FCSS_NST_SE-7.6 Practice Questions

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 diagnose debug authd fsso server command is the primary tool for troubleshooting communication between the FortiGate and the FSSO Collector Agent. This debug output reveals the status of the connection and the reasons for failure. The three most common connectivity issues identified by this debug are:

FortiGate cannot reach the IP address of the collector agent (Option C): The debug will show connection timeouts or "host unreachable" errors if the Layer 3 connectivity is missing.

The connection was refused / Port mismatch (Option B): If the FortiGate can reach the IP but the Collector Agent is not listening on the specified port (default 8000), the debug will display "Connection refused." This often happens if the port configured on the FortiGate does not match the listening port on the agent.

The pre-shared key does not match (Option D): If the IP and Port are correct, the next step is authentication. If the password configured on the FortiGate does not match the one on the Collector Agent, the debug will explicitly show an "Authentication failed" or "password mismatch" error during the handshake.

Note on other options: Option A (SSL) is less common than basic connectivity/auth mismatches. Option E (Group filters) relates to user processing logic, which occurs after connectivity is established.

The debug command diagnose debug application fssod -1 reveals the internal processing of the FortiGate Single Sign-On daemon.

Option D (Agentless Polling): The output shows event_id=4768. Event ID 4768 (Kerberos TGT Request) is a Windows Event Log entry. The presence of specific Event IDs in the fssod debug, rather than a generic logon notification, indicates that the system is reading (polling) the Security Event Logs from the Domain Controller. This is characteristic of Agentless Polling Mode (or Collector Agent Polling Mode), where the FortiGate or Collector scrapes logs. In contrast, DC Agent mode intercepts logon calls directly and would typically provide more complete information, including the workstation name.

Option A (Verification): Crucially, the output shows workstation=,, indicating the workstation name field is empty. In Polling Mode, certain Event IDs (like 4768) often do not contain the source workstation's hostname. Without the workstation name, the FortiGate (or Collector) cannot perform a workstation check (WMI/Registry poll) to verify if the user is still logged in. It essentially has to rely on the "dead entry timeout" because active verification is impossible without the target machine's name.

Option B is incorrect because DC Agents reliably capture workstation names. Option C is incorrect because the system cannot poll a workstation it cannot identify.