Palo Alto Networks Network Security Architect ... Passed

Palo Alto Networks has reworked their certification program to be more "role" based.

You can find all the new certifications here.

So you have a track for each main Palo Alto Networks products portfolio:
- Security Operation oriented with Cortex products

- Cloud Security oriented with Prisma Cloud products

- Network Security oriented with Strata products

I took the NetSec NGFW Engineer and the NetSec Analyst, which were more or less covering the PCNSE (Palo Alto Networks certified Networks Security Engineer) earlier this year.

So I wanted to test the NetSec Architect exam, released last October (announcement here).

... and I got a PASS.

Although during the exam, I was not confident until the last question.

This exam is totally different than the NetSec NGFW Engineer and Analyst, it is more "design" oriented in my opinion. Also, a simple NGFW day to day job would not be enough: an understanding of the big picture of the SASE architecture, and how every product fits into this architecture is required.

For the preparation ... just my day to day work in TAC, which let's me honest lack of Prisma Access / Prisma SDWAN experience. 

Positive point: I attended a workshop on Prisma AIRS - runtime protection, the exam requires the candidate to understand the use case of Prisma AIRS vs AI Access, and it helped me in the exam.

Anyway, if I have to prepare it correctly, I would say you need a correct understanding of the different technologies involved in SASE.