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

What I wish was available when I started working with Palo Alto Firewalls
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.

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

This is a good one for the at-work training shelves!
# 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.

Not for the complete beginner Palo Alto NGFW admin
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.

This book is one of the greatest books on Palo Alto Firewall. I loved it.

This book doesn’t really make one a master, the title is misleading. I’d say it covers the fundamentals.