Palo Alto Networks (PANW) Certified Network Security Administrator (PCNSA) Practice Exam

The feature designed to reduce network latency on the data plane of the Palo Alto Networks firewall is the Single-Pass Parallel Processing Architecture. This architecture allows the firewall to examine traffic just once while simultaneously carrying out multiple functions such as firewalling, intrusion prevention, and antivirus scanning. By processing data in a single pass, it minimizes the need for additional passes over the same data, which directly reduces the latency experienced when traffic flows through the firewall.

In contrast, while Multi-Threaded Architecture and Flow-Based Processing are also important features of Palo Alto Networks implementations, they pertain more to how data is managed and processed rather than specifically targeting latency reduction. High Availability Setup primarily focuses on maintaining continuous network service in the event of a hardware or software failure rather than affecting the speed of data processing in the normal operation mode. Therefore, the Single-Pass Parallel Processing Architecture stands out as the essential feature that optimally reduces latency during data processing within the data plane of the firewall.