Navigating Firewall Migrations: Finest Practices and Palo Alto to Cisco Subsequent-Gen Firewall Specifics

Migrating firewalls could be a complicated endeavor, usually involving intricate insurance policies, vital functions, and the necessity for seamless transition. This submit distills key insights from skilled architects on finest practices for any firewall migration, after which dives into the distinctive issues when transferring from Palo Alto Networks to Cisco Subsequent-Technology Firewalls.

Part 0: The Background

Buyer management has determined emigrate from PAN to Cisco.  This was a enterprise determination primarily based on elevated costs by PAN.  Not like many firewall migration initiatives CX helps, this engagement had the next complicating components:

1. Lack of current-state documentation.
2. Lack of know-how of present id answer. Extra particularly, we recognized (with effort) that there was a must make Cisco & PAN co-exist due to many cases of identity-based firewall enforcement.
3. Lack of know-how of firewall historical past (i.e. WHY is there a firewall right here/what community segments want isolation).
4. Lack of know-how/documentation of applications-and how/the place the firewall coverage helps the functions.
5. 24/7 setting: There isn’t any ‘after-hours’ so each migration effort required vital planning.

Part 1: Basic Firewall Migration Finest Practices

A profitable firewall migration hinges on meticulous planning, thorough execution, and diligent post-migration actions.  There isn’t any device that may substitute good practices and this part’s intent is to organize an engineer with expertise required to save lots of one’s sanity:

1. Complete Prep Work:

• Pre-migration Cleanup & Optimization: Earlier than you even take into consideration transferring, clear up your current firewall. This consists of analyzing rule and NAT hit-counts to establish unused or redundant insurance policies, and performing object de-duplication to streamline configurations.  Would you progress homes with out first decluttering and throwing away trash?  If not, why would you progress stale or irrelevant firewall coverage?  A superb finest observe is to make this one thing the client is accountable for.  Like transferring, you possibly can’t declutter indefinitely, so guarantee there’s a timeline to which the client is held accountable to.
• Change Administration: Ideally, implement a configuration freeze on the supply firewall. If not potential, set up strong change monitoring to duplicate any new guidelines or modifications throughout each the outdated and new firewalls.
• Stakeholder Engagement: Establish all mission-critical functions and their key stakeholders. Their enter is essential for understanding site visitors flows and validating post-migration performance.
• Documentation is King:
  • Develop an in depth Methodology of Process (MOP): Define each step, together with whether or not you’ll carry out a ‘laborious’ cutover or an incremental/phased migration. Embody clear time aims.
  • Conduct Peer Evaluations: Have a number of eyes in your MOP and configurations.
  • Create a Thorough Take a look at Plan: This isn’t nearly testing functions; it’s about testing your check plan itself. Guarantee it covers all vital functionalities and edge instances.
  • Design a Rollback Plan: At all times have a transparent technique to revert to the earlier state if points come up.

2. Flawless Migration Execution:

• Conduct a ‘Dry-Run’: If potential, simulate the migration in a check setting to establish potential points earlier than the precise cutover.
• Validate ARP Tables: Test ARP tables each earlier than and after the migration to make sure correct community connectivity.
• Optimize Vital Visitors: Develop pre-filters or ‘fastpath’ guidelines for vital functions to make sure their efficiency isn’t impacted.
• Pre-stage Monitoring Instruments: Put together customized searches and packet captures upfront to rapidly diagnose points throughout the migration.
• On-Name Help: Have utility testers and house owners available or on a devoted name throughout the migration window.  Vital word: These MAY NOT be the identical individuals.  Usually, we got testers, who lacked any understanding of how the applying labored.  Guarantee it’s nicely documented the place this expertise lives.  Supply/vacation spot IPs & L4 ports-who is aware of these low-level particulars?

3. Publish-Migration Actions for Stability & Optimization:

• Assessment Publish-Migration Studies: Completely analyze any stories generated by migration instruments to establish and deal with lingering points.
• Replace Documentation: Guarantee all community diagrams, coverage paperwork, and operational procedures are up to date to mirror the brand new firewall configuration.
• Steady Monitoring: Implement strong monitoring to trace efficiency, safety occasions, and potential anomalies.
• Coaching and Help: Educate your operations staff on the brand new platform and its administration.
• Ongoing Optimization: Firewall insurance policies will not be static. Frequently assessment and optimize guidelines to take care of effectivity and safety posture.

Finish-to-Finish Migration Process (Basic Steps):

1. Obtain and launch the migration device.
2. Export the supply firewall’s configuration file.
3. Assessment the pre-migration report.
4. Map interfaces, safety zones, and interface teams.
5. Map configurations with functions.
6. Specify vacation spot parameters and choose options for migration.
7. Optimize, assessment, and validate the migrated configuration.
8. Push the migrated configuration to the brand new firewall’s administration middle (e.g., FMC).
9. Deploy the configuration to the firewall.
10. Obtain and assessment the post-migration report.
11. Configure any further guide gadgets.

Part 2: Key Variations and Migration Methods from Palo Alto to Cisco Subsequent-Technology Firewalls

Migrating from Palo Alto Networks to Cisco Safe Firewall brings its personal set of nuances, notably regarding id integration, coverage conversion, and platform-specific capabilities.

1. Identification Coexistence Throughout Migration:

A big problem is making certain person id mappings (e.g., “Lisa is 10.14.10.7”) are constant throughout each Palo Alto and Cisco firewalls throughout the interim migration interval.

• The Drawback: Cisco wants to concentrate on user-to-IP mappings that Palo Alto’s Person-ID brokers or VPN gateways already know. With out this, site visitors from recognized customers is likely to be denied by the Cisco firewall as a result of it lacks the mandatory context.
• Options Explored:
  • Devoted ISE-PIC Deployment: Whereas tried, utilizing an current ISE deployment for this objective may be problematic, particularly since PassiveID is incompatible with 802.1x Machine Authentication. Notice: ISE-PIC has reached Finish-of-Life.
  • Syslog Forwarding: A viable technique entails configuring the Palo Alto VPN firewall to ahead Syslog messages containing user-to-IP mappings to Cisco ISE.
  • Lively Listing Brokers: Deploying brokers on Lively Listing servers or terminal servers might help each platforms collect id data.

By together with a mixture of syslog forwarding on the PAN VPN firewall and new Cisco brokers on the client AD servers, we have been in a position to migrate a downstream PAN firewall to Cisco.

Ought to customers be coming from on-premise (passive authentication) or through remote-access VPN, the Cisco firewall could have a user->IP mapping to verify the suitable firewall coverage is being matched.

As of Firewall Administration Middle 7.6, the passive ID performance is accessible straight with out the necessity for ISE-PIC (which went EOL on 5/5/2025).

2. Coverage Conversion with the Safe Firewall Migration Device:

The Cisco Safe Firewall migration device is designed to help with this transition, however understanding its capabilities and limitations is vital.

• • Extraction & Mixture: The device can extract and mix Palo Alto configurations, figuring out components like Entry Management guidelines, Community/Port objects, Interfaces, Routes, and Purposes.
  • Function Choice: You possibly can choose which elements of the configuration (e.g., Interfaces, Routes, Entry Management) emigrate.
  • Software Mapping: It’s essential to resolve any clean or invalid utility mappings. In some instances, you may want so as to add port-based equivalents if a direct utility mapping isn’t accessible. Assets like Cisco AppID and Palo Alto’s Applipedia might help.
  • Bulk Actions & Optimization: The device facilitates bulk actions and permits for ACL optimization, however keep in mind to pre-stage File and IPS insurance policies within the Cisco Firepower Administration Middle (FMC).

3. Palo Alto Configuration Limitations for Migration:

• • PAN-OS Model: The supply Palo Alto firewall have to be operating PAN-OS software program model 8.0 or greater for the migration device to operate appropriately.
  • VSYS Migration: The device helps migration of both single or multi-vsys configurations, that are usually merged with VRFs to attain segmentation in Cisco FTD.
  • System Configuration: Vital system configurations, resembling Platform Insurance policies (e.g., NTP, SSH entry) in FTD, are typically not migrated by the device and require guide setup.

4. Particular Challenges and Guide Configurations:

A number of components require guide consideration or have completely different implementations between the 2 platforms:

• NAT IP and Port Oversubscription: Palo Alto can deal with greater ranges of NAT oversubscription (e.g., 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x reuse of similar deal with/port). When migrating to Cisco, you usually want to extend the PAT pool measurement to accommodate this.
• URL Wildcards: Palo Alto makes use of characters like * or ^ for URL wildcards, whereas Cisco usually helps substring matching (e.g., cisco.com as a substitute of *.cisco.com). These want adjustment.
• Nested Object Teams: Community and port object teams nested deeper than 10 ranges will not be supported in Cisco FMC and can want flattening.
• Identification Realm/Lively Listing Integration: Whereas newer variations of the migration device (FMT 7.7+) help AD/Realm integration, you’ll usually must manually add id to relevant guidelines and pre-stage the Realm and AD configurations within the FMC.
• NAT Supply Substitute: Manually substitute NAT supply in Entry Management Coverage (ACP) guidelines with the NAT vacation spot (i.e., swap the translated deal with with the unique vacation spot).
• Unmigrated Objects Requiring Guide Configuration:
  • Time-based entry management guidelines.  Cisco doesn’t presently help time-based entry management guidelines.
  • Identification-based entry management guidelines: You’ll must explicitly affiliate id teams or particular person identities.
  • FQDN objects: Particularly these beginning with or containing particular characters. Wildcard FQDNs usually want alternative or updates.
  • URL Filtering Insurance policies: Add the respective classes as insurance policies utilizing URL filtering may not translate straight.
  • Software Mapping: If a rule in Palo Alto used “utility default” for service, it should seemingly be migrated as “any” service in Cisco, requiring guide refinement.  In some case we added port-based equivalents.

• • Negate Guidelines: Palo Alto’s “permit X however exclude Y” logic must be translated into specific “deny” guidelines in FTD.  Cisco doesn’t presently help negate guidelines.  This was achieved by merely implementing a ‘deny’ rule in FTD.
  • Dynamic Routing: Requires guide configuration.  This won’t be ported through the migration device.
  • Route Reflector: Add FTD as an eBGP peer manually.  Extra particularly, cisco doesn’t presently (as of this weblog posting) help iBGP route reflector configuration.  This was overcome by manually configuring a brand new eBGP autonomous quantity for the firewall.  This additionally required the extra configuration of ‘allow-as in’ as there have been cases the place route propagation hair pinned the firewall.

5. Partially Supported, Ignored, or Disabled Objects:

Bear in mind that sure configurations will not be totally supported or are ignored throughout migration:

• Administration Settings (like NTP, SSH entry).
• Syslog Dynamic Routing.
• Service Insurance policies (these usually translate to FlexConfig in FTD).
• Distant-Entry VPN reserved IP addresses (require workarounds through ISE or AD).
• Gadget-Particular Web site-to-Web site VPN configurations.
• Connection log settings.

By adhering to normal finest practices and understanding these particular variations when migrating from Palo Alto to Cisco Subsequent-Technology Firewalls, organizations can obtain a smoother, safer, and environment friendly transition.