Mastering Palo Alto Networks: Deploy and manage industry-leading PAN-OS 10.x solutions to secure your users and infrastructure

I have worked with Palo Alto Firewalls for nearly 2 years and I wish I had this book when I started out.It covers everything you need to know to properly manage Palo Alto firewalls in a efficient way.The book contains information for people on every skill level and is great at explaining how the firewall works.

I was a bit hesitant at first to purchase as I have a few years of PAN-OS management experience.However, this book is a great resource and covers what’s necessary for day to day challenges.I particularly enjoy how organized the materials are.Cheers.

Well written, easy to follow. I would suggest having access to real hardware or an emulator (e.g., EVE-NG).

Great book for beginners and people with some background knowledge in Palo Alto. Concepts are well explained.

# Mastering Palo Alto Networks - PAN-OS 10.x Edition (2020)## SynopsisMastering Palo Alto Networks is geared towards Network Security Engineers with some experience with Palo Alto firewalls (or "Strata") seeking to improve their skillset within Palo Alto's Strata subset (Next-Generation Firewalls).## The FieldPalo Alto Networks is the industry leader for perimeter firewalling (NGFW) as of this publication and has fought hard to achieve this title. Over the last 5 or so years, Palo Alto has accelerated the rate of development with its core product line to maintain this lead, making it difficult for new users to navigate through the dizzying array of new features (1-2 major releases *per year*). The author of this book has a proven reputation when it comes to making these capabilities clear when they are otherwise buried by the product developer.This book bridges the gap between vendor documentation and actionable practice, covering visually and comprehensively every capability in PAN-OS. This is important, especially with features that are platform unique (like NAT) where the quirks are consistent, but not well understood. Many of these features are rapidly developing, and Packt worked well with the author to ensure that all examples within the text are up-to-date. Please note that at the time of this publishing, PAN-OS 10.0 was released *two months ago*, so this took considerable effort.## The BookOverall, the book is organized in a way I would consider to be in-line with what I'd expect a burgeoning Network Security Engineer should learn. I have trained quite a few people on this platform and the layout of this book generally follows the path I would consider to be "from most important, to most useful." When I say that, I mean that the fundamentals are of the utmost importance when you begin to learn because it makes more advanced topics easier to achieve mastery on. There are some side-hikes along the way. This book must be comprehensive, however, and this is unavoidable without compromising at least one of those objectives.That being said, this is a powerful utility, but should not be regarded as a standalone work. I would strongly encourage whoever has the ability to get access to a lab or test unit to try out the concepts covered in this book to truly achieve mastery. If a reader has no prior experience with the platform/subject matter, some of the concepts covered in this book (it covers EVERYTHING) may seem foreign and will be difficult to retain.My recommendation to a reader would be to take this chapter-by-chapter for best information retention. The author does an excellent job of keeping each section self-contained, so there is no harm in stopping at the end of the chapter. Focus on absorbing the knowledge fully, then move on to the next section from there. To use an old science fiction neologism, `grok it completely`.Tom Piens has provided something fundamentally important here. I'm not exactly the target audience (PCNSE 7-10) but I have struggled to provide training and resources like this to on-board new Network Security Engineers. This will be a valuable tool in my team training arsenal from here on out!## Fit and FinishOverall, this is a good first edition. It is worth mentioning that the majority of this book has been written in informal language, and will have some awkward 1st Edition-isms. This is common with other technical texts, as people in our field tend to try to get the facts down first and work on cleanup later. Given that this is effectively going to become a continual publication as time evolves, I wouldn't decry this book for that - it's going to improve over time.

This fantastic book provides an overview of Palo Alto Firewalls + Panorama, based on the new PAN-OS 10.0.x release.Providing an overview of the core technologies involved and a full in-depth setup guide (including hardening tips) as a starting point; this book quickly dives into the deep end and doesn't shy away from advanced details.Accompanied by clear screenshots of the management GUI and CLI output (including detailed output explanations) this guide provides an excellent companion for people tasked with setting up, hardening and troubleshooting Palo Alto firewalls.Even for someone who has 4+ years of Palo Alto product experience this guide provided valuable info that I had not yet been able to find anywhere else. This clearly reflects the level of knowledge/skill of the author and speaks volumes about how useful this book can be for both the beginner and the senior engineer.Highly recommended!

I have been a Palo Alto NGFW admin for several years (4 devices)I wanted a book for PanOS 10 rather than the online training provided by Palo Alto.This book is not well thought out. Definitions are lacking, the Index is poor and the book leaves out clear navigation when moving from subject to subject. You are directed into a subject; figures are displayed but many times, not where in the GUI these figures are displayed from. If a person is not accustomed to the PanOS layout, it is infuriating to find where the book is taking you in the GUI, especially if the reader is not doing a page-by-page study but may be jumping around the book for a specific topic. And most annoying is the explanation of functions, processes and concepts.

As a former administrator of 20 some Palo Alto Networks firewalls, and holder of PCNSE8 and PCNSE9 certifications, this is the book I wish was available when I first started my journey. And even as a veteran of the platform I've enjoyed reading it picking up nuggets of information along with better understanding of configuration options. One particular area I found covered better (and more clearly) than any support doc available was U-Turn NAT policies which were a particular pain point a few years back on a project.This book will guide you succinctly from basic initial setup through to more advanced topics such as custom app-ids and zone protections in an easy to follow step by step manner.Whether you're just starting to look at PANW firewalls or like myself have years of experience I highly recommend picking up a copy of Tom's excellent book.