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Migrating firewalls could be a complicated enterprise, usually involving intricate insurance policies, important functions, and the necessity for seamless transition. This publish 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-Era Firewalls.

Part 0: The Background

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

1. Lack of current-state documentation.
2. Lack of knowledge of present identification resolution. 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 knowledge of firewall historical past (i.e. WHY is there a firewall right here/what community segments want isolation).
4. Lack of knowledge/documentation of applications-and how/the place the firewall coverage helps the functions.
5. 24/7 setting: There is no such thing as a ‘after-hours’ so each migration effort required vital planning.

Part 1: Common Firewall Migration Greatest Practices

A profitable firewall migration hinges on meticulous planning, thorough execution, and diligent post-migration actions.  There is no such thing as a device that may substitute good practices and this part’s intent is to arrange 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 present 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?  An excellent finest follow is to make this one thing the shopper is liable for.  Like transferring, you possibly can’t declutter indefinitely, so guarantee there’s a timeline to which the shopper is held accountable to.
• Change Administration: Ideally, implement a configuration freeze on the supply firewall. If not potential, set up sturdy change monitoring to duplicate any new guidelines or modifications throughout each the outdated and new firewalls.
• Stakeholder Engagement: Determine 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 aims.
  • 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 check plan itself. Guarantee it covers all important functionalities and edge circumstances.
  • 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 Crucial Site visitors: Develop pre-filters or ‘fastpath’ guidelines for important functions to make sure their efficiency isn’t impacted.
• Pre-stage Monitoring Instruments: Put together customized searches and packet captures prematurely to shortly diagnose points throughout the migration.
• On-Name Assist: Have utility testers and house owners available or on a devoted name throughout the migration window.  Necessary word: These MAY NOT be the identical folks.  Typically, we got testers, who lacked any understanding of how the applying labored.  Guarantee it’s effectively 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 studies 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 replicate the brand new firewall configuration.
• Steady Monitoring: Implement sturdy monitoring to trace efficiency, safety occasions, and potential anomalies.
• Coaching and Assist: Educate your operations workforce on the brand new platform and its administration.
• Ongoing Optimization: Firewall insurance policies usually are not static. Usually overview and optimize guidelines to keep up effectivity and safety posture.

Finish-to-Finish Migration Process (Common 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, 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 extra guide objects.

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

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

1. Identification Coexistence Throughout Migration:

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

• The Downside: Cisco wants to concentrate on user-to-IP mappings that Palo Alto’s Consumer-ID brokers or VPN gateways already know. With out this, site visitors from recognized customers may be denied by the Cisco firewall as a result of it lacks the required context.
• Options Explored:
  • Devoted ISE-PIC Deployment: Whereas tried, utilizing an present ISE deployment for this goal might 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 includes 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 will help each platforms collect identification info.

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

Ought to customers be coming from on-premise (passive authentication) or by way of 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 Heart 7.6, the passive ID performance is on the market immediately 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 essential.

• • Extraction & Mixture: The device can extract and mix Palo Alto configurations, figuring out components like Entry Management guidelines, Community/Port objects, Interfaces, Routes, and Functions.
  • Function Choice: You’ll be able to 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 accessible. Assets like Cisco AppID and Palo Alto’s Applipedia will help.
  • Bulk Actions & Optimization: The device 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 Heart (FMC).

3. Palo Alto Configuration Limitations for Migration:

• • PAN-OS Model: The supply Palo Alto firewall should be operating PAN-OS software program model 8.0 or larger for the migration device to perform appropriately.
  • VSYS Migration: The device helps migration of both single or multi-vsys configurations, that are sometimes merged with VRFs to realize segmentation in Cisco FTD.
  • System Configuration: Crucial system configurations, comparable to 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 Handbook Configurations:

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

• NAT IP and Port Oversubscription: Palo Alto can deal with larger ranges of NAT oversubscription (e.g., 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x reuse of similar 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 usually are not 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 identification 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 handle with the unique vacation spot).
• Unmigrated Objects Requiring Handbook Configuration:
  • Time-based entry management guidelines.  Cisco doesn’t at the moment help time-based entry management guidelines.
  • Identification-based entry management guidelines: You’ll must explicitly affiliate identification 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 immediately.
  • Software Mapping: If a rule in Palo Alto used “utility default” for service, it can possible 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 express “deny” guidelines in FTD.  Cisco doesn’t at the moment help negate guidelines.  This was achieved by merely implementing a ‘deny’ rule in FTD.
  • Dynamic Routing: Requires guide configuration.  This won’t be ported by way of the migration device.
  • Route Reflector: Add FTD as an eBGP peer manually.  Extra particularly, cisco doesn’t at the moment (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 usually are not 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 by way of ISE or AD).
• Machine-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-Era Firewalls, organizations can obtain a smoother, safer, and environment friendly transition.