Palo Alto Networks Firewall Training Course Lab

Working with the TechNow lab for the PA-215: Palo Alto Networks Firewall Essentials FastTrack course has been nothing less than a techie's idea of fun.  When students come in we are immediatly configuring the Cisco 3750 switches for access ports, VLANS, and trunks.  We then cable the switch to the Palo Alto Networks Firewall.  Each student gets their own Palo Alto Firewall Pod of hardware and software.  What we find as fun is the VLAN environment, with an array of virtual machines hosted on an ESXi server that can really exercise the abilities of the Palo Alto Firewall.  The DMZ VLAN hosts virtual machines that support enterprise services and also potentialy vulnerable web services.  The Trust VLAN has Windows and Linux clients.  The UnTrust VLAN has Web services and a VM of Kali. The hardware Firewall is additionally connected to a Management VLAN.  All those VLANs are trunked into an ESXi server where the student also has a VM-Series Palo Alto Networks Firewall for High Availability.  

After configuring all the trunking, VLANs, and network interfaces we learn about the firewall and configure it for the lab environment.  Using Metasploitable and Kali/Metasploit nefarious penetration attempts are executed.  Using packet captures, custom APP-ID's  and custom signatures are generated.  Custom logging and reporting are created to similate and enterprise and assist the desired Incident Response.  It is always fun in a training environment to learn all about the controls available in a product, even though specific controls may not be used in the operational environment.  In the end we have a good understanding of the Palo Alto Networks Firewall.

L-395: Accelerated Linux Administration and Utilities

Course Overview:

This course is extremely fast paced and for students that have already had UNIX or Linux training, or have not worked with Linux in several months or years.  This is NOT a course for students new to Linux and assumes the student requires a refresher before progressing through high end security courses that require dexterity on Linux.  RedHat and Ubuntu, VMware Virtual Machines, and BackTrack are used for the instruction of this course.  The student will acquire the skills to easily navigate the advanced VMware training environment and will be able to create scripts to manipulate and manage Linux.  The ulimate goals of the skills of this course is to provide the student the ability to automate through scripting BackTrack tools for offensive security, forensics, and defense.

Attendees to L-395: Accelerated Linux Administration and Utilities will receive TechNow approved course materials and expert instruction.

Date/Locations:

No Events

Duration: 5 days

Course Objectives:

Day 1 and 2: Unix Review and Unix  Utilities

  • Linux File System Archictecure and In-Depth discussion of Hard and Soft Links
  • Linux File, Directory, and Permissions Management
  • Linux  archives using tar and zip
  • Interacting with BASH
  • Review of Common Linux commands
  • Sorting files by line or field
  • Regular Expressions (meta character) with grep commands to locate specific lines in files
  • Grep, egrep extended metacharacters, combinations-lab advanced combinations- lab Sed
  • Basic commands- Lab, Advanced commands- Lab, Advanced scripting -Lab
  • Miscellaneous commands Tr, sort, cut, past, pr -Lab
  • Performing non-interactive editing tasks with the sed command
  • Writing simple sed scripts to perform complex editing tasks
  • Using awk variables & arrays to sort data
  • Employing awk programs to manipulate numeric & textual data
  • Performing formatted printing in awk
  • Writing simple awk programs to write reports from data files
  • Using built-in awk functions & defining new functions
  • Write awk programs that make decisions based on numeric or string comparisons (branches & loops)
 
Day 3 – Intro to Programming / Shell Scripting
  • Shell Review
  • Shell Interpretation of Quotes & Backslash
  • The Bash Shell
  • Shell's combined with UNIX utilities
  • Programming Basics
  • Data Constructs
  • Programming Looping
  • Your Environment
  • More on Parameters

Day 4 and 5 – Security Fundamentals, Linux Administration

  • System Configuration / Kernel overview 
  • System Maintenance / Disk and file admin
  • Using utilities for process control, locating files & automating maintenance tasks
  • System Startup / Boot Process – LILO & GRUB Configuration
  • Managing the Linux file system
  • Customization of setup files
  • Run Levels
  • Network Services / Configuration
  • User Management Monitoring, accessing & restricting root system access
  • Administration Tools
  • Process Control
  • Client side components of NFS, Samba, NTP, NIS
  • Server side components such as DHCP, Samba, NIS, LDAP, inet, telnet, ftp, DNS, etc.

Prerequisites:

  • Prior UNIX/Linux experience or training

Comments

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User: mikenaya

Instructor comments: As usual, Dave was excellent and the content was very relevant to our line of work.

Facilities comments: The hotel facilities met our basic needs but it was awkward having a bathroom so close. I can't wait for the new facility to open.

User: fquinene

Instructor comments: Instructor was super knowledgeable and helped me tie in a lot of information from other OS and processes.

Facilities comments: Facility was fine

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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.
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PM-224: PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)® Prep Course

Course Overview:

This course is developed for those individuals seeking to pass the Project Management Institute’s PMI-ACP Exam. PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)® is one of the newest certifications offered by PMI and is expected to become the industry standard certification for agile over the next few years. The PMI-ACP® certification clearly illustrates to colleagues, organizations or even potential employers that students are ready and able to lead in this new age of product development, management, and delivery.

While preparing you for the exam, you will explore various approaches to agility including Scrum, Kanban, Lean, Extreme Programming (XP), and Test-Driven Development (TDD). By the end of the course, you’ll have mastered the practices and techniques that Agile practitioners use to improve team performance, resolve problems and engage in continuous process improvements and be equipped with job-ready skills.

This course provides students with 21 contact hours in agile practices to help attain the Project Management Institute (PMI)® credential.  PMI® and PMI-ACP® are registered marks of the Project Management Institute, Inc.

Attendees to PM-224: PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) Prep Course will receive TechNow approved course materials and expert instruction.

Dates/Locations:

Date/Time Event
11/17/2025 - 11/19/2025
08:00 -16:00 		PM-224: PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)® Prep Course
TechNow, Inc, San Antonio TX

Duration: 4 Days

Course Objectives:

  • Agile Principles and Mindset
  • Value-driven delivery
  • Stakeholder engagement
  • Team performance
  • Adaptive planning
  • Problem detection and Resolution
  • Continuous Improvement

Prerequisites:

  • Secondary degree
  • 21 contact hours of training in agile practices
  • 12 months of general project experience within the last 5 years. A current PMP® or PgMP® will satisfy this requirement but is not required to apply for the PMI-ACP
  • 8 months of agile project experience within the last 3 years

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