The principle of least privilege mandates granting only the minimum necessary access. A single rule for ‘Any’ service or source is too permissive. The correct approach is to create separate, specific rules for each required service (HTTPS and ICMP), further restricting the ICMP rule to only the necessary source IPs (the partner networks), thereby minimizing the attack surface.

Manual NAT rules are used for advanced, specific NAT configurations where you need explicit control over the translation for both source and destination. A one-to-one static mapping for a server (like a mail server) is a classic use case, as it requires a consistent public IP. Automatic NAT is simpler and is typically used for common scenarios like hiding internal networks (option A) or for dynamic groups.

The Check Point Tracker is the primary tool for troubleshooting traffic flow. By filtering for the specific source and destination, you can see if packets are being dropped, and more importantly, *which rule* is dropping them (or if they are being accepted by a different rule). This provides concrete evidence for the next step. The other options are disruptive, insecure, or bypass proper diagnostic procedure.

The ‘Use VPN Tunnel’ setting is critical for applying Threat Prevention. When this is enabled, VPN traffic is routed *through* the firewall’s inspection engines after decryption. If this is not enabled, the traffic is simply encrypted/decrypted and passed through, bypassing Anti-Virus, IPS, and other blade protections, creating a major security gap.

In Check Point terminology, a **Schedule Object** is the specific object used to define time constraints (days of the week and hours of the day) that can be applied directly to an Access Policy rule. You would create the Schedule Object with the ‘Monday-Friday, 09:00-17:00’ criteria and then add it to the relevant firewall rule.

While removing unused rules is a security best practice, it must be done methodically. Blindly deleting or disabling rules can break unforeseen legacy applications or business processes. The correct procedure is to investigate the rule’s purpose, formally confirm with the relevant application/business owner that it is obsolete, document this, and then safely remove or disable it.

Many sensitive sites, especially financial institutions, use HTTP Public Key Pinning (HPKP) or similar techniques to bind their identity to a specific certificate. When the firewall performs HTTPS Inspection, it presents its own (corporate) CA certificate to the client. The browser detects this mismatch with the pinned certificate and blocks the connection. The standard solution is to create an exception in the HTTPS Inspection policy to bypass inspection for this specific banking domain.

The Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) blade is designed to inspect traffic for known vulnerabilities, attack patterns (signatures), and anomalous behavior that indicates an attack. It operates at the network and transport layers (and some application layers) to block exploits, buffer overflows, and other malicious activity. While other blades contribute to security, IPS is specifically tasked with this network attack prevention role.

In a distributed deployment, roles are separated. A **Security Gateway** is the enforcement point that receives and enforces policies from a central **Security Management Server**. It does not store the policy database or manage logs locally (those are sent to a Management or dedicated Log Server). ‘Standalone’ combines both roles on one machine, which is not the requirement described.

The principle of least privilege mandates granting only the minimum necessary access. A single rule for ‘Any’ service or source is too permissive. The correct approach is to create separate, specific rules for each required service (HTTPS and ICMP), further restricting the ICMP rule to only the necessary source IPs (the partner networks), thereby minimizing the attack surface.0