Fortinet FCSS_NST_SE-7.6 - Fortinet NSE 6 - Network Security 7.6 Support Engineer

According to the official Fortinet documentation (Technical Tip: Useful FSSO Commands), heartbeat messages play a crucial role in communication between the FSSO Collector Agent and FortiGate. These messages are regularly sent from the Collector Agent to verify its status, maintain session awareness, and confirm connectivity between the authentication infrastructure and FortiGate appliances.

Option B is confirmed by Fortinet, as the collector agent logs on Windows or its management console will specifically note heartbeat events, connection status, and any issues maintaining contact with FortiGate units.

Option C is validated by both official CLI documentation and the technical tip linked. On FortiGate, heartbeat messages from the collector agent are visible using real-time debug tools such as diagnose debug application authd or FSSO-specific commands. These enable administrators to monitor live logon states, session status, and connection health directly from the FortiGate CLI. The debug stream shows heartbeats received and their effect on active logons, associating health monitoring with active sessions.

Heartbeat operation is fully automated once FSSO is set up—there is no requirement for manual enablement or configuration, aligning with Fortinet’s philosophy of seamless integration and centralized management across the Security Fabric. This ensures that both FortiGate and the collector agent can quickly and reliably detect any miscommunication or outage, addressing authentication issues proactively.

The session output includes the flags:

state=redir local may_dirty ...

npu_state=00000000

offload=0/0

The 7.6 study guide explains these flags directly:

local = “Session is to/from local stack”

redir = “Session is being processed by an application layer proxy”

may_dirty = “Session is allowed by a firewall policy”

This makes C correct, because the local flag means the session either originates from FortiGate or terminates on FortiGate . The FortiOS administration guide states the same meaning: “Session is originated from or destined for local stack.”

This also makes A correct. The redir flag means the session is handled by an application-layer proxy . FortiOS documents explain that proxy-based inspection buffers traffic on the FortiGate and inspects it there, and that proxy-based processing is CPU and memory-intensive

Since the session also shows no NPU offload (npu_state=00000000, offload=0/0), this traffic is being handled in software/CPU, not by the NPU.

Why the other options are wrong:

B is wrong because the redir flag proves the session is not passing without inspection; it is being processed by an application-layer proxy

D is wrong because there is no authentication flag in this session. In Fortinet examples of captive portal/authentication-related sessions, the session state includes auth or authed flags. The study guide shows: “Any session for traffic coming from an authenticated user contains the authed flag.” This exhibit does not show auth or authed, so there is no basis to conclude the client was redirected to a captive portal for authentication.

The correct answer is B .

The study guide states that for TCP , the protocol state is a two-digit number . The first digit is the server-side state and is 0 when the session is not subject to inspection . The second digit is the client-side state . It also shows that value 1 = ESTABLISHED

So, for a normal TCP session with no inspection, proto_state=01 means:

first digit 0 = no inspection

second digit 1 = ESTABLISHED

That makes B correct.

Why the other options are wrong:

A is wrong because for UDP , the study guide says 00 = one-way traffic and 01 = two-way traffic

C is wrong because 10 does not represent the normal established TCP session described in the study guide. The established example shown is based on state value 1 , and the guide explicitly highlights proto_state=11 when both server-side and client-side TCP handshakes are completed

D is wrong because for ICMP , the study guide says “the protocol state is always 00”

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The get router info bgp summary output lists BGP neighbor status:

Prefix Reception: The " State/PfxRcd " column shows the number of prefixes received from the neighbor—neighbor 100.64.1.254 has " 1 " , confirming option A.

Received Message Count: Under " MsgRcvd " , 18 packets have been received from neighbor 100.64.1.254. This matches option C.

The second neighbor 100.64.2.254 is in " Active " state and has received/sent 0 packets, indicating that its TCP connection is NOT established, disproving option B.

There is no indication anywhere that the router is " still calculating " prefixes; " Active " just means no session is established, so option D is incorrect.

Based on the Fortinet FCSS - Network Security 7.6 documents and the analysis of the VPN tunnel exhibit, here is the verified answer.

Questions no: 91

Verified Answer: A, C

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation with all FCSS - Network Security 7.6 documents:

To determine the status of the VPN tunnel, we must examine the specific counters and fields in the diagnose vpn tunnel list output provided in the exhibit.

Analyze Phase 2 Status (Option A):

The output displays child_num=0.

In IKEv2 (and IKEv1 implementations in FortiOS), " Child SAs " refer to the Phase 2 (IPsec) Security Associations that carry the actual data traffic.

A value of 0 indicates that no Phase 2 tunnels are established. If Phase 2 were up, child_num would be at least 1.

Additionally, under the proxyid section, the field sa=0 confirms there is no active Security Association for that traffic selector.

Analyze Traffic Status (Option C):

The stat line shows: rxp=0 txp=0 rxb=0 txb=0.

rxp (Received Packets) and txp (Transmitted Packets) are both zero. This definitively confirms that no traffic is traversing the tunnel currently. This is expected since Phase 2 is down.

Analyze Phase 1 Status (Why B is incorrect):

The tunnel entry exists in the list with a valid tun_id, and NAT-Traversal is active (natt: mode=keepalive).

The presence of the tunnel in this command output, along with active Keepalive mechanisms, typically indicates that Phase 1 (IKE SA) is established and the peers are communicating on port 4500 (NAT-T), even though the data tunnels (Phase 2) failed to negotiate. If Phase 1 were down, the tunnel would often not appear in this " list " view or would show different status flags indicating a complete connection failure.

Conclusion: The exhibit shows a scenario where the Phase 1 control channel is likely up (evidenced by the entry existence and NATT keepalives), but the Phase 2 data channel is down (child_num=0), resulting in zero traffic flow (rxp=0/txp=0).

The get router info ospf database brief output on FGT-2 clearly indicates that Area 0.0.0.5 is configured as a [Stub] area.

In OSPF, a Stub Area is specifically designed to reduce the size of the Link State Database (LSDB) on internal routers. The primary behavior of a Stub area is that it does not accept Type 5 (AS External) LSAs .

FGT-3 is the ASBR (Autonomous System Border Router) and is importing static routes, which are generated as Type 5 LSAs in the OSPF domain.

FGT-1 acts as the ABR (Area Border Router). Because Area 0.0.0.5 is a Stub area, FGT-1 blocks these Type 5 LSAs from entering Area 0.0.0.5.

Consequently, FGT-2 will not receive the specific external routes advertised by FGT-3. Instead, the ABR (FGT-1) injects a default route (0.0.0.0/0) into the Stub area to allow connectivity to the external world, which is visible in the database output.

While the question text mentions FGT-3 not receiving routes, the definitive configuration shown in the exhibit is the Stub area setting, which directly corresponds to the blocking of Type 5 LSA propagation (Option A).

The correct answers are B and C .

The study guide has a section titled “Not Verified Status on the Collector Agent” and states:

“The collector agent cannot verify if the user is still logged in” and lists these common causes :

“A firewall is blocking traffic to port 139 and 445”

“The workstation remote registry service is not running”

The guide also explains the verification method:

“For WMI polling mode, the collector agent checks the WMI service. For all the other modes, the collector agent checks the HKEY_USERS hive through remote registry services.” If the workstation does not respond to these checks, the status can become not verified

An additional requirements slide in the same study guide confirms:

“TCP ports 139 and 445 must be open between the collector agent and all workstations”

“Remote registry service must be up and running on each workstation”

Why the other options are wrong:

A is wrong because the study guide mentions a workstation coming out of hibernate mode under a different problem: “No Internet After IP Address Change” , not as a common cause of Not Verified status

D is wrong because DNS resolution issues are also discussed under the IP address change scenario, where the collector agent uses DNS to resolve the workstation name after an IP change. That is separate from the Not Verified causes listed for this log message

So the verified answers are: B, C .

To display debug output on FortiGate devices, you must always run both the application-specific debug command and the global debug enable command. The command diagnose debug application ike -1 sets up the detail level for the IKE daemon debug, but it does not display any debug output on its own. As described in the FortiOS CLI debugging manuals, the command diagnose debug enable activates debug output on the console, making all previously set debugs visible. This is especially important for VPN troubleshooting—without the enable command, no output appears even if there is VPN traffic.

The correct diagnostic sequence is:

diagnose debug application ike -1

diagnose debug enable

This procedure is found in every FortiOS CLI debug tutorial and troubleshooting workflow.