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

Migrating firewalls could be a complicated enterprise, 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 concerns 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 resolution primarily based on elevated costs by PAN.  In contrast to many firewall migration initiatives CX helps, this engagement had the next complicating elements:

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 have to 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 surroundings: There isn’t any ‘after-hours’ so each migration effort required important planning.

Part 1: Basic Firewall Migration Greatest Practices

A profitable firewall migration hinges on meticulous planning, thorough execution, and diligent post-migration actions.  There isn’t any software that may exchange good practices and this part’s intent is to organize an engineer with abilities 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 present firewall. This contains 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 great finest follow is to make this one thing the client is chargeable for.  Like transferring, you’ll be able to’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 attainable, set up sturdy change monitoring to copy any new guidelines or modifications throughout each the previous 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 Technique of Process (MOP): Define each step, together with whether or not you’ll carry out a ‘onerous’ cutover or an incremental/phased migration. Embrace clear time goals.
  • Conduct Peer Critiques: Have a number of eyes in your MOP and configurations.
  • Create a Thorough Check Plan: This isn’t nearly testing functions; it’s about testing your take a look at plan itself. Guarantee it covers all vital functionalities and edge circumstances.
  • Design a Rollback Plan: All the time have a transparent technique to revert to the earlier state if points come up.

2. Flawless Migration Execution:

• Conduct a ‘Dry-Run’: If attainable, simulate the migration in a take a look at surroundings to establish potential points earlier than the precise cutover.
• Validate ARP Tables: Examine ARP tables each earlier than and after the migration to make sure correct community connectivity.
• Optimize Important Site 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 prematurely to rapidly diagnose points in the course of the migration.
• On-Name Help: Have utility testers and homeowners available or on a devoted name in the course of the migration window.  Necessary notice: These MAY NOT be the identical individuals.  Usually, we got testers, who lacked any understanding of how the appliance 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. Put up-Migration Actions for Stability & Optimization:

• Evaluation Put up-Migration Stories: Totally analyze any reviews generated by migration instruments to establish and handle 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 sturdy monitoring to trace efficiency, safety occasions, and potential anomalies.
• Coaching and Help: Educate your operations group on the brand new platform and its administration.
• Ongoing Optimization: Firewall insurance policies aren’t static. Usually overview and optimize guidelines to take care of effectivity and safety posture.

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

1. Obtain and launch the migration software.
2. Export the supply firewall’s configuration file.
3. Evaluation 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, overview, and validate the migrated configuration.
8. Push the migrated configuration to the brand new firewall’s administration heart (e.g., FMC).
9. Deploy the configuration to the firewall.
10. Obtain and overview the post-migration report.
11. Configure any further handbook 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, significantly regarding id integration, coverage conversion, and platform-specific capabilities.

1. Identification Coexistence Throughout Migration:

A big problem is making certain consumer id mappings (e.g., “Lisa is 10.14.10.7”) are constant throughout each Palo Alto and Cisco firewalls in the course of 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 perhaps denied by the Cisco firewall as a result of it lacks the mandatory context.
• Options Explored:
  • Devoted ISE-PIC Deployment: Whereas tried, utilizing an present ISE deployment for this objective will be problematic, particularly since PassiveID is incompatible with 802.1x Machine Authentication. Observe: ISE-PIC has reached Finish-of-Life.
  • Syslog Forwarding: A viable technique includes configuring the Palo Alto VPN firewall to ahead Syslog messages containing user-to-IP mappings to Cisco ISE.
  • Energetic Listing Brokers: Deploying brokers on Energetic 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 had been capable of 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 may have a user->IP mapping to ensure 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 Instrument:

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

• • Extraction & Mixture: The software can extract and mix Palo Alto configurations, figuring out parts like Entry Management guidelines, Community/Port objects, Interfaces, Routes, and Functions.
  • Function Choice: You possibly can choose which parts 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 circumstances, you may want so as to add port-based equivalents if a direct utility mapping isn’t obtainable. Assets like Cisco AppID and Palo Alto’s Applipedia might help.
  • Bulk Actions & Optimization: The software facilitates bulk actions and permits for ACL optimization, however bear 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 should be working PAN-OS software program model 8.0 or increased for the migration software to perform accurately.
  • VSYS Migration: The software helps migration of both single or multi-vsys configurations, that are sometimes merged with VRFs to attain segmentation in Cisco FTD.
  • System Configuration: Important system configurations, comparable to Platform Insurance policies (e.g., NTP, SSH entry) in FTD, are typically not migrated by the software and require handbook setup.

4. Particular Challenges and Guide Configurations:

A number of parts require handbook consideration or have totally different implementations between the 2 platforms:

• NAT IP and Port Oversubscription: Palo Alto can deal with increased ranges of NAT oversubscription (e.g., 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x reuse of identical handle/port). When migrating to Cisco, you usually want to extend the PAT pool dimension to accommodate this.
• URL Wildcards: Palo Alto makes use of characters like * or ^ for URL wildcards, whereas Cisco sometimes helps substring matching (e.g., cisco.com as an alternative of *.cisco.com). These want adjustment.
• Nested Object Teams: Community and port object teams nested deeper than 10 ranges aren’t supported in Cisco FMC and can want flattening.
• Identification Realm/Energetic Listing Integration: Whereas newer variations of the migration software (FMT 7.7+) help AD/Realm integration, you’ll usually have to manually add id to relevant guidelines and pre-stage the Realm and AD configurations within the FMC.
• NAT Supply Substitute: Manually exchange NAT supply in Entry Management Coverage (ACP) guidelines with the NAT vacation spot (i.e., swap the translated handle with the unique vacation spot).
• Unmigrated Objects Requiring Guide Configuration:
  • Time-based entry management guidelines.  Cisco doesn’t at present help time-based entry management guidelines.
  • Identification-based entry management guidelines: You’ll have to 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 would probably be migrated as “any” service in Cisco, requiring handbook refinement.  In some case we added port-based equivalents.

• • Negate Guidelines: Palo Alto’s “enable X however exclude Y” logic must be translated into express “deny” guidelines in FTD.  Cisco doesn’t at present help negate guidelines.  This was completed by merely implementing a ‘deny’ rule in FTD.
  • Dynamic Routing: Requires handbook configuration.  This won’t be ported through the migration software.
  • Route Reflector: Add FTD as an eBGP peer manually.  Extra particularly, cisco doesn’t at present (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:

Remember that sure configurations aren’t 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).
• System-Particular Website-to-Website 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.