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Frequently Asked Questions

Why use Splunk with my Palo Alto Networks products?​

Palo Alto Networks products provide exceptional levels of visibility into network traffic and malicious activity, both in the network and on the endpoint. Combining this visibility with Splunk allows a customer to make correlations and perform analytics around different kinds of data. These correlations can be between different kinds of Palo Alto Networks data, for example, correlating WildFire reports against traffic logs to detect infected hosts, or correlating firewall logs with endpoint logs. But the real power of Splunk is correlations and analytics across multiple sources of data and multiple vendors, for example, correlating firewall logs with webserver logs, or advanced endpoint security logs with Windows event logs.

Why use Palo Alto Networks with my Splunk?​

Splunk has unmatched ability to consume and analyze data, but for Splunk to present usable and actionable insights, it must have the highest level of visibility and knowledge possible. Palo Alto Networks provides that level of visibility into the network and the endpoint to detect and even predict malicious activity. When an indicator of compromise is detected, Palo Alto Networks and Splunk work together to take action and remediate problems automatically to keep the network secure.

What can the Palo Alto Networks Splunk App do?​

The Splunk for Palo Alto Networks app is one of the most downloaded apps for Splunk and is completely free. Splunk apps tell Splunk how to handle data and come with dashboards that display visualizations and analysis of the data. The Splunk for Palo Alto Networks app brings in syslogs from firewalls, Panorama, and Traps Endpoint Security Manager and makes the data easily searchable, analyzes the data with correlations, and displays the data including any anomalies visually. When actionable alerts are produced, Splunk can take action by leveraging the firewall and Panorama APIs to add context that the firewall uses to prevent targeted threats.

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What kinds of data does the app take in?​

The Splunk for Palo Alto Networks app accepts syslogs from Firewalls, Panorama, and Endpoint Security Manager. Also, WildFire malware reports are pulled from the WildFire portal as XML. These reports represent a behavioral fingerprint of any malware detected by WildFire which you can correlate against other logs to detect indicators of compromise.

Does the app have a Data Model?​

Yes! In Splunk 6.x, the data model feature allows Splunk users to quickly visualize and analyze data with a point-and-click interface (instead of the Splunk searchbar language). This capability requires that the data be modeled into a Splunk Data Model which is a highly accelerated summary index of the data. Not only is there a data model for all Palo Alto Networks logs, all the app's dashboards are based on this accelerated data model for extremely fast data retrieval and visualization. So the app itself is using the same Data Model that Splunk administrators would use to generate visualizations.

Does the app conform to the Common Information Model?​

Yes! The Common Information Model (CIM) is a set of standards and an app that help other apps conform to a common naming and tagging scheme. This allows Splunk users to search for data across multiple kinds of logs from multiple vendors using the same field names to access the data, which eases correlations across different kinds of data. For example, a Splunk user could correlate between firewall logs and webserver logs. The Splunk for Palo Alto Networks app conforms strictly to the Common Information Model.

Does the app work with the Splunk Enterprise Security app?​

Yes! The Splunk Enterprise Security app (or "ES"), is a set of security log parsers and security related dashboards that conform to the Common Information Model. The Enterprise Security app contains a TA (parsers) for Palo Alto Networks firewall logs. The Splunk for Palo Alto Networks app and Enterprise Security app can be used individually, or together. The Palo Alto Networks Add-on 3.7 supports the new Adaptive Response capabilities of Splunk Enterprise Security.

I use Splunk ES with the Palo Alto Add-on (TA), why use the App?​

The Palo Alto Networks App offers significant additional benefits including:

  • Take immediate action to stop threats with [automated remediation](/adaptive-response.
  • Sync user logins from authentication logs to User-ID
  • Update content pack metadata for apps and threats
  • Datamodel with Pivots for easy access to data and visualizations
  • Macros for easy access to logs
  • Dashboards to track SaaS application usage, user activity, system health, configuration changes for audits, Wildfire malware, and other Palo Alto Networks specific features.

My question isn't answered here, how do I get answers?​

Here are a few ways to get your questions answered. Search for answers in this order: