Observations of Instructor Led Training with Real Hardware

TechNow has heard many students talk about virtualized/remote training that TechNow Does Not Do. While training our most recent offering of PA-215: Palo Alto Networks Firewall Essentials FastTrack a student told his story of how he endend up in our course. His story we have heard for other technologies like Cisco, VMware, BlueCoat and other products.

A large percentage of training is moving to the virtualized/remote lab environments. Students are asked to use some variant of remote access software and remote into the training company's lab environment. Our student in our Palo Alto Networks Firewall course informed us that he went to a very costly offering of that course from the vendor and was not able to perform any labs. There were either network connectivity issues, or issues with the remote access software, or other problems. The whole training experience was very frustrating and not productive.

We keep our labs open to students if they would like after hours, or before hours access. Repeatedly going through a lab engrains that knowledge for later recall. Touching hardware is so critical in understanding the problems that arise when a cable comes loose, or a cable gets plugged in the wrong port. There are other scenarios such as just pulling the power cable, or turning off a power strip, or accidently overwriting a configuration. These disaster scenarious requires hands-on physical access to hardware. Preventing and recovering from disasters is what it's all about, and that requires hands-on, instructor led, real hardware.

Palo Alto Networks

TechNow has been involved in enterprise security architectures and education since 1990. TechNow’s training program has followed the evolution of enterprise computing into security architectures. Palo Alto Networks represents the current state of security product evolution. With next generation firewall technology, the reunification of your security architecture is possible. TechNow can present the ramifications of many centralized strategies. All courses utilize enterprise security professionals with experience as instructors and can discuss the detail of implementation and the integration into an existing infrastructure.

Palo Alto Networks Certifications: Accredited Configuration Engineer (ACE) take EDU-201; Palo Alto Networks Certified Network Security Engineer (PCNSE) take EDU-201 + EDU-205 + EDU-221

TechNow is a mobile Pearson VUE Authorized Testing Center. Palo Alto courses can be delivered on the customer site, with certificadtion testing on the last day of the course. Take the course and get certfied, without logistical effort of getting students to a training facility and the hassle of scheduling testing.

TechNow, Inc. is not associated in any way with Palo Alto Networks, Inc.

N-485: In-Depth Securing Networks with Cisco Firepower Threat Defense NGFW

Course Overview:

An in-depth course on how to use and configure Cisco Firepower Threat Defense technology, from device setup and configuration and including routing, high availability, Firepower Threat Defense migration, traffic control, and Network Address Translation (NAT). Students implement advanced Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) and Next Generation Intrusion Prevention System (NGIPS) features, including network intelligence, file type detection, network based malware detection, and deep packet inspection.
Students will also learn how to configure site to site VPN, remote access VPN, and SSL decryption before moving on to detailed analysis, system administration, and troubleshooting. This course combines lecture materials and hands on labs throughout to make sure that students are able to successfully deploy and manage the Cisco Firepower system.

It is a five-day instructor-led course that is aimed at providing network security engineers with the knowledge and skills that are needed to implement and maintain perimeter solutions that are based on Cisco Firepower security appliances. At the end of the course, students will be able to reduce risk to their IT infrastructure and applications using Cisco Firepower security appliance features, and provide detailed operations support for the Firepower appliance.

Attendees to N-485: In-Depth Securing Networks with Cisco Firepower Threat Defense NGFW will receive TechNow approved course materials and expert instruction.

Date/Locations:

No Events

Duration: 5 days

Course Objectives:

Understand Sourcefire, Firepower 6.2, FireAMP, and Firepower Threat Defense (FTD)
Configure the Firepower Management Center (FMC)
Raise you confidence managing the Firepower Manager and Firepower tThreat Defense (FTD)
Describe the Cisco Firepower Systems infrastructure
Navigate the user interface and administrative features of the Cisco Firepower 6.2 system, including advanced analysis and reporting functionality to properly assess threats
Describe the System Configuration and Health policies and implement them
Describe the role Network Discovery (Firepower) technology plays in the Cisco devices
Describe, create, and implement objects for use in Access Control policies
Create DNS and URL policies and configure Sinkholes
Configure FTD policies such as Platform, Routing, Interface, Zones, PreFilter, QoS, NAT and Flex Config!
Describe advanced policy configuration and Firepower system configuration options
Configure Malware Policies to find and stop Malware
Understand Security Intelligence, and how to configure SI to stop attacks NOW!
Configure policies to find and stop Ransomware
Understand how to fine tune IPS policies
Understand how to find tun Snort Preprocessor policies (NAP)
Configure Correlation events, white rules, traffic profiles and create respective events and remediate them
Analyze events
Create reporting templates and schedule them
Configure backups, rule updates, Firepower Recommendations, URL updates, and more to run every week automatically
Set up external authentication for users using LDAP/Realms
Configuring system integration, realms, and identity sources
Configure FMC domains and implement them
Configure FTD HA with two FTD devices
SSL Policy – decrypt your traffic
AnyConnect and Site-to-Site VPN
Understand network and host based AMP. Configure and analyze host based AMP
Understand Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE)
Configure ISE and integrate with Cisco FMC identity policy using PxGrid

Prerequisites:

Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) certification. or equivalent
Cisco Certified Network Associate Security (CCNA Security) certification. or equivalent
Working knowledge of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Comments

Latest comments from students

Liked the class? Then let everyone know!

Courses Similar to SANS

TechNow is in no way associated with SANS or GIAC, but has courses that are similar in subject matter:

TN-949: Certified Firewall Analyst Course

Course Overview:

This is a hands-on course that covers many of the concepts of securing the perimeter of an organization. This includes concepts such as intrusion detection, packet filtering, and central logging.

A skills focus enables the student to better absorb the subject matter and perform better on the job. This is not death by power point. The course is aligned with information assurance operators and executing hands-on labs. Lecture and labs walk the student through the knowledge required to truly understand the mechanics of Firewalls.

This course is an excellent precursor to PA-215 Palo Alto Firewall Essentials FastTrack.

Attendees to TN-949: Certified Firewall Analyst Prep will receive TechNow approved course materials and expert instruction.