Palo Alto Networks

The Palo Alto Networks Certified Network Security Engineer (PCNSE) exam retired on July 31, 2025. You cannot schedule a new PCNSE attempt in 2026. The exam’s former topics—PAN-OS routing, policies, application identification, threat prevention, centralized management and troubleshooting—remain useful engineering skills, but its booking instructions, domain weights and practice-test schedules are no longer a current certification plan. Palo Alto Networks now offers role-based Network Security Professional, Network Security Analyst, Next-Generation Firewall Engineer and Network Security Architect credentials. These are not one-to-one replacements for PCNSE. This guide explains which legacy skills…

Palo Alto Networks firewalls expose several layers of evidence for understanding network activity: traffic logs show sessions and policy outcomes, threat and URL logs add security context, the Application Command Center (ACC) summarizes patterns, and packet capture can answer low-level questions when logs are not enough. Effective monitoring comes from using those layers in the right order rather than opening a packet capture for every problem. The operational goal is to move from symptom to evidence quickly. Start with the user, application, source, destination, policy, or time window you care…

Palo Alto Networks remains one of the most influential vendors in network security, but choosing it in 2026 should be a platform decision rather than a brand decision. The relevant question is not whether its firewalls are “good.” It is whether the combination of next-generation firewalls, Prisma Access, Strata Cloud Manager, cloud-delivered security services, identity-aware policy, threat prevention, and operations tooling fits the organization’s architecture and operating model. That distinction matters because network security has expanded beyond appliance selection. Users connect from branches, homes, mobile networks, clouds, and SaaS platforms….