Palo Alto VM-Series – Application and Threats Section Missing From Dynamic Updates

You might find after creating a Palo Alto VM-Series VM that the Application and Threats section in Dynamic Updates is missing.

This bugged me for a while, as originally I thought it was a licensing issue due to a few rebuilds of my lab VM-100. I was receiving the below error message when attempting to install a newer PAN-OS version:

Normally you would go to Dynamic Updates and run a manual update of Application and Threats, but since that section was missing, this wasn’t possible. My VM was stuck on the current Application Version.

The fix is to simply manually download the latest dynamic updates from Palo Alto Support Portal, install them manually, and despite a small error message, it should trigger the Application and Threats section under Dynamic Updates to appear again.

Log into your Palo Alto support account, and under Updates -> Dynamic Updates download the latest package:

On your firewall, go to Device -> Dynamic Updates and click Upload. Select Application and Threats as the Type, and the path to the file you downloaded:

After a successful upload, click Install From File, again select Application and Threats, and choose the file you just uploaded:

After running Commit, despite a small error as below, you should see Application and Threats available in Dynamic Updates: