What is good security engineer

mrugesh patel — Sun, 03 May 2026 21:50:43 +0000

One thing that quietly separates good Palo Alto firewall engineers from great ones:

They don’t think in IPs and ports first.
They think in applications and behavior.

It’s tempting—especially coming from traditional firewall backgrounds—to build rules like:

“Source → Destination → Port → Allow”

But Palo Alto gives you something far more powerful: App-ID.

And yet, many environments barely use it to its full potential.

Here’s the shift that changes everything:

Instead of asking:
“Which ports should I open?”

Start asking:
“What exact application behavior am I trying to allow?”

Why this matters:

🔹 Apps don’t always stay on fixed ports anymore
🔹 Shadow IT often hides in “allowed” traffic (like HTTPS)
🔹 Broad rules = invisible risk

A small but powerful habit:

➡️ Review your top “any-any” or overly broad rules
➡️ Replace just ONE of them with application-based control
➡️ Monitor the impact

You’ll be surprised how much visibility you gain instantly.

Most teams don’t have a visibility problem.
They have a precision problem.

And Palo Alto firewalls are built for precision—if you actually use them that way.

Curious—are you designing policies around ports… or around applications?

DEV Community: mrugesh patel