Step 1
- Study the curriculum: Palo Alto Networks offers its courses, including the PCNSA for free under https://beacon.paloaltonetworks.com. Make sure you cover the basics for the PCNSA by watching all of the videos found in the EDU-110 class.
Including:
- Interface configuration
- APP-ID and content-ID
- URL filtering
- NAT and security policies
- WildFire
- User-ID
- URL filtering
- SSL decryption
- GlobalProtect
- Monitoring and reporting
- Site-to-site VPN
- Active/passive high availability
- Next-Generation Security Practices
Depending on your level of experience with firewalls and their security practices in general, it may take you anywhere from 12 to 25 hours to complete the curriculum on Beacon. Once you complete it, you may review the material as many times as needed until you have a good understanding of the content. Also make sure you read the study guide which is a free PDF published by Palo Alto.
Step 2
Hands on practices: You don’t really know it “till you’ve done it”. Get your hands on a firewall by any means necessary!
A firewall can be a hardware appliance that you install in your basement or a software (VM) version that you acquire the right to use from Palo Alto. Acquiring the right here means you by the VM(Virtual machine) license from palo Alto through a reseller such as CDW or spin up a cloud VM firewall of a public cloud platform such as Microsoft Azure. It really doesn’t matter how what type of firewall you choose to practice on. The bottom line is: you must be able to configure a firewall if you intend to have a certificate that validate that you can do so. Once you have management access to your firewall, go over Step 1 again while practicing on your own pace.
Step 3
YouTube it: some of the best content about the PCNSA exist exclusively on YouTube. There are short videos that cover specific modules and other lengthier ones that go over the entire curriculum, take advantage of the free resources on YouTube! Also, before taking the exam, don’t forget to watch certified Administrators talk about their own experiences taking the exam, what you should expect and what techniques they used.
Step 4
Google It : Palo Alto offer review questions and answers that you might find on Google and Beacon(Palo Alto’s free learning platform). You shouldn’t depend on these reviews as they are just meant to give you a feel for how the exam will be. Nonetheless, having an idea of how the questions are formulated can put your spirit at ease.
Conclusion: Make Sure you Learn
The PCNSA is not necessarily an entry level exam. There are people who have been deploying Palo Alto firewalls for many years yet have failed the PCNSA exam. However, if you study the content of the EDU110 and read the study guide from palo Alto, ensure that you have hands-on experience deploying and managing Palo Alto firewalls, you will succeed at this exam. I also recommend taking the final week of your preparation studying very day 5 hours a day to review everything you need to be prepared. And if you fail, learn from the failure practice some more and retake the exam in less than two weeks. Repeat until you pass.
