Strata Cloud Manager (SCM)offers acloud-based unified managementplane for both NGFWs and Prisma Access, enabling consistent policy enforcement, simplified management, and AI-driven operational insights.
"Strata Cloud Manager provides a single interface for unified management of NGFWs and Prisma Access, leveraging AI to optimize security operations and streamline workflows." (Source: Strata Cloud Manager Overview) Unlike Panorama, which is an on-premises management solution, SCM delivers cloud-based, AI-driven capabilities for centralized oversight.

To fully manage a firewall from Strata Cloud Manager (SCM), it's essential to establish trust and ensure reliable connectivity:
Configure NTP and DNS servers
The firewall must have accurate time (NTP) and name resolution (DNS) to securely communicate with SCM and related cloud services.
"To ensure successful management, configure the firewall's NTP and DNS settings to synchronize time and resolve domain names such as stratacloudmanager.paloaltonetworks.com." (Source: SCM Onboarding Requirements) Install a device certificate A device certificate authenticates the firewall's identity when connecting to SCM.
"The device certificate authenticates the firewall to Palo Alto Networks cloud services, including SCM. It's a fundamental requirement to establish secure connectivity." (Source: Device Certificates) These steps ensuretrust, secure communication, and successful onboarding into SCM.

The SP3 architecture of Palo Alto NGFWs ensures that additional security services (CDSS) only cause a minor reduction in performance , as traffic is inspected once in a single pass.
"The single-pass parallel processing (SP3) architecture performs application identification and security enforcement simultaneously in one pass, resulting in only minor performance impacts when enabling multiple security services." (Source: SP3 Architecture) Unlike traditional multi-pass engines, SP3 architecture optimizes performance while delivering comprehensive security.

When usingAWS centralized deploymentsfor Cloud NGFW, the service deploys NGFW instances into selected VPCsas additional workloads to secure that traffic.
"In centralized deployments, Cloud NGFW instances are deployed as security appliances within the selected VPCs, ensuring consistent traffic inspection and protection." (Source: Cloud NGFW Deployment Models) This approach minimizes complexity and ensures direct security policy enforcement within AWS.