Forward Networks’ flagship product, Forward Enterprise, delivers a vendor-agnostic “digital twin” of the network, designed for both cloud and on-prem networks
Forward Networks has been named an Outperformer in the 2024 GigaOm Radar for Network Validation for the third consecutive year. Among 15 vendors, Forward Networks achieved the highest overall score for key features and business criteria, cementing its position as an innovator and leader in the market.
GigaOm highlights the increasing importance of automated network validation for ensuring business continuity, security compliance, and efficient change management in today’s complex multi-vendor, hybrid-cloud networks. The report recognizes Forward Networks for its advanced capabilities, including:
Network Source of Truth: Forward Enterprise provides a unified, vendor-neutral digital twin of the network, delivering instant, searchable insights across on-premises and multi-cloud environments in an intuitive format. Data is delivered in an intuitive manner, empowering even the newest or most junior member of the IT team to glean actionable insights. (View this BrightTALK Session to learn how creating a single source of network truth improved operations for a large federal agency.)
End-to-End Validation: The platform performs detailed hop-by-hop path analysis, intent verification, and policy compliance checks while identifying security vulnerabilities to keep hybrid multi-cloud networks robust and secure.
Dynamic Network Visualization: Forward Enterprise generates real-time topology diagrams across hybrid environments, giving IT teams unparalleled visibility and actionable insights.
Compliance: Forward Enterprise offers continuous compliance verification to ensure companies are in compliance with company policy and regulatory requirements such as STIGs, ECA, GDPR, GLBA, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and SOX.
Download the full GigaOm report to learn why Forward Networks continues to lead the way in network validation and discover how our platform can transform your network management.
Network security and compliance are critical to modern enterprises, yet the complexity of hybrid environments often makes achieving these goals seem insurmountable. If you're attending Gartner IOCS, make sure to visit Forward Networks at Booth 114 to see how Fortune 500 companies are revolutionizing their IT operations using network digital twin technology.
A network digital twin creates a mathematically accurate replica of your entire network, including cloud, virtual, and physical components. This cutting-edge technology offers unmatched visibility, enabling your IT teams to remediate vulnerabilities, streamline compliance, and manage cloud configurations efficiently. Visit our technical experts to learn about:
Enhancing Network Security Compliance with Confidence
Unpatched vulnerabilities are gateways for cyberattacks, but managing them across complex networks can feel overwhelming. Traditional scanning tools generate high volumes of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs), leading to noise and inefficiency. Forward Networks simplifies this process with its digital twin technology by:
Providing an accurate inventory of all network devices and connected hosts to ensure comprehensive vulnerability scans.
Reducing false positives by combining OS version analysis with device configuration insights, ensuring teams focus on critical vulnerabilities.
Offering exposure-based prioritization so teams can address high-risk, internet-exposed devices first.
This approach helps organizations act swiftly and confidently, reducing their vulnerability window while conserving IT resources. Learn how leading organizations are leveraging these capabilities to stay ahead of attackers.
Troubleshooting Hybrid Cloud Issues in Seconds
Cloud adoption has revolutionized IT infrastructure, but it also introduces new challenges in managing configurations and troubleshooting issues. Forward Networks addresses these challenges by:
Creating a unified, always-up-to-date view of your hybrid network, including configurations and states for on-premises and cloud devices.
Visualizing multi-cloud and hybrid environments in a single pane, including configurations and all possible traffic paths from Layer 2 to Layer 4, which eliminates both reliance on static tools like outdated diagrams and limited visibility from individual monitoring solutions.
Identifying misconfigurations, failed security rules (e.g., mismatches in Security Groups or ACLs), or unreachable paths using automated intent checks. Engineers can pinpoint the exact issue and its location in seconds rather than spending hours sifting through logs or configurations.
Fortune 500 Success Stories
At Gartner IOCS, you'll hear firsthand how Fortune 500 companies are using Forward Networks' digital twin to:
Identify and remediate CVEs in hours, not weeks.
Automate compliance audits, saving weeks of manual effort while meeting strict regulatory timelines.
Enable cross-functional collaboration between network, security, and cloud teams by providing a single source of truth.
For example, Forward Networks' platform recently helped a financial services client reduce compliance audit times from weeks to minutes. With actionable insights and automated workflows, the client's IT team now focuses on strategic initiatives rather than manual checks.
Why Visit Us at Gartner IOCS?
Learn how this transformative technology can enhance your security posture, save operational costs, and deliver peace of mind.
Make challenges with network compliance and security a thing of the past with Forward Networks' digital twin technology. Visit Forward Networks at Booth 114, and discover how to simplify the complexities of modern IT environments. Schedule your demo at the show.
The vulnerabilities CVE-2024-0012 and CVE-2024-9474 exploit weaknesses in the PAN-OS management interface, allowing attackers to bypass authentication and escalate privileges, potentially resulting in unauthorized control over network devices. Addressing these vulnerabilities quickly and effectively is critical to maintaining security and compliance. However, determining if they are present in your network may take time and effort using legacy vulnerability software or a manual approach, all while network security is compromised.
Traditional methods of managing such vulnerabilities—like manual scanning and inventory management—struggle to keep up with the pace of new threats. Forward Networks’ Digital Twin technology offers an efficient and precise solution to mitigate risks associated with these CVEs.
Tackling CVE-2024-0012 and CVE-2024-9474
Comprehensive Asset Discovery:
Forward Enterprise collects current configuration and state data from all network devices, creating an always-accurate inventory. This ensures that PAN-OS devices affected by these CVEs are identified immediately, even in large, complex networks.
NIST and Vendor Integration for Accurate Identification:
The platform integrates with the NIST and vendor-specific vulnerability databases to automatically detect devices compromised by CVE-2024-0012 and CVE-2024-9474. It delivers detailed reports that map each vulnerability, highlighting specific OS matches and providing a clear path to remediation. Because the platform collects accurate topology information, the detailed and exportable report will include the device location.
Actionable Insights for Remediation:
The Digital Twin provides detailed, exportable reports that pinpoint the exact configuration lines or OS versions causing vulnerabilities. This eliminates guesswork, enabling teams to patch devices or implement compensating controls faster.
Real-Time Compliance Monitoring:
Using the Insights Dashboard, teams can track the status of remediation efforts, ensuring vulnerabilities like CVE-2024-0012 and CVE-2024-9474 are addressed efficiently. This feature is not available in any other vulnerability software offerings
CISA Compliance
CISA has published directive BOD 23-02, which outlines how organizations can reduce their attack surface from misconfigured management interfaces. Forward Enterprise supports CISA BOD compliance by offering multiple device discovery techniques, including subnet scans, CDP/LLDP protocols, and seed device methods. This enables the platform to inventory and map an entire network in under an hour without impacting performance. The platform also detects the highest risk devices, those which are connected to the Internet. Discovery can be performed several times daily to identify any missing devices and ensure they are included in future collections. This makes maintaining compliance straightforward and effortless.
See the Technology in Action
To understand how Forward Networks addresses these critical CVEs and improves your vulnerability management workflow, watch this detailed demonstration. The video illustrates how the platform’s advanced capabilities reduce the time and effort needed to secure your network.
Mitigating high-risk vulnerabilities like CVE-2024-0012 and CVE-2024-9474 requires precision and efficiency. Forward Networks equips engineers with the tools necessary to identify and address these threats swiftly, safeguarding network security.
Going to Gartner IOCS? Book a meeting, or stop by Booth 224 and ask for a demo (Also we’re giving away a bottle of rare Scottish Whisky daily).
What does Forward Networks do?
Forward Networks ensures that the world's most complex and mission-critical networks are secure, agile, and reliable. A mathematical model of the network, including computations of all possible traffic paths, is built by collecting configuration data and L2-L7 states from networking devices and public cloud platforms. With support for major cloud providers, including AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, Forward Enterprise stands out as the go-to solution for large enterprises managing hybrid cloud networks with multiple vendors.
What makes computing network traffic flows so difficult?
Large enterprise networks contain thousands of devices (switches, routers, firewalls, load balancers, etc). Each of these devices has complex behaviors. Consider a large graph with thousands of nodes, each representing one of these devices, and the links between nodes show how they are connected. Network traffic originating from edge devices needs to be precisely modeled.
To do so, you need to understand the exact behavior of each device in handling different packets. A typical enterprise network includes several different types of devices (routers, firewalls, etc.) and many firmware versions for every kind of device (Cisco, Arista, Juniper, etc.). To build a mathematically accurate model, you need to model every corner case, and a lot of these are not even documented by vendors.
We have developed an automated testing infrastructure based on a mathematical model to predict forwarding behavior. We purchase or lease these devices, put them in our lab, inject various types of traffic to them, and observe how these devices behave.
How do we process networks with over 50,000 devices?
Let me explain how we can process networks with over 50,000 devices on a single box or cloud instance. Here is a screenshot of an example network with about 50k devices:
Our customers send us obfuscated data that helps us identify and resolve performance bottlenecks. To obfuscate the data, every IP and MAC address is randomly changed to a different address, every name is also converted to a random name, and these mappings are irreversible. Obfuscating data does not materially change the model's behavior because obfuscated data is still representative of the original network’s complexity and diverse network behaviors. Sharing this data is a win-win scenario. Our digital twin gets better over time, and customers get even faster processing time. The network in the above example is built from such data.
This network includes more than 1030 flows. Each flow shows how a group of similar packets traverses the network. For example, one flow might show how email traffic originating from a specific host and destined to another host starts from a datacenter and then goes through several backbone devices before arriving at the destination data center.
Each of these flows can be complex. If we were to spend 1 microsecond to compute each of these flows, it would take us more than 1017 years to compute this. After years of advanced engineering work, algorithmic optimizations, and performance optimizations, we are able to process this network in under an hour on a single box. In the majority of cases, the computation scales linearly. For customers who need faster processing speed or higher verification throughput, we offer a cluster version, which can be scaled up or down as needed.
What lessons have we learned?
Our first data source was a very small network. We became better, faster, and more scalable as we optimized our software, allowing us to reach out to customers with larger networks and find the next bottlenecks. As we gained access to larger data sets, we saw new patterns we hadn't anticipated, which helped us improve the computation core of our software multiple times. Using obfuscated data enables us to model some of the most complex and regulated networks in the world without compromising customer security, and it proves that we can support any private or government network.
What minimal hardware requirements does Forward Networks’ on-prem software work with?
Today, provisioning an instance in AWS, Azure, or other cloud providers with 1TB or more RAM is easy. Yet you might be surprised to know how long it takes some customers to provision a single on-prem instance with a modest amount of memory. To ensure customers quickly experience the value of our software, we streamline the initial setup process, so you can start using it right away during the proof-of-concept period. This means you won't have to wait for lengthy provisioning times or deal with low-priority ticket delays, allowing you to evaluate the software's benefits in your environment efficiently and without hassle.
Forward Networks has learned to be very careful when adding new tools, frameworks, or dependencies. Because our resource requirements are so low, our developers are able to run the entire stack on their laptops, which is essential for fast debugging and rapid iteration.
We have spent a lot of engineering time and effort on making this possible. Here are some of our high level approaches:
Avoiding repeated computation.
Deduping data structures in memory and on disk.
Lazy computation: delaying processing to when it is actually needed.
Making core data structures as compact as possible and with very low serialization and access overheads (our in-house serialization implementation has ideas similar to Google’s FlatBuffers).
Using fastutil for fast and memory efficient collections in Java. Our fork even improved its performance and added support for immutable structures.
Detecting and optimizing actual bottlenecks through performance profiling.
You can't simply use a cluster with 1000 nodes when you need to scale to 1000x or 10000x. It is not economically justified even if it is possible. To get the same result with minimal resources, you need to do the hard engineering work. Most of our customers run our network digital twin on a single computer. But we also offer the cluster version for those customers that want to ensure high availability or have more concurrent users and want to have higher search or compute throughput. We support deployments in customer-owned AWS or Azure cloud environments for those who wish to use their own cloud.
Our customer told us they were amazed by what our software delivers, given such low requirements after having to provision and maintain a few racks of servers for a comparable software solution (in the same space as us but not exactly our competitor). This validated our efforts. By focusing on low-compute mechanisms to solve the problem, we’ve enabled our customers to accelerate deployment while saving money.
Are open source tools always the answer?
In the early years of our startup, we relied on off-the-shelf platforms and tools. Over time, it became clear that while these platforms are generic enough to be applicable to a wide range of applications, they were not appropriate for our platform because they didn’t support the level of customization we required.
For example, initially we were computing all end to end network behaviors, indexing, and storing them in a generic platform. Eventually, it became evident that precompiling all such behaviors was not feasible. Even if it were possible, such an index would be enormous in size. We switched to a lazy computation approach where we would pre-compute just enough data to perform quick searches, and at search time we would do the rest of the computation that was specific to user query.
Because of the limitations of these generic platforms, we developed our own distributed compute and search platform. This in-house development is the foundation of our ability to scale.
What’s next?
While we believe we have already built a product that is a significant step forward on how networks are managed and operated, our journey is 1% complete. Our vision is to become the essential platform for the whole network experience, and we have just started in that direction. If this is something that interests you, please join us. We are hiring for key positions across several departments. Note that having prior networking experience is not a requirement for most of our software engineering positions.
If you operate a large-scale complex network, please request a demo to see how our software can de-risk your network operations and return massive business value.
COMMENTARY: Technical debt has become the foremost self-imposed cyber threat within enterprises. But what are we talking about? Why does it happen? And, how can enterprises ensure that obsolete hardware and unattended software aren’t inadvertently leaving the network open to risk?
McKinsey defines technical debt as the “tax” a company pays on any development to redress existing technology issues. And it’s not cheap. The consulting firm’s research found that technical debt accounts for about 40% of IT balance sheets – and that companies pay an additional 10% to 20% on top of a project’s cost to address it.
Every second matters for your network. A network failure can be catastrophic for large enterprises, significantly affecting revenue, productivity, and reputation. As networks grow increasingly complex with hybrid and multi-cloud environments, robust monitoring and maintenance have never been more critical to help avoid outages.
Today’s networks are vastly different from what they were even five years ago, with hybrid environments making troubleshooting much more complex. So complex, in fact, that most organizations don’t have a current network diagram due to constant changes., Siloed teams with limited communication create additional challenges in keeping networks reliably performing as intended. Without comprehensive network visibility, it's difficult to diagnose the cause of an outage with speed and confidence. This lack of visibility impacts the Mean Time to Identify (MTTI), drastically affecting the Mean Time to Repair (MTTR), which can be costly to an organization.
In the realm of artificial intelligence (AI), especially when applied to networking and security, the accuracy and reliability of data are paramount. AI systems are only as good as the data they consume, and for network engineers, feeding these systems with up-to-date and precise information can make the difference between optimal performance and costly errors. Forward Networks addresses this challenge with a sophisticated solution: a network digital twin that forms a mathematically accurate network model by capturing state and configuration data from all packet-pushing devices— L2 to L4 —and the public cloud. The platform is designed for complex enterprise environments with support for >30 hardware vendors, >35 operating systems, >900 OS, and all three major public clouds.
How reliable are AI recommendations?
AI has transformative potential for network operators, from automating complex tasks to identifying potential security threats and enhancing overall operational efficiency. However, a key element that defines AI’s success in these applications is data quality. Low-quality or outdated data can lead to unreliable results, undermining trust and reducing the practical value of AI solutions in a network environment. For AI to truly add value in network operations, it requires current and encyclopedic data that accurately reflects the real-world state of the network.
Forward Networks' digital twin uniquely solves this challenge by creating the only mathematically accurate, always current digital twin of the network. By continuously collecting state and configuration data from network devices and cloud elements, this model ensures that any AI-driven analysis, query, or insight is rooted in an accurate and up-to-date network representation, giving network administrators confidence in the AI recommendations they implement.
Are my AI tool’s recommendations accurate?
Forward Networks' digital twin aggregates data from across the network, capturing the configurations and states of each device at L2 through L4 and in cloud environments. This comprehensive approach means that no part of the network is left unchecked. The collected data is then used to form a model that is mathematically precise, allowing AI to perform its analyses on a foundation that mirrors the network's current state.
One of the most important aspects of this digital twin is its regular refresh cycle. Rather than relying on static snapshots, Forward Networks regularly collects snapshots to capture changes as they happen. This capability is crucial for network engineers who depend on up-to-the-minute information to make informed decisions, conduct audits, or troubleshoot issues. With the digital twin’s regular updates, network professionals can trust that the data fueling their AI tools reflects the network’s present configuration and status.
How can network engineers benefit from AI?
For network engineers, Forward Networks’ digital twin provides significant practical advantages. Since the data is consistently refreshed, it enables network professionals to implement AI recommendations with the assurance that they are based on the latest network data.
Furthermore, Forward Networks enhances its Network Query Engine (NQE) with AI-powered features such as code generation, code explanation, and interactive documentation. These tools streamline complex tasks, allowing engineers to focus on strategic priorities rather than manual configuration and compliance checks. Forward Networks' newest feature, AI Assist, lets engineers build network queries using natural language prompts, expanding access to network insights without requiring additional training.
What does the new era for AI in network operations look like?
By building a digital twin using current network state and configuration data, Forward Networks enables AI to reach its full potential in network operations. With a model that reflects the network's current state, engineers and operators can trust the results produced by AI, knowing they are grounded in accuracy and precision.
Forward Networks’ digital twin is a critical enabler for AI in network management. It ensures that data is accurate and current, creating a dependable foundation for AI applications in networking. This commitment to data quality ultimately transforms the way network professionals work, unlocking efficiencies, enhancing security, and fostering a new level of trust in AI’s role in network operations.
Attending a conference with the leading minds in IT offers the rare chance to leave with renewed confidence in your strategies. Fresh from the Gartner IT Symposium in Orlando, we’re gearing up for the upcoming Gartner IOCS in Las Vegas to continue these important conversations.
Insights from the Keynotes: Trends and Relevance to Forward Networks
As with every technology show we’ve attended this year, AI was front and center. On Day 2, Gene Alvarez, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner, presented the “Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2025.” Gene noted, “This year’s top strategic technology trends span AI imperatives and risks, new frontiers of computing and human-machine synergy. Tracking these trends will help IT leaders shape the future of their organizations with responsible and ethical innovation.”
His keynote categorized technology trends into investment protection, developer support, and delivering value. Forward Networks delivers in all of these areas, enriching our discussions on the show floor. The CIOs we spoke with were very concerned about delivering value and protecting their investment in existing tools as well as anything they decide to add to their tech stack.
1. Investment Protection
In January 2023, "AI" overtook “Magic Quadrant” as the top search term on Gartner.com, illustrating the surging interest in AI. But as the AI landscape expands, so do concerns over data accuracy. Even Google recently paused Gemini AI’s people-imaging feature due to flawed outputs. This raises a critical question: what happens if AI insights are based on inaccurate network data?
This is where Forward Networks' digital twin steps in, offering comprehensive and precise network data. Our solution regularly gathers configuration and state data from all L2-L4 packet-pushing devices and cloud platforms, ensuring AI tools that rely on accurate data and recommendations are trustworthy. With 45% of Gartner respondents increasing AI investment, our role in supporting these initiatives sparked considerable interest.
Additionally, sustainable IT emerged as a critical theme. In this context, “sustainable” means long-term, data-driven initiatives to maximize value. Forward Networks’ digital twin empowers clients to leverage network data in innovative ways, from saving $6 million during a modernization project to enabling self-service application provisioning via Slack. By transforming the network into a searchable database, we support modernization efforts and help ensure operational continuity.
Gartner predicts that within two years, 75% of CIOs will be responsible for sustainable tech solutions, with compensation linked to these goals.
2. Supporting Developers
The Symposium highlighted trends in empowering developers and non-developers alike to build innovative solutions with minimal obstacles. Since networks are fundamental to application deployment, providing developers with visibility and automation is crucial. Forward Networks enables automated secure application provisioning, accelerating deployment timelines and enhancing service capabilities.
3. Delivering Value
Eliminating repetitive tasks is always of interest to business leaders—they don’t hire people to check boxes; they hire people who can help innovate and improve the organization and its outcomes. Eliminating repetitive tasks is the tip of the iceberg; of course people are freed to do new things and innovate, but technologies that really change the game for companies going forward fuel better business outcomes by making data understandable and actionable. That’s where Forward Enterprise shines. Our Network Query Engine is designed to empower engineers to ask questions of their network. On November 4, 2024 at 11:00 a.m. PST, Dr. Andreas Voellmy, the creator of NQE, will be discussing how NQE is used to automate design validation, inform decision-making with accurate inventory, and proactively check for misconfigurations to prevent incidents. Register for Dr. Voellmy’s talk here! If we missed you at Gartner IT Symposium, you can request a personalized technical session, or join us at Gartner IOCS in Las Vegas.
Mobile Breakthrough Awards has named Forward Networks the winner of its “2024 Enterprise Cloud Computing Software of the Year” award. This is Forward Networks’ fifth consecutive award win for Enterprise Cloud Computing from Mobile Breakthrough’s Award program.
The Mobile Breakthrough Awards serves as the industry’s most comprehensive analysis and recognition platform for the top companies, products, innovation, and people in the mobile and wireless industries around the globe.
Forward Networks’ is a multi-year winner because its digital twin technology is revolutionizing how businesses secure, manage, and maintain compliance of their large, multi-cloud networks while generating major bottom line benefits. IDC’s Business Value Study found that Forward’s customers reap up to $14.2 million in financial and operational benefits annually, derived from measurable improvements to network stability and reliability ($7.7M), team productivity ($2.9M), and operational efficiencies ($3.6M).
Forward’s advanced software uniquely delivers a digital twin of the network by collecting state and configuration data across all network devices (load balancers, routers, firewalls, and switches). This data is then used to create an always accurate topology (on-prem and multi-cloud), calculate all possible paths within the network, analyze detailed behavioral information, and make network configuration and behavior searchable and verifiable. Forward provides the only solution that operates across all major networking vendors and cloud services at scale.
Forward’s digital twin technology enhances network visibility, security, and operational efficiency. It enables even less experienced team members to identify and resolve issues effectively, ensuring that organizations can manage their multi-cloud network environments with confidence.
Organizations face an ever-expanding attack surface and a host of cyberthreats. Yet, most organizations have limited resources and lack effective solutions to fully understand and address their network security risks. This forces security leaders to find more efficient ways to analyze network security, identify risks and prioritize remediation. This is where reachability analysis and risk-based prioritization become crucial tools for optimizing cybersecurity strategies.
Understanding reachability in the context of corporate risk is increasingly important for enterprises, as it can significantly influence their risk management strategies. To protect critical data and infrastructure from unauthorized access, organizations often implement firewalls and multiple layers of security. However, business objectives and the complexity of the security architecture necessitate that some of these assets are more reachable than others. This access hierarchy is known as reachability.
