For those of us in the MSP or VAR world, we support a number of different technologies using a number of different platforms. Quite often however, we find ourselves deploying the same solution for different customers time and time again. One of these solutions I find myself working with on a regular basis is a Palo Alto Networks Next Generation Firewall.

Now, these devices are awesome – they blow competition out of the water with their entirely different take on how firewalls work (check this out here), but one thing that has always annoyed me is their VPN Client, aptly named “Global Protect”, and let me explain why.

For the average user, they get a device belonging to their corporate network (laptop, be it their own or a company issued one), they work for one employer, and they always VPN in to the same spot (that is, the office). All is well and good – for these people, the Global Protect client works well.

But, for the advanced user – those who have multiple sites to support (MSPs, VARs, or even just the odd combination of sysadmins that do this), re-configuring the client every single time you need to connect to a different customer kind of sucks. You have to open the GUI, type in a username, type in a password, type in a hostname, connect, let the auto discovery take place, then finally connect to the customer once all of this has been done. It sucks. It’s not simple, and if you’re hopping around between customers and Global Protect Portals/Gateways on a regular basis, it’s quite frankly a pain in the behind.

You’re probably wondering where I’m going with this.

Well, I wrote an app that lets you capture and then revert to different Global Protect Portals/Gateways. You can switch between Global Protect Portals / Servers / Gateways, and save multiple profiles and gateways.

Basically, the steps are as follows.

1. Configure your Global Protect Client for a Customer
2. Connect Global Protect
3. On the interface, click “Capture”
   
4. Your configured Global Protect profile will be captured, ready for use
   
5. Right click and switch between your  captured Global Protect portals, or load from the main interface
   
6. Never retype a username, password and portal name again

Obviously, this ability depends on a few things, namely:

• Your Global Protect Gateways permit you to save your password
• You have a functioning Windows Installation with .NET
• You have local administrative rights on the machine you are using, since it needs to do some registry manipulation

If you want a copy of this utility, grab it from here:

Global Protect Switcher

Leave a comment below if you find it useful or have any questions/feedback?

EDIT:

There is an update to this post. See here!