Cisco CCNP Securing Networks with Cisco Firepower (300-710 SNCF)

Next-generation firewalls reduce risk when the team running them can configure, tune, upgrade, and troubleshoot them with confidence. This course gives IT Directors a structured way to build that Cisco Firepower capability across a security team.

Role fit: This course is designed for Network Security Engineers and System Administrators with three to five years of security experience who manage or will manage Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) and Firepower Management Center (FMC). It also serves as an onboarding path for engineers inheriting an existing Firepower deployment, and as prep for the 300-710 SNCF exam toward CCNP Security.

Time investment: The course has 19 skills and about 19.6 hours of video. Learners build practice labs in ESXi, VMware Workstation, or EVE-NG, so plan for the video time plus hands-on practice.

Risk and change management: Learners practice outside production. The upgrade content covers reading release notes, following formal change control, and testing before deployment. Troubleshooting content helps teams validate configurations and work through Firepower issues before changes reach production.

Supporting the rollout: Team Leads can sequence skills into Playlists, starting with access control and IPS before moving to SSL decryption and VPNs. Team Reporting lets Training Managers track progress toward 300-710 SNCF preparation across the team.

IT teams complete this training to run Cisco Firepower in production, not just prepare for 300-710. Engineers first build a working FMC and FTD lab in ESXi, VMware Workstation, or EVE-NG. That gives your team a safe place to test policies and bring things up and tear them down without touching the live network.

• Safer upgrades and change control: Your engineers practice upgrading HA-paired FMCs and FTDs from 6.7 to 7.x. That includes pausing synchronization, updating the standby unit first, and re-establishing the active unit. The course reinforces three habits: read the release notes, follow formal change management, and test in a virtual environment before rolling out.
• Fewer outages through fault tolerance: Team Leads learn which Firepower high availability options exist and how to build fault tolerance, so a single failure doesn't take the network down.
• Identity-based policy enforcement: Engineers connect Firepower to Active Directory through realms. That lets access policies permit or deny traffic based on users and group membership, not just IP addresses.
• Faster troubleshooting during incidents: Practitioners troubleshoot packet flow layer by layer, enable logging on new rules, and run packet captures to verify what Firepower is doing with traffic.

The course also gives Team Leads clearer operational context around the controls engineers will manage, including Security Intelligence, URL filtering, reputation filtering, IDS/IPS, and application-layer inspection in a lab environment before production rollout.

Knowledge

• How the Firepower Management Center (FMC) and Firepower Threat Defense (FTD) fit together, including how security intelligence is applied through Firepower policy
• How access control policies serve as the foundation for next-generation features such as IPS/IDS, URL filtering, application inspection, SSL decryption, and malware and file policies
• Fault-tolerance options for Firepower and the operational, licensing, and complexity trade-offs of building high availability
• How identity sources can inform user-aware access policy in Firepower environments
• How to approach FMC and FTD updates in HA environments, including why release notes, formal change control, and pre-production testing matter
• What built-in dashboards reveal, including risky applications with low business relevance, traffic by user, and URL reputation and categories

Ability

• Build a working Firepower practice lab in ESXi, VMware Workstation, or EVE-NG, including bootstrapping the FMC and FTDs and registering FTDs for management
• Configure and verify access control, intrusion, SSL decryption, malware, file, and Security Intelligence policies against live traffic from a test client
• Plan and validate Firepower updates in HA environments using release notes, change-control checkpoints, and pre-production testing before production changes
• Troubleshoot packet flow with a layered model (OSI or TCP/IP), rule logging, packet tracer, and packet captures
• Generate FMC and FTD troubleshooting files to speed up Cisco TAC cases
• Use dashboards, scheduling, audit logging, and reporting to monitor user activity and spot anomalies