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.

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.

N-315: Cisco Secure Virtual Private Networks

Course Overview:

This course is designed for students who intend to work with virtual private networks (VPNs) using IPSec. The course includes detailed coverage of the VPN 3000 Concentrator, a scalable remote access platform that offers encryption, high availability, and superior performance. This class is an invaluable theory and configuration guide for the VPN 3000 series of products, with its thorough coverage of concentrators, hardware clients, and software clients.

Attendees to N-315: Cisco Secure Virtual Private Networks will receive TechNow approved course materials and expert instruction.

Dates/Locations:

No Events

Duration: 5 days

Course Objectives:

  • Network Security & Virtual Private Network Technologies Cisco VPN 3000 Concentrator Series Hardware Overview
  • Routing on the VPN 3000
  • Configuring the Cisco VPN 3000 for Remote Access Using Pre-shared Keys
  • Configuring the Cisco VPN 3000 for Remote Access Using Digital Certificates
  • The Cisco VPN Client Firewall Feature
  • Configuring the Cisco 3002 Hardware Client for Remote Access
  • Configuring the Cisco 3002 Hardware Client for User & Unit Authentication
  • Configuring Cisco VPN Clients for Backup Server, Load Balancing & Reverse Route Injection
  • Configuring the Cisco 3000 Concentrator for IPSec over TCP & UDP
  • Configuring LAN-to-LAN VPNs on the Cisco 3000
  • Network Monitoring & Administration Troubleshooting

Prerequisites:

  • Students who attend this advanced course must have experience in configuring Cisco IOS software
  • CCNA certification
  • Basic knowledge of the Windows operations system
  • Familiarity with the networking & security terms & concepts

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TN-345: Python for Penetration Testers

 

Course Overview:

 

This Python for Penetration Testing course is designed to give you the skills you need for maintaining or developing Python Penetration Testing tools oriented towards offensive operations.  We have a suite of courses and certifications that help  understand a problem, this course prepares the student to rapidly develop prototype code to attack or defend against it.

The course concludes with a Capture the Flag event that will test both your ability to apply your new tools and coding skills in a Python Penetration Testing challenge.

This course is not intended to be an Advanced Python course, but to exemplify penetration techniques utilizing Python.  The course covers Threading, Sockets, OOP, and third party modules that facilitate the offensive operator’s objective.

This course utilizes the “Violent Python” text book.

Attendees to TN-345: Python for Penetration Testers Class will receive TechNow approved course materials and expert instruction.

Dates/Locations:

No Events

Duration: 3 Days

Course Objectives:

  • Python Lanuage Refress
  • Network Sockets
  • Exception Handling
  • Hashes and Cracking Passwords
  • Threading
    • Concepts and Python Implementation
    • Queues and Synchronization
    • urlparse and httplib to probe URLs
    • Crack a password protected zip file
  • Port Scanner
    • Threading a Port Scanner
  • nmap integration
  • Deploying shellcode
  • Mechanize, BeautifulSoup
    • HTTP Form Password Guessing
    • HTTP Proxies (Burp Suite)
    • HTTP Cookies Session Hijacking
      • CookieMonster
  • Images and Metadata
  • Justniffer
  • SQL Injection
    • sqlmap
    • SQLBrute
  • Antivirus and IDS evasion
    • PyInstaller
    • Metasploit
  • Scapy
    • Deploy shellcode
    • DNS Cache Poisoning
    • Packety Violence

Prerequisites:

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TN-813: Certified in Governance, Risk and Compliance (CGRC)

 

Course Overview:

TN-813: Certified in Governance, Risk, and Compliance (CGRC) course is for the (ISC)²® Certified in Governance, Risk, and Compliance (CGRC) credential previously known as Certified Authorization Professional (CAP). This course walks the student through the Risk Management Framework following practices the NIST pubs. CGRC is an objective measure of the knowledge, skills and abilities required for personnel involved in the process of certifying and accrediting security of information systems. Specifically, this credential applies to those responsible for formalizing processes used to assess risk and establish security requirements. Their decisions will ensure that information systems possess security commensurate with the level of exposure to potential risk, as well as damage to assets or individuals.The CGRC credential is appropriate for civilian, state and local governments in the U.S., as well as commercial markets. CGRC certification applies to job functions such as authorization officials, system owners, information owners, information system security officers, and certifiers.  CGRC is crucial to the Management staff.

This course is the “why” of the entire security field. It provides a logical way of allocating resources where there is greatest risk and why we make the decisions we make in the field of security. It is TechNow’s view that of all the security courses we have seen, this course genuinely puts the “big picture” of security in front of the students. Students actually come to an understanding of truly what is critical to security of an enterprise versus a bunch of nuts and bolts of security.

TechNow’s CGRC course covers all of the (ISC)²® CGRC 7 Knowledge domains:

  • Security and Privacy Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance Program
  • Scope of the System
  • Selection and Approval of Framework, Security, and Privacy Controls
  • Implementation of Security and Privacy Controls
  • Assessment/ Audit of Security and Privacy Controls
  • System Compliance
  • Compliance Maintenance

RMF Related Steps

  • Prepare – Process Initiation
  • Categorize Information Systems
  • Establish the Security Control Baseline
  • Apply Security Controls
  • Assess Security Controls
  • Authorize Information System
  • Monitor Security Controls

TechNow’s CGRC Instructors have extensive knowledge and experience in the field, and have been working with organizations to build assessor teams for over 20 years.

Attendees to TN-813: Certified in Governance, Risk, and Compliance (CGRC) will receive TechNow authorized training materials, including access to the documentation of the CGRC Exam domains, and expert instruction.

Dates/Locations:

Date/Time Event
05/26/2026 - 05/29/2026
08:00 -16:00 		TN-813: Certified in Governance, Risk and Compliance (CGRC)</a>
TechNow, Inc, San Antonio TX
09/08/2026 - 09/11/2026
08:00 -16:00 		TN-813: Certified in Governance, Risk and Compliance (CGRC)
TechNow, Inc, San Antonio TX

Duration: 3 Days

Course Objectives:

  • Initiate the Preparation Phase
  • Perform Execution Phase
  • Perform Maintenance Phase
  • Understand the Purpose of Security Authorization

Prerequisites:

  • IT Security
  • Information Assurance
  • Information Risk Management certification and systems administration
  • 1-2 years of general experience technical experience
  • 2 years of general systems experience
  • 1-2 years of Database/Systems Development/Network Experience
  • Information Security Policy Experience

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