topic Re: Search among section titles in Firewall and Security Management

Search among section titles

AkosBakos — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 20:18:00 GMT

Hi Community,

I got an interesting question from the customer. They have more than 300 section titles. They want to search only in the section titles, not among the rules.

As I know it is impossible, is it?

Akos

Re: Search among section titles

Vincent_Bacher — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 20:38:47 GMT

Yes and no afaik.

Out of the box: no way

But. As

mgmt_cli -r true show access-rulebase name "Network" --format json | jq '.rulebase[] | select(.type=="access-section") | .name'

(not yet tested)

maybe could do it on cli, this could be a use case for a smartconsole extension. Could be worth a try.

Re: Search among section titles

Vincent_Bacher — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 20:42:51 GMT

Addendum: it comes into my mind that even if this works, once layers come into the game it could be extremely difficult

Re: Search among section titles

the_rock — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 22:43:34 GMT

Interesting question, Akos...I will definitely give this a go in my lab via API.

Re: Search among section titles

Don_Paterson — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 23:08:42 GMT

They could create a new temporary policy package and then copy and paste the whole section and then search the new policy package.

EDIT:

I misread that and understand it's not about the rules.

Why do they need to do that kind of search?

Could the SmartConsole Indicators help?

(Top of the scroll bar on the right (top right))

Re: Search among section titles

the_rock — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 23:13:43 GMT

Excellent idea, Don. Technically, they could do so for every section, just make separate policy package for each section.

Re: Search among section titles

Tal_Paz-Fridman — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 13:04:42 GMT

You can use Web SmartConsole and use the Search from the browser

Re: Search among section titles

AkosBakos — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 13:16:09 GMT

Indeed 🙂

Maybe is there any feature request in this topic?

Akos

Re: Search among section titles

the_rock — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 13:17:33 GMT

Brilliant. Just tested in the lab, works well.

Re: Search among section titles

Don_Paterson — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 16:21:37 GMT

That works nicely 👋

...and just a | grep on the end is needed, or a bit more after jq (contains) for the search/filter.

Just adding the policy package name before the layer name to have another example here.

mgmt_cli -r true show access-rulebase name "Corporate_Policy Network" --format json | jq '.rulebase[] | select(.type=="access-section") | .name'

Another option:

mgmt_cli -r true show access-rulebase name "Policy-Package-Name Network" --format json | jq -r '.rulebase[] | select(.type=="access-section" and (.name | contains("Internal"))) | .name'

And then a sprinkling of best practice:

SID=$(mgmt_cli login user "fwadmin" --format json | jq -r '.sid') mgmt_cli --session-id "$SID" show access-rulebase name "Policy-Package-Name Network" --format json \ | jq -r '.rulebase[] | select(.type=="access-section") | .name'

mgmt_cli --session-id "$SID" logout

That best practice example works in a session with a dedicated SmartConsole user (good for auditing) and the SID is set as a variable (more secure).

The show command/s is/are done in a dedicated session and then a logout is required (to keep with best practices).

I looked at the show access-section command but that was not good for this case. show access-rulebase is the way to go.

Re: Search among section titles

the_rock — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 16:30:54 GMT

Just tested it as well, works great!

Re: Search among section titles

Don_Paterson — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 16:37:29 GMT

Nice. Although it felt like cheating 🙂

When I tested this I found:

1. The CTRL + F keystroke defaulted to the Web SmartConsole search box.

No problem, just click on the address bar and CTRL + F

2. The first search worked well.

Before searching I could see the Sectional Title I searched for, and then Chrome found it (of course),

BUT then I searched for one I knew of that was out of view (further down in the rulebase) and it was not found by the Chrome search feature... At least not until I scrolled down and then searched again.

I also found that inline layers that contained sectional titles were also not part of the search. They were collapsed, but even after I expanded them and scrolled back up they were not found (meaning that the search for a word in the sectional title was not found unless I scrolled down again).

Re: Search among section titles

Tal_Paz-Fridman — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 18:48:24 GMT

I will open an internal RFE for this but I also suggest opening an External RFE through Partner.

Re: Search among section titles

Don_Paterson — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 18:51:37 GMT

I was curious about this one.

A normal search does not cover Ordered Layer but it does cover Inline Layers within the current layer.

Meaning that a search for a word (using the SmartConsole search box) will find results in the parent rules and child rules (within the layer (the current layer in view)), while ignoring Sectional Title names altogether, but will not search Ordered Layers.

Moving to the next ordered layer does not carry the search over, and moving back to the original ordered layers results in the search box being cleared.

Anyway.... I got the AI to put this script together that uses the API to find layers in the named policy package and then carry out the search across all layers.

Fun with AI scripting 🙂

Re: Search among section titles

the_rock — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 19:11:51 GMT

I will test it, lets see 🙂

Re: Search among section titles

the_rock — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 19:16:23 GMT

AMAZING:

From the lab:

[Expert@CP-MANAGEMENT:0]# ./find-sections-1.sh
Username [fwadmin]: admin
Policy package name [Corporate_Policy]: LAB-POLICY-Andy
Search string (case-insensitive, empty = show all):

Logging in as 'admin' (mgmt_cli will prompt for password)...
Password:
==============================
Search report (Ordered Layers)
Package : LAB-POLICY-Andy
Search : <empty = show all>
==============================

ORDERED LAYERS IN PACKAGE (count: 3)
----------------------------------------------
1) network (38271c2f-ab44-4e25-9aa4-e219cb6e12cf)
2) appc+urlf (0d66fd92-fb01-4862-8005-8871f976ad4f)
3) final-layer (8c33534f-e11d-4511-a5d1-538a0415a7b3)

INLINE LAYERS DISCOVERED IN ORDERED LAYER: network (count: 5)
----------------------------------------------
1) ivanti (34af18c9-62de-4fb0-9a2d-6dfc46419ccf)
2) dmz-layer (480bf54e-c377-486b-8e62-34cb8b58215c)
3) win11-layer (7fb4428e-ab8e-4dbe-93db-7461e33f3a7d)
4) internal-layer (bca520ad-e6d2-464d-967b-35d106aa40f1)
5) external-layer (c6d7a124-cbe7-4937-89c9-48dbeb2d9cd2)

[Expert@CP-MANAGEMENT:0]#

Re: Search among section titles

PhoneBoy — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 19:28:33 GMT

Perhaps we can make this a Toolbox item @_Val_ ?

Re: Search among section titles

Don_Paterson — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 08:17:49 GMT

Cool!

Thanks for testing that Andy. 🙂

Re: Search among section titles

Don_Paterson — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 08:21:20 GMT

That would be great.

Re: Search among section titles

Don_Paterson — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 11:03:34 GMT

This one asks if you want to list all Section Titles if the show-all option is used.

Working on a python version for the Tool Box (hopefully).