Kentik now supports the full set of fields from the NetFlow Templates that are supported by Palo Alto Networks firewalls. This first phase of our PAN integration adds huge value for Kentik customers who use PAN firewalls, providing single-pane-of-glass network visibility that now includes firewall policies and events. Beyond standard flow-record fields such as IPs, protocols, and interfaces, you’ll also now have visibility into data including user IDs, application names, and more.

You can see this new functionality in Kentik Detect’s Data Explorer. First, make sure that your PAN firewall is included in the devices selected in the Devices pane in the Explorer sidebar (shown at right). Then click on the Group-by Dimensions selector in the Query pane to open the Group-by Dimensions dialog. Scrolling down, you’ll now find (as shown below) a dimension category for Palo Alto Networks Firewall. Available PAN dimensions include:

• Source Dimensions: Post-NAT Transport Port, Post-NAT Address
• Destination Dimensions: Post-NAT Transport Port, Post-NAT Address
• Non-Directional Dimensions: ICMP Type, Flow ID, Application ID, User ID, Firewall Event, Direction

Once you select the dimensions of interest, you can order them as you like and run the query. Moreover, you can combine other data (i.e. Geo) and filter on specific firewall events to answer questions like, “Is this a region-specific problem or a general problem?” The following screenshot, for example, shows a Geo HeatMap chart of traffic filtered by a Firewall Event value of Flow Denied (the filter setting is shown in the overlaid inset).

Bringing PAN firewall events into Kentik Detect flow records empowers enterprise network teams with application visibility and enables additional security use cases, such as:

• Forensic investigation of current and past threat activity.
• Real-time verification that firewall policies are not over-or under-blocking applications.
• Cross-correlation between source countries and firewall events with a map view.

We’ll continue executing additional phases of integration, aiming for the best user experience (e.g. UI improvement and alerting integration). For more information, please see the Kentik Knowledge Base topic on Palo Alto Networks Firewall dimensions, or contact our Customer Success team.