria.
You can manually peruse through the logs or you can create a custom report using the same
Query Builder attributes used for activity searches. You can then use the custom report /
threat log results to modify your existing Security policy rules in preparation for the new and
updated App-IDs scheduled for inclusion in the following month's release of the Applications
and Threats content update. You can track affected rules by cross referencing the Rule or
Rule UUID with the detected App-ID TSIDs in your network. If you use Panorama to manage
your firewalls, you can use the global search functionality (located in the top-right) to find
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the affected rule(s). Selecting the resulting Security Rule will bring you to that policy rule for
configuration.
You can cross reference affected rules by populating the threat logs and custom
reports with the Rule and Rule UUID data columns.
• Monitor activity on the firewall:
If you are using the Strata Cloud Manager Log Viewer to review your firewall logs,
you can use the following search query: Threat Category = 'app-idchange'
1. Select Monitor > Logs > Threat.
2. Use the log query builder to create a filter with the Attribute Threat Category and in the
Value field, enter the Threat Category: app-id-change. For example: ( category-ofPAN-OS® Administrator’s Guide Version 10.2 850 ©2025 Palo Alto Networks, Inc. | https://docs.paloaltonetworks.com/content/dam/techdocs/en_US/pdf/pan-os/10-2/pan-os-admin/pan-os-admin.pdf |
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threatid eq app-id-change ) to view logs that have triggered a matching App-ID
TSID, which can be identified by the Threat Category: app-id-change.
• Create a custom report on the firewall:
Palo Alto Networks recommends using the following configuration for the custom report to
view information relevant to the App-ID TSIDs.
1. Configure a custom report from Monitor > Manage Custom Reports. For more
information about creating custom reports, refer to Generate Custom Reports.
2. When configuring the Report Settings, make sure to specify the Database type: Threat,
which is listed under the Summary Databases group. If you are using Panorama, the
Threat type to be used is listed under Remote Device Data.
3. Use the Query Builder to add the following filter: category-of-threatid eq appid-change.
4. (Optional) Group the report by the Rule.
5. At a minimum, populate the report with the following columns:
• Rule
• Rule UUID
• Application
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• Threat ID/Name
6. Define the Time Frame for the report (Last 7 Days is generally recommended; however,
also consider using a time frame most relevant since you downloaded and installed the
latest Application and Threats content update, which contain TSIDs).
7. (Optional) Select the Scheduled option to run the report on a nightly basis. The report is
then available for viewing in the Reports column on the side.
8. Click Run Now to generate the custom report or OK to save the changes.
• If you generate a custom report, you can immediately view the results of the report.
Alternatively, you can output the report into the following formats: PDF, CSV, and
XML.
STEP 11 | Next Steps:
• The Threat ID/Name value in the App-ID TSID match results describe the nature of the
updated App-ID entry after you install the upcoming Applications and Threats content
update. Depending on the type of the update, this could be a Modified or New App-ID, as
indicated by the description. After reviewing the information, you can update your security
policies to include these modified or new App-IDs, as appropriate for your organization's
network usage policies. Refer to Manage New and Modified App-IDs for more information.
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Use Application Objects in Policy
Use application objects to define how your security policy handles applications.
• Create an Application Group
• Create an Application Filter
• Create a Custom Application
• Resolve Application Dependencies
Create an Application Group
An application group is an object that contains applications that you want to treat similarly
in policy. Application groups are useful for enabling access to applications that you explicitly
sanction for use within your organization. Grouping sanctioned applications simplifies
administration of your rulebases. Instead of having to update individual policy rules when there is
a change in the applications you support, you can update only the affected application groups.
When deciding how to group applications, consider how you plan to enforce access to your
sanctioned applications and create an application group that aligns with each of your policy goals.
For example, you might have some applications that you will only allow your IT administrators
to access, and other applications that you want to make available for any known user in your
organization. In this case, you would create separate application groups for each of these policy
goals. Although you generally want to enable access to applications on the default port only,
you may want to group applications that are an exception to this and enforce access to those
applications in a separate rule.
STEP 1 | Select Objects > Application Groups.
STEP 2 | Add a group and give it a descriptive Name.
STEP 3 | (Optional) Select Shared to create the object in a shared location for access as a shared
object in Panorama or for use across all virtual systems in a multiple virtual system firewall.
STEP 4 | Add the applications you want in the group and then click OK.
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STEP 5 | Commit the configuration.
Create an Application Filter
An application filter is an object that dynamically groups applications based on application
attributes that you define, including category, subcategory, technology, risk factor, and
characteristic. This is useful when you want to safely enable access to applications that you do
not explicitly sanction, but that you want users to be able to access. For example, you may want
to enable employees to choose their own office programs (such as Evernote, Google Docs, or
Microsoft Office 365) for business use. To safely enable these types of applications, you could
create an application filter that matches on the Category business-systems and the Subcategory
office-programs. As new applications office programs emerge and new App-IDs get created,
these new applications will automatically match the filter you defined; you will not have to make
any additional changes to your policy rulebase to safely enable any application that matches the
attributes you defined for the filter.
STEP 1 | Select Objects > Application Filters.
STEP 2 | Add a filter and give it a descriptive Name.
STEP 3 | (Optional) Select Shared to create the object in a shared location for access as a shared
object in Panorama or for use across all virtual systems in a multiple virtual system firewall.
STEP 4 | Define the filter by selecting attribute values from the Category, Subcategory, Technology,
Risk, Characteristic, and Tags sections. (Tags can streamline Security policy rule creation
and maintenance). As you select values, notice that the list of matching applications at the
bottom of the dialog narrows. When you have adjusted the filter attributes to match the
types of applications you want to safely enable, click OK.
STEP 5 | Commit the configuration.
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Create a Custom Application
To safely enable applications you must classify all traffic, across all ports, all the time. With AppID, the only applications that are typically classified as unknown traffic—tcp, udp or non-syn-tcp
—in the ACC and the Traffic logs are commercially available applications that have not yet been
added to App-ID, internal or custom applications on your network, or potential threats.
If you are seeing unknown traffic for a commercial application that does not
yet have an App-ID, you can submit a request for a new App-ID here: http://
researchcenter.paloaltonetworks.com/submit-an-application/.
To ensure that your internal custom applications do not show up as unknown traffic, create a
custom application. You can then exercise granular policy control over these applications in order
to minimize the range of unidentified traffic on your network, thereby reducing the attack surface.
Creating a custom application also allows you to correctly identify the application in the ACC and
Traffic logs, which enables you to audit/report on the applications on your network.
To create a custom application, you must define the application attributes: its characteristics,
category and sub-category, risk, port, timeout. In addition, you must define patterns or values that
the firewall can use to match to the traffic flows themselves (the signature). Finally, you can attach
the custom application to a security policy that allows or denies the application (or add it to an
application group or match it to an application filter). You can also create custom applications to
identify ephemeral applications with topical interest, such as ESPN3-Video for world cup soccer
or March Madness.
In order to collect the right data to create a custom application signature, you'll need a
good understanding of packet captures and how datagrams are formed. If the signature
is created too broadly, you might inadvertently include other similar traffic; if it is defined
too narrowly, the traffic will evade detection if it does not strictly match the pattern.
Custom applications are stored in a separate database on the firewall and this database is
not impacted by the weekly App-ID updates.
The supported application protocol decoders that enable the firewall to detect
applications that may be tunneling inside of the protocol include the following as of
content release version 609: FTP, HTTP, IMAP, POP3, SMB, and SMTP.
The following is a basic example of how to create a custom application.
STEP 1 | Gather information about the application that you will be able to use to write custom
signatures.
To do this, you must have an understanding of the application and how you want to control
access to it. For example, you may want to limit what operations users can perform within the
application (such as uploading, downloading, or live streaming). Or you may want to allow the
application, but enforce QoS policing.
• Capture application packets so that you can find unique characteristics about the
application on which to base your custom application signature. One way to do this is to run
a protocol analyzer, such as Wireshark, on the client system to capture the packets between
the client and the server. Perform different actions in the application, such as uploading and
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downloading, so that you will be able to locate each type of session in the resulting packet
captures (PCAPs).
• Because the firewall by default takes packet captures for all unknown traffic, if the firewall
is between the client and the server you can view the packet capture for the unknown
traffic directly from the Traffic log.
• Use the packet captures to find patterns or values in the packet contexts that you can use
to create signatures that will uniquely match the application traffic. For example, look
for string patterns in HTTP response or request headers, URI paths, or hostnames. For
information on the different string contexts you can use to create application signatures
and where you can find the corresponding values in the packet, refer to Creating Custom
Threat Signatures.
STEP 2 | Add the custom application.
1. Select Objects > Applications and click Add.
2. On the Configuration tab, enter a Name and a Description for the custom application
that will help other administrators understand why you created the application.
3. (Optional) Select Shared to create the object in a shared location for access as a shared
object in Panorama or for use across all virtual systems in a multiple virtual system
firewall.
4. Define the application Properties and Characteristics.
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STEP 3 | Define details about the application, such as the underlying protocol, the port number the
application runs on, the timeout values, and any types of scanning you want to be able to
perform on the traffic.
On the Advanced tab, define settings that will allow the firewall to identify the application
protocol:
• Specify the default ports or protocol that the application uses.
• Specify the session timeout values. If you don’t specify timeout values, the default timeout
values will be used.
• Indicate any type of additional scanning you plan to perform on the application traffic.
For example, to create a custom TCP-based application that runs over SSL, but uses port 4443
(instead of the default port for SSL, 443), you would specify the port number. By adding the
port number for a custom application, you can create policy rules that use the default port
for the application rather than opening up additional ports on the firewall. This improves your
security posture.
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STEP 4 | Define the criteria that the firewall will use to match the traffic to the new application.
You will use the information you gathered from the packet captures to specify unique string
context values that the firewall can use to match patterns in the application traffic.
1. On the Signatures tab, click Add and define a Signature Name and optionally a
Comment to provide information about how you intend to use this signature.
2. Specify the Scope of the signature: whether it matches to a full Session or a single
Transaction.
3. Specify conditions to define signatures by clicking Add And Condition or Add Or
Condition.
4. Select an Operator to define the type of match conditions you will use: Pattern Match or
Equal To.
• If you selected Pattern Match, select the Context and then use a regular expression
to define the Pattern to match the selected context. Optionally, click Add to define a
qualifier/value pair. The Qualifier list is specific to the Context you chose.
• If you selected Equal To, select the Context and then use a regular expression to
define the Position of the bytes in the packet header to use match the selected
context. Choose from first-4bytes or second-4bytes. Define the 4-byte hex value for
the Mask (for example, 0xffffff00) and Value (for example, 0xaabbccdd).
For example, if you are creating a custom application for one of your internal
applications, you could use the ssl-rsp-certificate Context to define a pattern match
for the certificate response message of a SSL negotiation from the server and create a
Pattern to match the commonName of the server in the message as shown here:
5. Repeat steps 4.c and 4.d for each matching condition.
6. If the order in which the firewall attempts to match the signature definitions is
important, make sure the Ordered Condition Match check box is selected and then
order the conditions so that they are evaluated in the appropriate order. Select a
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condition or a group and click Move Up or Move Down. You cannot move conditions
from one group to another.
7. Click OK to save the signature definition.
STEP 5 | Save the application.
1. Click OK to save the custom application definition.
2. Click Commit.
STEP 6 | Validate that traffic matches the custom application as expected.
1. Select Policies > Security and Add a security policy rule to allow the new application.
2. Run the application from a client system that is between the firewall and the application
and then check the Traffic logs (Monitor > Traffic) to make sure that you see traffic
matching the new application (and that it is being handled per your policy rule).
Resolve Application Dependencies
You can see application dependencies when you create a new Security policy rule and when
performing Commits. When a policy does not include all application dependencies, you can
directly access the associated Security policy rule to add the required applications.
STEP 1 | Create a security policy rule.
STEP 2 | Specify the application that the rule will allow or block.
1. In the Applications tab, Add the Application you want to safely enable. You can select
multiple applications or you can use application groups or application filters.
2. View dependencies for selected applications and Add To Current Rule or Add To
Existing Rule.
3. If adding to an existing rule, Select Rule and click OK.
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STEP 3 | Click OK and Commit your changes.
1. Review any Commit warnings in the App Dependency tab.
2. Select the Count to view the application dependencies not included.
3. Select the Rule name to open the policy and add the dependencies.
Resolve any dependent applications or they’ll continue to generate warnings on
Commits.
4. Click OK and Commit your changes.
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Safely Enable Applications on Default Ports
Applications running on unusual ports can indicate an attacker that is attempting to circumvent
traditional port-based protections. Application-default is a feature of Palo Alto Networks firewalls
that gives you an easy way to prevent this type of evasion and safely enable applications on their
most commonly-used ports. Application-default is a best practice for application-based security
policies—it reduces administrative overhead, and closes security gaps that port-based policy
introduces:
Less overhead—Write simple application-based security policy rules based on your business
needs, instead of researching and maintaining application-to-port mappings. We’ve defined the
default ports for all applications with an App-ID.
Stronger security—Enabling applications to run only on their default ports is a security best
practice. Application-default helps you to make sure that critical applications are available
without compromising security if an application is behaving in an unexpected way.
Additionally, the default ports an application uses can sometimes depend on whether the
application is encrypted or cleartext. Port-based policy requires you to open all the default
ports an application might use to account for encryption. Open ports introduce security gaps
that an attacker can leverage to bypass your security policy. However, application-default
differentiates between encrypted and clear-text application traffic. This means that it can
enforce the default port for an application, regardless of whether it is encrypted or not.
For example, without application-default, you would need to open ports 80 and 443 to enable
web-browsing traffic—you’d be allowing both cleartext and encrypted web-browsing traffic
on both ports. With application-default turned on, the firewall strictly enforces cleartext webbrowsing traffic only on port 80, port 443, and SSL-tunneled traffic only on port 443.
To see the ports that an application uses by default, you can visit Applipedia or select Objects
> Applications. Application details include the application’s standard port—the port it most
commonly uses when in cleartext. For web-browsing, SMTP, FTP, LDAP, POP3, and IMAP details
also include the application’s secure port—the port the application uses when encrypted.
Select Policy > Security and add or a modify a rule to enforce applications only on their default
port(s):
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Using application-default as part of an application-based security policy and with SSL
decryption is a best practice. Additionally, if you have existing security policy rules that
control web-browsing traffic with the Service set to service-http and service-https, you
should update those rules to use application-default instead.
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Applications with Implicit Support
When creating a policy to allow specific applications, you must also be sure that you are allowing
any other applications on which the application depends. In many cases, you do not have to
explicitly allow access to the dependent applications for the traffic to flow because the firewall is
able to determine the dependencies and allow them implicitly. This implicit support also applies to
custom applications that are based on HTTP, SSL, MS-RPC, or RTSP. Applications for which the
firewall cannot determine dependent applications on time will require that you explicitly allow the
dependent applications when defining your policies. You can determine application dependencies
from within your application-based security policy workflow using one of the following:
• Policy Optimizer
• Create an Application Filter Using Tags
• Create an Application Filter Based on Custom Tags
• Resolve Application Dependencies
Applipedia is also available if needed.
The following table lists the applications for which the firewall has implicit support (as of Content
Update 595).
Application Implicitly Supports
360-safeguard-update http
apple-update http
apt-get http
as2 http
avg-update http
avira-antivir-update http, ssl
blokus rtmp
bugzilla http
clubcooee http
corba http
cubby http, ssl
dropbox ssl
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Application Implicitly Supports
esignal http
evernote http, ssl
ezhelp http
facebook http, ssl
facebook-chat jabber
facebook-social-plugin http
fastviewer http, ssl
forticlient-update http
good-for-enterprise http, ssl
google-cloud-print http, ssl, jabber
google-desktop http
google-talk jabber
google-update http
gotomypc-desktop-sharing citrix-jedi
gotomypc-file-transfer citrix-jedi
gotomypc-printing citrix-jedi
hipchat http
iheartradio ssl, http, rtmp
infront http
instagram http, ssl
issuu http, ssl
java-update http
jepptech-updates http
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Application Implicitly Supports
kerberos rpc
kik http, ssl
lastpass http, ssl
logmein http, ssl
mcafee-update http
megaupload http
metatrader http
mocha-rdp t_120
mount rpc
ms-frs msrpc
ms-rdp t_120
ms-scheduler msrpc
ms-service-controller msrpc
nfs rpc
oovoo http, ssl
paloalto-updates ssl
panos-global-protect http
panos-web-interface http
pastebin http
pastebin-posting http
pinterest http, ssl
portmapper rpc
prezi http, ssl
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Application Implicitly Supports
rdp2tcp t_120
renren-im jabber
roboform http, ssl
salesforce http
stumbleupon http
supremo http
symantec-av-update http
trendmicro http
trillian http, ssl
twitter http
whatsapp http, ssl
xm-radio rtsp
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Security Policy Rule Optimization
Policy Optimizer provides a simple workflow to migrate your legacy Security policy rulebase
to an App-ID based rulebase, which improves your security by reducing the attack surface and
gaining visibility into applications so you can safely enable them. Policy Optimizer identifies
port-based rules so you can convert them to application-based allow rules or add applications
from a port-based rule to an existing application-based rule without compromising application
availability. It also identifies over-provisioned App-ID based rules (App-ID rules configured with
unused applications). Policy Optimizer helps you prioritize which port-based rules to migrate
first, identify application-based rules that allow applications you don’t use, and analyze rule usage
characteristics such as hit count.
Converting port-based rules to application-based rules improves your security posture because
you select the applications you want to allow and deny all other applications, so you eliminate
unwanted and potentially malicious traffic from your network. Combined with restricting
application traffic to its default ports (set the Service to application-default), converting to
application-based rules also prevents evasive applications from running on non-standard ports.
You can use this feature on:
• Firewalls that run PAN-OS version 9.0 and have App-ID enabled.
• Panorama running PAN-OS version 9.0. You don’t have to upgrade firewalls that Panorama
manages to use the Policy Optimizer capabilities. However, to use the Rule Usage capabilities
(Monitor Policy Rule Usage), managed firewalls must run PAN-OS 8.1 or later. If managed
firewalls connect to Log Collectors, those Log Collectors must also run PAN-OS version 9.0.
Managed PA-7000 Series firewalls that have a Log Processing Card (LPC) can also run PAN-OS
8.1 (or later).
• For Strata Logging Service compatibility, Panorama running PAN-OS 10.0.3 or later with the
Cloud Services plugin 2.0 Innovation or later installed.
• Cloud Managed Prisma Access and Panorama Managed Prisma Access in PAN-OS 10.2.4 or
later with Cloud Service Plugin 5.0 or later.
PA-7000 Series Firewalls support two logging cards, the PA-7000 Series Firewall Log
Processing Card (LPC) and the high-performance PA-7000 Series Firewall Log Forwarding
Card (LFC). Unlike the LPC, the LFC does not have disks to store logs locally. Instead, the
LFC forwards all logs to one or more external logging systems, such as Panorama or a
syslog server. If you use the LFC, the application usage information for Policy Optimizer
does not display on the firewall because traffic logs aren’t stored locally. If you use the
LPC, the traffic logs are stored locally on the firewall, so the application usage information
for Policy Optimizer displays on the firewall.
Use this feature to:
• Migrate port-based rules to application-based rules—Instead of combing through traffic
logs and manually mapping applications to port-based rules, use Policy Optimizer to identify
port-based rules and list the applications that matched each rule, so you can select the
applications you want to allow and safely enable them. Converting your legacy port-based
rules to application-based allow rules supports your business applications and enables you to
block any applications associated with malicious activity.
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• Identify over-provisioned application-based rules—Rules that are too broad allow applications
you don’t use on your network, which increases the attack surface and the risk of inadvertently
allowing malicious traffic.
Remove unused applications from Security policy rules to reduce the attack surface
and keep the rulebase clean. Don’t allow applications that nobody uses on your
network.
• Add App-ID Cloud Engine (ACE) applications to Security policy rules—If you have a SaaS
Security Inline subscription, you can use Policy Optimizer’s New App Viewer to manage clouddelivered App-IDs in Security policy. The ACE documentation describes how to use Policy
Optimizer to gain visibility into and control cloud-delivered App-IDs.
The Policy Optimizer examples in this section do not show the New App Viewer
because they depict firewalls that do not have a SaaS Security Inline subscription.
To migrate a configuration from a legacy firewall to a Palo Alto Networks device, see Best
Practices for Migrating to Application-Based Policy.
You can’t sort Security policy rules in Security > Policies because sorting would change the rule
order in the rulebase. However, under Polices > Security > Policy Optimizer, Policy Optimizer
provides sorting options that don’t affect the rule order, so you can sort rules to prioritize which
rules to convert or clean up first. You can sort rules by the amount of traffic during the past 30
days, the number of applications seen on the rule, the number of days with no new applications,
and the number of applications allowed (for over-provisioned rules).
You can use Policy Optimizer in other ways as well, including validating pre-production rules and
troubleshooting existing rules. Note that Policy Optimizer honors only Log at Session End and
ignores Log at Session Start to avoid counting transient applications on rules.
Due to resource constraints, VM-50 Lite virtual firewalls don’t support Policy Optimizer.
• Policy Optimizer Concepts
• Migrate Port-Based to App-ID Based Security Policy Rules
• Rule Cloning Migration Use Case: Web Browsing and SSL Traffic
• Add Applications to an Existing Rule
• Identify Security Policy Rules with Unused Applications
• High Availability for Application Usage Statistics
• How to Disable Policy Optimizer
Policy Optimizer Concepts
Review the following topics to learn more about this feature’s support:
• Sorting and Filtering Security Policy Rules
• Clear Application Usage Data
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Sorting and Filtering Security Policy Rules
You can filter Security policy rules to see the port-based rules, which are rules with no
applications configured on them (Policies > Security > Policy Optimizer > No App Specified). You
can also filter to see the rules that have applications configured on them, but traffic only matches
some of the configured applications—the rule is over-provisioned and includes applications that
aren’t seen on the rule (Policies > Security > Policy Optimizer > Unused Apps). In addition, if you
have a SaaS Security Inline license, you can use the New App Viewer to filter rules that have seen
new App-ID Cloud Engine (ACE) applications (see the ACE documentation for how to do this). You
can sort the filtered policy rules based on different types of statistics to help prioritize which rules
to convert from port-based to application-based rules or to clean up first.
You can’t filter or sort rules in Policies > Security because that would change the order of
the policy rules in the rulebase. Filtering and sorting Policies > Security > Policy Optimizer
> No App Specified, Policies > Security > Policy Optimizer > Unused Apps, and Policies
> Security > Policy Optimizer > New App Viewer (if you have a SaaS Inline Security
subscription) does not change the order of the rules in the rulebase.
You can click several column headers to sort rules based on application usage statistics. In
addition, you can View Policy Rule Usage to help identify and remove unused rules to reduce
security risks and keep your policy rule base organized. Rule usage tracking allows you to quickly
validate new rule additions and rule changes and to monitor rule usage for operations and
troubleshooting tasks.
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• Traffic (Bytes, 30 days)—The amount of traffic seen on the rule over the last 30 days. The 30-
day window places rules that currently match the most traffic at the top of the list by default (a
longer time frame places more emphasis on older rules that would remain at the top of the list
because they have large cumulative totals even though they may no longer see much traffic).
Click to reverse the order.
• Apps Seen—Place the rules with the most or least applications seen at the top. The firewall
never automatically purges the application data.
The firewall updates Apps Seen approximately every hour. However, if there is a large
volume of application traffic or a large number of rules, it may take longer than an hour
to update. After you add an application to a rule, wait at least an hour before running
Traffic logs to see the application’s log information.
• Days with No New Apps—Place the rules with the most or least days since the last new
application matched the rule at the top.
• (Unused Apps only) Apps Allowed—Place the rules with the most or least applications
configured on the rule at the top.
Application usage statistics only count applications for rules that meet the following criteria:
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• The rule’s Action must be Allow.
• The rule’s Log Setting must be Log at Session End (this is the default Log Setting). Rules that
Log at Session Start are ignored to prevent counting transient applications.
• Valid traffic must match the rule. For example, if the session ends before enough traffic passes
through the firewall to identify the application, it is not counted. The following traffic types are
not valid and therefore don’t count for Policy Optimizer statistics:
• Insufficient-data
• Not-applicable
• Non-syn-tcp
• Incomplete
You can filter the Traffic logs (Monitor > Logs > Traffic) to see traffic identified as one of
these types. For example, to see all traffic identified as incomplete, use the filter (app eq
incomplete).
If these criteria aren’t met, the application isn’t counted for statistics such as Apps Seen, doesn’t
affect statistics such as Days with No New Apps, and doesn’t appear in lists of applications.
The firewall doesn’t track application usage statistics for the interzone-default and
intrazone-default Security policy rules.
If the UUID of a rule changes, the application usage statistics for that rule reset because
the UUID change makes the firewall see the rule as a different (new) rule.
To see and sort the applications seen on a rule, in the rule’s row, click Compare or click the
number in Apps Seen.
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For the rules you see in Policies > Security > Policy Optimizer > No App Specified and Policies >
Security > Policy Optimizer > Unused Apps, clicking Compare or the Apps Seen number brings
up Applications & Usage, which gives you a view of the applications seen on the rule and the
ability to sort them. Applications & Usage is also where you Migrate Port-Based to App-ID Based
Security Policy Rules and remove unused applications from rules.
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You can sort the applications seen on the rule by all six of the Apps Seen statistics (Apps Seen is
not updated in real time and takes an hour or longer to update, depending on the volume of traffic
and number of rules).
• Applications—Alphabetical by application name. If you configure specific ports or port ranges
for a rule’s Service (the Service cannot be any), and there are standard (application default)
ports for the application, and the configured ports don’t match the application-default ports,
then a yellow, triangular warning icon appears next to the application.
• Subcategory—Alphabetical by application subcategory, derived from the application content
metadata.
• Risk—According to the risk rating of the application.
• First Seen—The first day the application was seen on the rule. The time stamp resolution is by
the day only (not hourly).
• Last Seen—The last day the application was seen on the rule. The time stamp resolution is by
the day only (not hourly).
• Traffic (30 days)—Traffic in bytes that matched the rule over the last 30 days is the default
sorting method.
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Set the Timeframe to display statistics for a particular time period—Anytime, the Past 7 days, the
Past 15 days, or the Past 30 days.
Traffic (30 days) always displays only the last 30 days of traffic in bytes. Changing the
Timeframe does not change the duration of the Traffic (30 days) bytes measurement.
Clicking the column header orders the display and clicking the same column again reverses the
order. For example, click Risk to sort applications from low risk to high risk. Click Risk again to
sort applications from high risk to low risk.
The firewall doesn’t report application usage statistics in real time for Policy Optimizer, so it isn’t a
replacement for running reports.
• The firewall updates Apps Allowed, Apps Seen, and the applications listed in Applications &
Usage approximately every hour, not in real time. If there is a large amount of traffic or a large
number of rules, updates may take longer. After you add an application to a rule, wait at least
an hour before running Traffic logs to see the application’s log information.
The firewall updates Apps Seen approximately every hour. However, if there is a large volume
of application traffic or a large number of rules, it may take longer than an hour to update.
After you add an application to a rule, wait at least an hour before running Traffic logs to see
the application’s log information.
• The firewall updates Days with No New Apps and also First Seen and Last Seen on
Applications & Usage once per day, at midnight device time.
• For rules with large numbers of applications seen, it may take longer to process application
usage statistics.
• For Security policy rulebases with large numbers of rules that have many applications, it may
take longer to process application usage statistics.
• For firewalls managed by Panorama, application usage data is visible only for rules Panorama
pushes to the firewalls, not for rules configured locally on individual firewalls.
Clear Application Usage Data
You can use a CLI command to clear application usage data for an individual Security policy rule
and reset Apps Seen and other application usage data.
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STEP 1 | Find the UUID of the Security policy rule whose application usage data you want to clear.
There are two ways to find the UUID in the UI:
• In Policies > Security, copy the UUID from the Rule UUID column.
• In Policies > Security, select Copy UUID in the rule Name drop-down menu.
STEP 2 | Switch from the UI to the CLI.
Use the UUID you captured in the UI to clear the rule’s application usage data:
admin@PA-VM>clear policy-app-usage-data ruleuuid <uuid-value>
Paste or type the rule’s UUID as the value and execute the command to clear the rule’s
application usage data.
Migrate Port-Based to App-ID Based Security Policy Rules
When you transition from a legacy firewall to a Palo Alto Networks next-generation firewall, you
inherit a large number of port-based rules that allow any application on the ports, which increases
the attack surface because any application can use an open port. Policy Optimizer identifies all
applications seen on any legacy port-based Security policy rule and provides an easy workflow for
selecting the applications you want to allow on that rule. Migrate port-based rules to applicationbased rules to reduce the attack surface and safely enable applications on your network. Use
Policy Optimizer to maintain the rulebase as you add new applications.
Migrate a few port-based rules at a time to application-based rules, in a prioritized
manner. A gradual conversion is safer than migrating a large rulebase at one time and
makes it easier to ensure that the new application-based rules control the necessary
applications. Use Policy Optimizer to prioritize which rules to convert first.
To migrate a configuration from a legacy firewall to a Palo Alto Networks device, see Best
Practices for Migrating to Application-Based Policy.
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STEP 1 | Identify port-based rules.
Port-based rules have no configured (allowed) applications. Policies > Security > Policy
Optimizer > No App Specified displays all port-based rules (Apps Allowed is any).
STEP 2 | Prioritize which port-based rules to convert first.
Policies > Security > Policy Optimizer > No App Specified enables you to sort rules without
affecting their order in the rulebase and provides other information that helps you prioritize
rules for conversion based on your business goals and risk tolerance.
• Traffic (Bytes, 30 days)—(Click to sort.) Rules that currently match the most traffic are at the
top of the list. This is the default sorting order.
• Apps Seen—(Click to sort.) A large number of legitimate applications matching a port-based
rule may indicate you should replace it with multiple application-based rules that tightly
define the applications, users, and sources and destinations. For example, if a port-based
rule controls traffic for multiple applications for different user groups on different sets of
devices, create separate rules that pair applications with their legitimate users and devices
to reduce the attack surface and increase visibility. (Clicking the Apps Seen number or
Compare shows you the applications that have matched the rule.)
The firewall updates Apps Seen approximately every hour. However, if there is a
large volume of application traffic or a large number of rules, it may take longer
than an hour to update. After you add an application to a rule, wait at least an hour
before running Traffic logs to see the application’s log information.
• Days with No New Apps—(Click to sort.) When the applications seen on a port-based
rule stabilize, you can be more confident the rule is mature, conversion won’t accidentally
exclude legitimate applications, and no more new applications will match the rule. The
Created and Modified dates help you evaluate a rule’s stability because older rules that
have not been modified recently may also be more stable.
• Hit Count—Displays rules with the most matches over a selected time frame. You can
exclude rules for which you reset the hit counter and specify the exclusion time period in
days. Excluding rules with recently reset hit counters prevents misconceptions about rules
that show fewer hits than you expect because you didn’t know the counter was reset.
You can also use Hit Count to View Policy Rule Usage and help identify and
remove unused rules to reduce security risks and keep your rulebase organized.
STEP 3 | Review the Apps Seen on port-based rules, starting with the highest priority rules.
On No Apps Specified, click Compare or the number in Apps Seen to open Applications &
Usage, which lists applications that matched a port-based rule over a specified Timeframe,
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with each application’s Risk, the date it was First Seen, the date it was Last Seen, and the
amount of traffic over the last 30 days.
You can check Applications seen on port-based rules over the past 7, 15, or 30 days, or
over the rule’s lifetime (Anytime). For migrating rules, Anytime provides the most complete
assessment of applications that matched the rule.
You can search and filter the Apps Seen, but keep in mind that it takes an hour or more to
update Apps Seen. You can also order the Apps Seen by clicking the column headers. For
example, you can click Traffic (30 days) to bring the applications with the most recent traffic to
the top of the list, or click Subcategory to organize the applications by subcategory.
The granularity of measurement for First Seen and Last Seen data is one day, so on the
day you define a rule, the dates in these two columns are the same. On the second day
the firewall sees traffic on an application, you’ll see a difference in the dates.
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STEP 4 | Clone or add applications to the rule to specify the applications you want to allow on the
rule.
On Applications & Usage, convert a port-based rule to an application-based rule in either of
two ways:
• Clone the rule—Preserves the original port-based rule and places the cloned applicationbased rule directly above it in the rulebase.
• Add Applications to the Rule—Replaces the original port-based rule with the new
application-based rule and deletes the original rule.
If you have existing application-based rules and you want to migrate applications to
them from port-based rules, you can Add Applications to an Existing Rule instead
of cloning a new rule or converting the port-based rule by adding applications to it.
Some applications appear on the network at intervals, for example, for quarterly or
yearly events. These applications may not display on the Applications & Usage screen
if the history isn’t long enough to capture their latest activity.
When you clone a rule or add applications to a rule, nothing else about the original
rule changes. The original rule’s configuration remains the same except for the
applications you added to the rule. For example, if the original rule’s Service allowed
Any application or specified a particular service, you need to change the Service to
Application-Default to restrict the allowed applications to their default ports on the
new rule.
Cloning is the safest way to migrate rules, especially when Applications & Usage shows more
than a few well-known applications matching the rule (Rule Cloning Migration Use Case: Web
Browsing and SSL Traffic provides an example of this). Cloning preserves the original portbased rule and places it below the cloned application-based rule, which eliminates the risk of
losing application availability because traffic that doesn’t match the cloned rule flows through
to the port-based rule. When traffic from legitimate applications hasn’t hit the port-based rule
for a reasonable period of time, you can remove it to complete that rule’s migration.
To clone a port-based rule:
1. In Apps Seen, click the check box next to each application you want in the cloned rule. Keep
in mind that it takes an hour or more to update Apps Seen.
2. Click Create Cloned Rule. In the Create Cloned Rule dialog, Name the cloned rule
(“slack” in this example) and add other applications in the same container and application
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dependencies, if required. For example, to clone a rule by selecting the slack-base
application:
The green text is the selected application to clone. The container application (slack) is in
the gray row. The applications listed in italics are applications that have not been seen on
the rule but are in the same container as the selected application. Individual applications
that have been seen on the rule are in normal font. All the applications are included in the
cloned rule by default (Add Container App, which adds all the applications in the container,
is selected by default) to help prevent the rule from breaking in the future.
3. If you want to allow all of the applications in the container, leave Add container app
selected. This also “future proofs” the rule because when an application is added to the
container app, it’s automatically added to the rule.
If you want to constrain access to some of the individual applications in the container,
uncheck the box next to each individual application you don’t want users to access. This
also unchecks the container app, so if you want to allow new applications in the container
later, you have to add those applications individually.
If you uncheck the container app, all the apps are unchecked and you manually select the
apps you want to include in the cloned rule.
4. If application dependencies are listed in a box below the Applications (there are none in
this example), leave them checked. The applications you selected need those application
dependencies to run. Common dependencies include ssl and web-browsing.
5. Click OK to add the new application-based rule directly above the port-based rule in the
rulebase.
6. Commit the configuration.
When you clone a rule and Commit the configuration, the applications you select for the
cloned rule are removed from the original port-based rule’s Apps Seen list. For example,
if a port-based rule has 16 Apps Seen and you select two individual applications and one
dependent application for the cloned rule, after cloning, the port-based rule shows 13 Apps
Seen because the three selected applications have been removed from the port-based rule
(16-3 = 13). The cloned rule shows the three added applications in Apps on Rule.
Creating a cloned rule with a container app works a bit differently. For example, a portbased rule has 16 Apps Seen and you select one individual application and a container
app for the cloned rule. The container app has five individual applications and has one
dependent application. After cloning, the cloned rule shows seven Apps on Rule—the
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individual application, the five individual applications in the container app, and the dependent
application for the container app. However, in the original port-based rule, Apps Seen shows
13 applications because only the individual application, the container app, and the container
app’s dependent application are removed from the port-based rule.
In contrast to cloning, adding applications to a port-based rule replaces the rule with the
resulting application-based rule. Adding applications to a rule is simpler than cloning, but riskier
because you may inadvertently miss applications that should be on the rule, and the original
port-based rule is no longer in the rulebase to catch accidental omissions. However, adding
applications to port-based rules that apply to only a few well-known applications migrates the
rule quickly to an application-based rule. For example, for a port-based rule that only controls
traffic to TCP port 22, the only legitimate application is SSH, so it’s safe to add applications to
the rule.
Adding applications using the traditional Security policy rule’s Application tab does
not change Apps Seen or Apps on Rule. To preserve accurate application usage
information, when replacing port-based rules with application-based rules, add
applications using Add to This Rule or Match Usage (or create a cloned rule or add
applications to an existing application-based rule instead) in Apps Seen.
There are three ways to replace a port-based rule with an application-based rule by adding
applications (Add to This Rule and Match Usage in Apps Seen and Add in Apps on Rule):
• Add to This Rule applications from Apps Seen (applications that matched the rule). Keep in
mind that it takes an hour or more to update Apps Seen.
1. Select applications from Apps Seen on the rule.
2. Click Add to This Rule. In the Add to This Rule dialog, add other applications in the same
container app and application dependencies, if required. For example, to add slack-base
to a rule:
Similar to the Create Cloned Rule dialog, the green text in Add to This Rule is the
selected application to add to the rule. The container app (slack) is in the gray row. The
applications listed in italics are applications that have not been seen on the rule but are
in the same container as the selected application. Individual applications that have been
seen on the rule are in normal font. All the applications are included in the cloned rule by
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default (Add Container App, which adds all the applications in the container, is selected
by default) to help prevent the rule from breaking in the future.
3. If you want to allow all of the applications in the container, leave Add container app
selected. This also “future proofs” the rule because when an application is added to the
container app, it’s automatically added to the rule.
If you want to constrain access to some of the individual applications in the container,
uncheck the box next to each individual application you don’t want users to access.
This also unchecks the container app, so if you want to allow new applications in the
container later, you have to add those applications individually.
If you uncheck the container app, all the apps are unchecked and you manually select the
apps you want to include in the cloned rule.
4. If application dependencies are listed in a box below the Applications (there are none in
this example), leave them checked. The applications you selected need those application
dependencies to run.
5. Click OK to replace the port-based rule with the new application-based rule.
When you Add to This Rule and Commit the configuration, the applications you didn’t add
are removed from Apps Seen because the new application-based rule no longer allows
them. For example, if a rule has 16 Apps Seen and you Add to This Rule three applications,
the resulting new rule shows only those three added applications in Apps Seen.
Add to This Rule with a container app works a bit differently. For example, a port-based
rule has 16 Apps Seen and you select one individual application and a container app to add
to the new rule. The container app has five individual applications and has one dependent
application. After adding the applications to the rule, the new rule shows seven Apps on
Rule—the individual application, the five individual applications in the container app, and the
dependent application for the container app. However, Apps Seen shows 13 applications
because the individual application, the container app, and the container app’s dependent
application are removed from that list.
• Add all of the Apps Seen on the rule to the rule at one time with one click (Match Usage).
Port-based rules allow any application, so Apps Seen may include unneeded or
unsafe applications. Use Match Usage to convert a rule only when the rule has
seen a small number of well-known applications with legitimate business purposes.
A good example is TCP port 22, which should only allow SSH traffic, so if SSH is
the only application seen on a port-based rule that opens port 22, you can safely
Match Usage.
1. In Apps Seen, click Match Usage. Keep in mind that it takes an hour or more to update
Apps Seen. All the applications in Apps Seen are copied to Apps on Rule.
2. Click OK to create the application-based rule and replace the port-based rule.
• If you know the applications you want on the rule, you can Add applications manually in
Apps on Rule. However, this method is equivalent to using the traditional Security policy
rule Application tab and does not change Apps Seen or Apps on Rule. To preserve accurate
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application usage information, convert rules using Add to This Rule, Create Cloned Rule, or
Match Usage in Apps Seen.
1. In Apps on Rule, Add (or Browse) and select applications to add to the rule. This is
equivalent to adding applications on the Application tab.
2. Click OK to add the applications to the rule and replace the port-based rule with the new
application-based rule.
Because this method is equivalent to adding applications using the Application
tab, the dialog to add application dependencies doesn’t pop up.
STEP 5 | For each application-based rule, set the Service to application-default.
If business needs require you to allow applications (for example, internal custom
applications) on non-standard ports between particular clients and servers, restrict
the exception to only the required application, sources, and destinations. Consider
rewriting custom applications so they use the application default port.
STEP 6 | Commit the configuration.
STEP 7 | Monitor the rules.
• Cloned rules—Monitor the original port-based rule to ensure the application-based rule
matches the desired traffic. If applications you want to allow match the port-based rule,
add them to the application-based rule or clone another application-based rule for them.
When only applications that you don’t want on your network match the port-based rule for
a reasonable period of time, the cloned rule is robust (it catches all the application traffic
you want to control) and you can safely remove it.
• Rules with Added Applications—Because you convert only port-based rules that have a few
well-known applications directly to application-based rules, in most cases the rule is solid
from the start. Monitor the converted rule to see if the expected traffic matches the rule—
if there’s less traffic than expected, the rule may not allow all of the necessary applications.
If there’s more traffic than expected, the rule may allow unwanted traffic. Listen to user
feedback—if users can’t access applications they need for business purposes, the rule (or
another rule) may be too tight.
Rule Cloning Migration Use Case: Web Browsing and SSL Traffic
A port-based rule that allows web access on TCP ports 80 (HTTP web-browsing) and 443 (HTTPS
SSL) provides no control over which applications use those open ports. There are many web
applications, so a general rule that allows web traffic allows thousands of applications, many of
which you don’t want on your network.
This use case shows how to migrate a port-based policy that allows all web applications to an
application-based policy that allows only the applications you want, so you can safely enable the
applications you choose to allow. For rules that see a lot of applications, cloning the original portbased rule is safer than adding applications to the rule because adding replaces the port-based
rule, so if you inadvertently forget to add a critical application, you affect application availability.
And if you Match Usage, which also replaces the port-based rule, you allow all of the applications
the rule has seen, which could be dangerous, especially with web browsing traffic.
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Cloning the rule retains the original port-based rule and places the cloned rule directly above
the port-based rule in the rulebase, so you can monitor the rules. Cloning also allows you to split
rules that see a lot of different applications—such as a port-based web traffic rule—into multiple
application-based rules so you can treat different groups of applications differently. When you’re
sure you’re allowing all the applications you need to allow in the cloned rule (or rules), you can
remove the port-based rule.
This example clones a port-based web traffic rule to create an application-based rule for webbased file sharing traffic (a subset of the application traffic seen on the port-based rule).
This example does not apply to using the New App Viewer to clone App-ID Cloud Engine
(ACE) applications (see the ACE documentation for examples of how to do this); ACE
requires a SaaS Security Inline license.
STEP 1 | Navigate to Policies > Security > Policy Optimizer > No App Specified to view the portbased rules.
STEP 2 | Click Compare for the rule you want to migrate.
In this example, the port-based rule that allows web access is named Traffic to internet.
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STEP 3 | Use the sorting options to review and select the applications you want to allow from Apps
Seen.
The number of Apps Seen is updated approximately every hour, so if you don’t see as
many applications as you expect, check again after about an hour. Depending on the
firewall’s load, it may take longer than one hour for these fields to update.
For example, click Subcategory to sort the applications, scroll to the file-sharing subcategory,
and then select the applications you want to allow. Alternatively, you can filter (search) for filesharing applications.
STEP 4 | Click Create Cloned Rule and Name the cloned rule (file-sharing-apps in this example).
Create Cloned Rule shows the selected applications shaded green, the container apps shaded
gray, individual applications in the container that haven’t been seen on the rule in italics, and
individual applications that have been seen on the rule in normal text font. Scrolling through
Applications shows all the container apps and their individual applications.
Create Cloned Rule also shows the dependent applications for the selected applications. In this
example, some of the selected applications require (Required By) the google-base and googledocs-base applications to run.
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STEP 5 | Select the applications you want in the cloned rule.
For applications you don’t want to include, uncheck the corresponding box, which also
unchecks the container app. If you don’t include the container app, then when new apps are
added to the container, they won’t automatically be added to the rule.
If you uncheck the container app, all the individual applications in the container are unchecked
and you must select the apps you want to add manually.
STEP 6 | Click OK to create the cloned rule.
STEP 7 | In Policies > Security, the cloned rule (file-sharing-apps) is inserted in the rulebase above the
original port-based rule (Traffic to internet).
STEP 8 | Click the rule name to edit the cloned rule, which inherits the properties of the original portbased rule.
STEP 9 | On the Service/URL Category tab, delete service-http and service-https from Service.
This changes the Service to application-default, which prevents applications from using nonstandard ports and further reduces the attack surface.
If business needs require you to allow applications (for example, internal custom
applications) on non-standard ports between particular clients and servers, restrict
the exception to only the required application, sources, and destinations. Consider
rewriting custom applications so they use the application default port.
STEP 10 | On the Source, User, and Destination tabs, tighten the rule to apply to only the right users in
only the right locations (zones, subnets).
For example, you may decide to limit web file sharing activity to only the user groups that have
business reasons to share files across the web.
STEP 11 | Click OK.
STEP 12 | Commit the configuration.
STEP 13 | Repeat the process for other application categories in the port-based web access rule until
your application-based rules allow only the applications you want to allow on your network.
When traffic you want to allow stops hitting the original port-based rule for a sufficient
amount of time to be confident that the port-based rule is no longer needed, you can remove
the port-based rule from the rulebase.
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Add Applications to an Existing Rule
In some cases, you may want to add applications learned (seen) on a port-based rule to a rule
that already exists. For example, an administrator may create a cloned application-based rule
for general business web applications from a port-based rule that allows internet access (a
port 80/443 rule). Later, the administrator notices that the port-based internet access rule has
seen more general business applications and wants to add some or all of them to the cloned
application-based rule (cloning another application-based rule for the same type of application
would create an unnecessary rule and complicate the rulebase).
This example assumes that an application-based Security policy rule to control general business
traffic already exists or was cloned from a port-based internet access rule, similarly to the Rule
Cloning Migration Use Case: Web Browsing and SSL Traffic. In that example, we cloned an
application-based rule from the port-based internet access rule and changed the new rule’s
Service to application-default to prevent web-based applications from using non-standard ports.
In addition to adding applications to an existing application-based rule, you can add
applications to an existing port-based rule. This converts the port-based rule to an
application-based rule for the applications you add to the rule. If you do this, go to the rule
and change the Service to application-default to prevent the applications from using nonstandard ports (also, the Service configured on the rule may not match the application).
This example does not apply to using the New App Viewer to add App-ID Cloud Engine
(ACE) applications to an existing rule (see the ACE documentation for examples of how to
do this); ACE requires a SaaS Security Inline license.
STEP 1 | You check the port-based internet access rule and discover that the rule has seen general
business applications and that you need to allow some of them for business purposes.
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STEP 2 | Select the general business apps you want to add to the existing rule.
STEP 3 | Click Add to Existing Rule and select the Name of the rule to which you want to add the
applications, in this example, general-business-applications.
STEP 4 | Click OK in Add Apps to Existing Ruleto add the selected applications to the generalbusiness-applications rule.
STEP 5 | Click OK in Applications & Usage.
STEP 6 | The updated rule now controls the original applications on the rule and the applications you
just added.
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Identify Security Policy Rules with Unused Applications
If you have application-based Security policy rules that allow a large number of applications, you
can remove unused applications (applications never seen on the rules) to tighten those rules so
that they only allow applications actually seen in traffic that matches the rule. Identifying and
removing unused applications from Security policy rules is a best practice that strengthens your
security posture by reducing the attack surface.
STEP 1 | Identify Security policy rules that have unused applications.
Policies > Security > Policy Optimizer > Unused Apps displays all application-based rules that
are configured with applications that have not matched (been seen on) the rule. This means
that these rules allow applications that you may not use in your network (or that another rule
shadows the rule, so traffic that you expect to match the rule matches an earlier rule in the
rulebase).
The number of Apps Allowed and Apps Seen are updated approximately every hour,
so if you configure applications on a rule and don’t see as many Apps Allowed as you
expect, check again after about an hour. Depending on the firewall’s load, it may take
longer than one hour for these fields to update.
STEP 2 | Prioritize which rules with unused applications to modify first.
Policies > Security > Policy Optimizer > Unused Apps enables you to sort rules without
affecting their order in the rulebase and provides other information that helps you prioritize
rules to clean up based on your business goals and risk tolerance.
• The difference between Apps Allowed (the number of applications on the allow list) and
Apps Seen (the number of allowed applications actually seen on the rule) shows how many
applications are configured on each rule but not actually seen on the rule, which indicates
to what extent the rule is over-provisioned. Click Apps Allowed to sort by the number of
applications allowed in a rule and click Apps Seen to sort by the number of applications
actually seen on a rule.
• Days with No New Apps (click to sort) shows you the number of days since the last time a
new application hit the rule. This indicates how likely it is that the rule is mature and won’t
see any applications that haven’t already been seen. The longer the Days with No New
Apps, the less likely that new applications will hit the rule and the more likely that you know
all the applications the rule allows.
• Created and Modified dates also help determine whether a rule has matured enough to
understand whether applications not seen on the rule may be seen at a later date or if the
rule has seen all the applications expected to hit the rule. The longer the time since a rule
was Modified, the more likely the rule is mature. (If Created and Modified are the same, the
rule hasn’t been modified.)
• Hit Count—Displays rules with the most matches over a selected time frame. You can
exclude rules for which you reset the hit counter and specify the exclusion time period in
PAN-OS® Administrator’s Guide Version 10.2 888 ©2025 Palo Alto Networks, Inc. | https://docs.paloaltonetworks.com/content/dam/techdocs/en_US/pdf/pan-os/10-2/pan-os-admin/pan-os-admin.pdf |
888 | App-ID
days. Excluding rules with recently reset hit counters prevents misconceptions about rules
that show fewer hits than you expect because you didn’t know the counter was reset.
You can also use Hit Count to View Policy Rule Usage.
You can also click Traffic (Bytes, 30 days) to sort by the amount of traffic a rule has seen over
the last 30 days. Use this information to prioritize which rules to modify first. For example, you
can prioritize rules with the largest difference between Apps Allowed and Apps Seen and that
also have the most Days with No New Apps, because those rules have the greatest number of
unused applications and are the most mature.
STEP 3 | Review the Apps Seen on the rule.
On Unused Apps, click Compare or the number in the Apps Seen column to open Applications
& Usage, which shows the applications configured on the rule (Apps on Rule) and the Apps
Seen on the rule.
• The number next to Apps Seen (10 in this example) is the number of applications that
matched the rule. Keep in mind that it takes at least one hour for the firewall to update
Apps Seen.
• The number next to Apps on Rule (35 in this example) is how many applications are
configured on the rule, which is calculated by counting each application in a container app
(but not the container app itself—if you configure a container app on the rule, the rule
allows the container app’s individual applications). Because the Applications list shows only
the applications you configure manually on the rule, when you configure a container app on
a rule, Applications only shows the container app, not all of the individual applications in the
container (unless you also manually configure the individual applications on the rule). For
this reason, the number of Apps on Rule may not be the same as the number of applications
you see in the Applications list.
• Click the number next to Apps on Rule to see all of the individual applications on the rule.
This example rule has 10 Apps Seen (applications that matched the rule) but allows 35 Apps
on Rule. The facebook container app is configured on the rule and the rule sees traffic from
the individual applications facebook-base, facebook-chat, and facebook-video (Apps Seen).
PAN-OS® Administrator’s Guide Version 10.2 889 ©2025 Palo Alto Networks, Inc. | https://docs.paloaltonetworks.com/content/dam/techdocs/en_US/pdf/pan-os/10-2/pan-os-admin/pan-os-admin.pdf |
889 | App-ID
When you click the Apps on Rule number, the Apps on Rule dialog displays the individual
applications allowed, but not the container app itself.
You cannot add or delete applications from the pop-up dialog.
Compare the Apps Seen on the rule to the Apps on Rule. If an application on the rule isn’t used
(you don’t see the application or you don’t see applications in an allowed container in Apps
Seen), consider removing the application from the rule to reduce the attack surface. Take into
account periodically used applications, such as for quarterly or annual events, which may look
unused if you don’t examine a long enough time frame. Timeframe enables you to select the
time frame for the Apps Seen on the rule. Select Anytime to see every application seen over
the life of the rule. Depending on the Created or Modified date in the No App Specified dialog
and the time between periodic events, the rule may not have been on the firewall long enough
to see all periodically used applications.
STEP 4 | Remove unused applications from the rule.
Delete (or Add) applications in Apps on Rule to remove (or add) applications manually, or
Match Usage to add the Apps Seen on the rule and delete applications for which no matching
traffic has been seen on the rule with one click.
To remove applications from the rule manually, select applications from Apps on Rule and
Delete them. Ensure that none of the applications are required for periodic events before you
remove them from the rule. (You can also add or delete applications on the Security policy
rule’s Application tab.)
Match Usage moves the Apps Seen on the rule to Apps on Rule and removes all unused
applications from the rule.
You can clone rules from Policies > Security and from No App Specified to Migrate
Port-Based to App-ID Based Security Policy Rules. You can’t clone a rule starting
from Unused Apps.
STEP 5 | Commit the configuration.
PAN-OS® Administrator’s Guide Version 10.2 890 ©2025 Palo Alto Networks, Inc. | https://docs.paloaltonetworks.com/content/dam/techdocs/en_US/pdf/pan-os/10-2/pan-os-admin/pan-os-admin.pdf |
890 | App-ID
STEP 6 | Monitor updated rules and listen to user feedback to ensure that updated rules allow the
applications you want to allow and don’t inadvertently block periodically used applications.
The number of Apps Allowed and Apps Seen are updated approximately every hour.
After you remove all of the unused applications from a rule, the rule remains listed in
Policies > Security > Policy Optimzer > Unused Apps until the firewall updates the
display. When the firewall updates the display and the number of Apps Allowed is
the same as the number of Apps Seen, the rule no longer displays in the Unused Apps
screen. However, depending on the firewall’s load, it may take longer than one hour for
these fields to update.
High Availability for Application Usage Statistics
When you configure two firewalls as a High Availability (HA) pair, the application usage statistics
are local to the firewall that generates the Traffic logs for the application. Where you can view
application usage statistics also depends in part on the HA configuration:
• Active/Passive—The active device generates the application usage statistics. If a passive device
has seen no user traffic, then only the active device displays the application usage statistics. If
a passive device has seen traffic, then the passive device only displays the application usage
statistics from the traffic that it has seen.
On a failover, the application usage statistics are based only on the Traffic logs generated on
the newly active device (the device that was passive before the failover).
• Active/Active—The device that owns a session generates the Traffic logs for that session, so
the application usage statistics for a session are only available on the device that owns the
session. If one active device owns a session, the other active device does not display that
session’s application usage statistics.
How to Disable Policy Optimizer
Policy Optimizer is enabled by default. Policy Optimizer provides many capabilities that make it
easier to Migrate Port-Based to App-ID Based Security Policy Rules and to Identify Security Policy
Rules with Unused Applications and remove the unused applications from the rules, but if you
wish to disable the feature, you can.
STEP 1 | Navigate to Device > Setup > Management > Policy Rulebase Settings.
PAN-OS® Administrator’s Guide Version 10.2 891 ©2025 Palo Alto Networks, Inc. | https://docs.paloaltonetworks.com/content/dam/techdocs/en_US/pdf/pan-os/10-2/pan-os-admin/pan-os-admin.pdf |
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