Palo Alto Firewall Reports Your HR Team Can Actually Use
Cyfin connects directly to your Palo Alto syslog and transforms raw log data into noise-free, human-only web activity reports — readable by HR, defensible in investigations, requiring no IT involvement once configured.
Your Palo Alto Logs Are Not HR Reports
Your Palo Alto firewall captures everything that happens on your network. But what it captures and what HR needs to see are two completely different things. A single website visit can generate over 100 individual connection records in the raw log. Automated background traffic — software updates, cloud sync, browser telemetry — is recorded right alongside deliberate employee browsing. The data is in technical notation: IP addresses and domain fragments, not the recognizable website names HR needs for an investigation or a disciplinary conversation.
When a policy violation needs to be investigated, IT must spend significant time manually extracting, interpreting, and sanitizing data for each request. In many organizations the investigation simply doesn't happen on schedule — or the evidence doesn't hold up when challenged. HR is dependent on IT for something they should be able to run themselves.
Cyfin reads your Palo Alto log data continuously, filters out all non-human background traffic, and reconstructs individual browsing sessions from hundreds of raw connection records. What HR receives are clean, accurate reports with real website names, session durations, and user activity — organized for human review, and accurate enough to support disciplinary action.
What Cyfin Delivers
Human-Only Activity Reports
All automated background traffic is filtered out before any report is generated. What HR sees is exclusively deliberate employee browsing — no noise, no misattribution, no technical clutter.
Session Reconstruction
Hundreds of raw connection records are rebuilt into individual browsing sessions with start time and duration. One website visit appears as one readable event, not 100 ambiguous log entries.
HR Self-Service Investigations
HR managers run their own investigation reports through a secure self-service portal — without submitting requests to IT. IT configures Cyfin once; HR operates independently from that point forward.
No New Infrastructure
Direct syslog from Palo Alto to Cyfin. No endpoint agents. No additional hardware. No changes to your network topology. Works with the infrastructure your organization already has in place.
AI Tool Usage Visibility
For organizations running the Palo Alto AI visibility add-on with SSL inspection, Cyfin can surface what employees are submitting to AI tools — not just usage volume, but session-level detail.
30+ Years of Proven Accuracy
Wavecrest Computing has been solving this specific problem since 1996. The noise-filtering and session reconstruction algorithms have been refined across decades of real-world firewall log data from organizations like yours.
Built for Palo Alto Networks Environments
Cyfin extends your existing Palo Alto investment to deliver the HR and management reporting layer that Palo Alto itself does not provide. The integration is direct and requires no changes to your network.
- Direct syslog integration — Palo Alto sends log data directly to Cyfin's built-in syslog server. Works with Panorama and standalone deployments. No third-party log server required.
- No network changes — Cyfin connects to your existing firewall infrastructure. No endpoint agents. No topology changes. No new hardware.
- AI tool visibility — With the Palo Alto AI visibility add-on and SSL inspection enabled, Cyfin surfaces not just that an employee used ChatGPT or Gemini, but the content they submitted. A capability unique to Palo Alto environments.
- Active Directory mapping — Reports show employee names and departments, not IP addresses. HR sees people, not network identifiers.
We just completed a rigorous evaluation of Wavecrest Computing's web-access reporting product Cyfin. We found that Cyfin produces comprehensive information that can help managers quickly correct inappropriate or ineffective surfing.
Reports That Hold Up When It Matters
Infrastructure logs — including firewall logs from Palo Alto and other vendors — are a well-established and legally accepted basis for monitoring employee activity on company-owned networks. This approach has been upheld in employment proceedings and is widely recognized as appropriate for workplace investigations. Government agencies, healthcare organizations, and financial institutions rely on this standard for disciplinary and compliance actions where the evidentiary bar is high.
Screen capture and keystroke logging tools carry substantially higher legal risk. They are subject to privacy violation claims, carry complex disclosure requirements, and are far more vulnerable to challenge when evidence is contested. They also produce unmanageable data volumes — hours of recordings per employee per day that no HR team can realistically review. Cyfin's approach — infrastructure logs, automatically noise-filtered, reconstructed into readable sessions — gives you defensible evidence without operational burden on IT or HR.
See What Your Palo Alto Users Are Actually Doing
Start with a free trial — no credit card, no IT commitment beyond the initial syslog connection. Or request a demo to see Cyfin reporting on Palo Alto log data before involving your team.