About HARDCOREdebug
Real-world networking and cybersecurity knowledge, documented for the community.
Who I Am
I’m Prince Kumar, a Designated Support Engineer currently working at Zscaler, based in India. With years of hands-on experience in enterprise networking and cybersecurity, I have worked extensively with some of the most complex security and networking architectures deployed in large organisations globally.
My day-to-day involves deep-diving into customer environments, diagnosing hard-to-reproduce issues, and producing actionable solutions — across tunnels, policies, routing tables, proxy chains, and cloud-delivered security stacks. This blog is a direct reflection of that work.
What This Blog Is
HardcoreDebug is a technical blog platform created to share real-world configurations, step-by-step troubleshooting guides, and experience notes across multiple enterprise vendors and platforms.
Every article here is drawn from real scenarios — not theory, not marketing materials. If a problem has burned hours in a support ticket, it deserves a clear, findable write-up. That’s the goal.
Technologies Covered
The blog covers enterprise security and networking with a focus on:
Zscaler ZIA / ZPA
Secure Internet Access, Private Access, ZDX, policy configurations, PAC files, SSL inspection, tunnel health.
Palo Alto NGFW
Next-Generation Firewall, security policies, NAT, App-ID, User-ID, Global Protect, Panorama management.
Prisma Access
SASE platform configuration, service connections, remote user deployments, mobile users, service infrastructure.
Cisco
IOS/IOS-XE/NX-OS routing and switching, ASA, FTD, Umbrella, SD-WAN (Viptela), OSPF, BGP, spanning tree.
Fortinet
FortiGate NGFW, FortiManager, FortiAnalyzer, SD-WAN, SSL-VPN, IPSec, IPS/IDS policies, HA configurations.
CloudGenix SD-WAN
Branch connectivity, application QoS, policy-based routing, WAN optimisation and real-time path selection.
My Approach
I believe in writing that respects the reader’s time. Each article is structured to give you the context, the root cause, and the fix — in that order. No filler. No SEO padding. Just technical depth.
Where possible, I include CLI outputs, config snippets, log excerpts and packet-level analysis to make the troubleshooting reproducible.
Get In Touch
Have a specific issue you’re working through? Found an error in an article? Want to collaborate on a guide? Drop me a line.
✉ info@hardcoredebug.com