AI Agent for Firewall Rulebase Audit
Build an automated workflow to audit Palo Alto firewall rules, enrich them with real-time usage data, and generate insightful security reports using n8n and AI.
Overview
This project guides you through building an automated workflow in n8n that performs a comprehensive audit of Palo Alto firewall security rules. The workflow begins by fetching all security rules and network address objects via the firewall's API. It then executes a Python script to gather rule usage statistics, such as hit counts and last-hit timestamps.
This data is merged and processed, resolving address objects to their corresponding IP addresses to enrich the rule information. Finally, an AI agent analyzes each enriched rule to identify potential risks, misconfigurations, and unused rules. The output is a clean, structured HTML report detailing the findings and providing actionable recommendations, turning a tedious manual audit into an efficient, automated task.
What You'll Learn
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API Integration
Learn to connect to and fetch data from a security appliance's REST API.
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Data Parsing & Transformation
Master extracting and reshaping complex JSON data using code nodes.
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Workflow Automation
Understand how to chain different tasks to create a seamless, automated security process.
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External Script Execution
Discover how to run external Python scripts within your n8n workflow to gather supplementary data.
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AI for Security Analysis
Learn to leverage Large Language Models (LLMs) to analyze structured data and generate security recommendations.
Prerequisites
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Prerequisites
Tools: n8n (self-hosted), Python 3. -
Prerequisites
Services: Access to a Palo Alto Firewall with the REST API enabled. -
Prerequisites
Language Models: Access to an LLM provider like OpenRouter or DeepSeek. -
Prerequisites
Credentials: -
Prerequisites
Palo Alto Firewall API credentials (Basic Authentication). -
Prerequisites
API key for your chosen Language Model. -
Prerequisites
Environment: A local or server environment with n8n and Python installed, and network connectivity to the Palo Alto firewall. A Python script named `hitcount_pa.py` is required to fetch rule hit counts.
About Trainer
Jaimin Pathak
Jaimin Pathak is a dynamic cybersecurity leader with deep expertise in Blue Team operations, digital forensics, and threat intelligence. As the Head of Security at HaxSecurity, Jaimin brings a hands-on approach to building and scaling modern Security Operations Centers (SOC). His career spans years of dedicated work in incident response, SIEM engineering, and proactive threat hunting. Jaimin is also a passionate mentor and educator, having guided thousands of cybersecurity learners through practical training programs, shaping the next generation of defenders in the field.
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Introduction to n8n for Cybersecurity
Learn how SOC and IT teams automate security workflows in real-world environments by understanding n8n fundamentals, triggers, webhooks, data handling, decision logic, alert enrichment, and notification workflows.