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Start guided practiceThe engineer-level PAN-OS exam: designing and deploying firewalls, Panorama-managed estates, high availability, advanced policy and decryption, and deep troubleshooting.
Palo Alto Networks does not publish numeric exam codes — PCNSE is the common abbreviation.
Palo Alto Networks Certified Network Security Engineer is Palo Alto Networks's professional-level cybersecurity certification, referred to across the industry by the shorthand PCNSE. The exam runs for 1 hour 20 minutes and presents up to 75 questions, with a pass mark of not published by Palo Alto Networks. It costs US$175 at the standard rate.
Palo Alto Networks publishes the syllabus as 5 weighted domains. Deploy and Configure carries the most weight at 23%, and the three largest domains together account for roughly 66% of the scored content — worth knowing before you decide where study time goes.
PCNSE leans hard on the PAN-OS packet processing order. Several questions can only be answered correctly if you can trace where in the flow a decision is made — before or after NAT, before or after policy lookup.
Confirm these details on the official Palo Alto Networks page before booking — vendors adjust format and pricing without notice.
Some forms include unscored trial questions
Standard rate, before local taxes
The published exam guide for PCNSE, in the vendor's own order.
01Plan and Design
16%02Deploy and Configure
23%03Operate and Optimise
20%04Troubleshoot
18%05Core Concepts
23%Three to five years of network security experience including hands-on PAN-OS.
Professional level — Advanced credentials covering design, scale and trade-off decisions.
Preview 25 supported questions before unlocking the 608-question PCNSE bank.
Community-contributedCompiled from publicly posted community exam discussions. Contributed by third parties rather than written here, so accuracy varies and most items carry no explanation. Progress and bookmarks stay in this browser.
Answer support: 456 explanations, 608 questions with candidate context and 483 questions with direct citations. Bank updated .
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Compiled from exam discussions posted publicly by other people on ExamTopics. Copyright in each contribution rests with its original author; it is reproduced here for study. Not verified by us — most items carry no explanation. To request removal, see our content policy.
Palo Alto Networks lists up to 75 questions, to be completed in 1 hour 20 minutes. Question counts can vary slightly between exam forms, and unscored trial questions are sometimes included.
Not published by Palo Alto Networks. Confirm the current figure on the official exam page before booking, as vendors adjust cut scores when an exam form is refreshed.
The standard price is US$175. Local pricing, taxes and any retake policy vary by region, so check the official page for the figure that applies to you.
Three to five years of network security experience including hands-on PAN-OS.
The exam guide covers Plan and Design, Deploy and Configure, Operate and Optimise, Troubleshoot and Core Concepts. The full weighted breakdown is listed above.
Yes — this exam has 608 practice questions available here, each with the correct answer marked. They are community-contributed, compiled from exam discussions posted publicly by other people rather than written here, and most do not carry an explanation.