PCNSA Retired: Historical Blueprint and Next Steps

Historical PCNSA Scope

The Palo Alto Networks Certified Network Security Administrator certification was administered by Palo Alto Networks to validate administrative knowledge of next-generation firewalls. This exam retired on 2025-01-31, and Network Security Professional / Network Security Analyst / Next-Generation Firewall Engineer is the named replacement. The program covered device management, object maintenance, policy evaluation, traffic security, and user identification.

Who PCNSA Was For

Network administrators, security engineers, and support personnel who configure, manage, and maintain Palo Alto Networks next-generation firewalls should pursue the Network Security Professional / Network Security Analyst / Next-Generation Firewall Engineer successor path.

Skills You Should Be Ready to Demonstrate

• Device Management and Services
• Managing Objects
• Policy Evaluation and Management
• Securing Traffic
• Identifying Users and Devices

How to Reuse Your Preparation

To properly and carefully prepare for the replacement path, candidates should study official PAN-OS administration guides, review best practices for securing administrative access, explore core security concepts, and practice configuring features such as App-ID, User-ID, and device settings using next-generation firewalls during their routine study sessions.

Historical Domain Guide

Device Management and Services: Historical Scope

This domain specifically covers Device Management and Services, representing 21.0 percent of the evaluation, focusing heavily on initial configuration, administrative access settings, and maintenance tasks for next-generation firewalls deployed in enterprise network environments.

• Device management tasks
• Services configuration

Managing Objects: Historical Scope

This domain focuses explicitly on Managing Objects, accounting for 18.0 percent of the evaluation, centered around creating, organizing, and maintaining reusable network objects and security profiles required for standard operational firewall deployments.

• Object creation
• Object maintenance

Policy Evaluation and Management: Historical Scope

This domain addresses Policy Evaluation and Management in detail, making up 24.0 percent of the evaluation, involving the structuring, ordering, and optimization of security rules within the next-generation firewall administrative rulebase.

• Policy evaluation
• Rule management

Securing Traffic: Historical Scope

This domain centers on Securing Traffic, representing 22.0 percent of the evaluation, involving traffic inspection, security profiles, and threat prevention settings deployed on the firewall to protect enterprise network assets.

• Traffic security
• Threat prevention

Identifying Users and Devices: Historical Scope

This domain covers Identifying Users and Devices extensively, accounting for 15.0 percent of the evaluation, focusing on mapping network traffic to specific authenticated users and network endpoints across the entire infrastructure.

• User identification
• Device identification