BLOG | Jun 26, 2025

Tackling Technical Debt to Secure and Streamline Federal Networks

How a Network Digital Twin Helps Federal Agencies Eliminate Technical Debt and Strengthen Cybersecurity

Register for the Live session Read the Blog

Dawn Slusher Senior Manager, Content Marketing and Analyst Relations

Who should read this post?

CISOs, CIOs, CSOs, and CTOs seeking to reduce cyber risk and manage network modernization costs more effectively.
IT and network leaders in federal agencies and Fortune 500 enterprises grappling with the hidden costs of aging infrastructure and fragmented inventory systems.
Security and operations teams looking to leverage network digital twin technology to identify vulnerabilities, plan budget cycles, and eliminate technical debt.

What is covered in this content?

A data-driven look at how technical debt impacts enterprise and federal IT security, budgets, and modernization goals.
Real-world case study of a Fortune 500 firm using a network digital twin to streamline budgeting, improve visibility, and reduce risk.
Clear explanation of how end-of-life (EOL) and end-of-support (EOS) data, paired with an accurate inventory, enables informed decision-making for CISOs and CTOs.

In today’s dynamic threat landscape, technical debt isn’t just a budgeting headache—it’s a growing national security risk. According to McKinsey, technical debt consumes up to 20% of engineering and DevOps capacity across large enterprises. For U.S. federal agencies—defense and civilian alike—the cost of carrying outdated, unsupported infrastructure goes far beyond inefficiency. It exposes sensitive environments to increased cyber risk, drives up operational expenses, and hampers modernization efforts. The lack of accurate visibility and authoritative network data leaves agencies scrambling to understand what they own, what’s at risk, and how to plan effectively for the future.

A true network digital twin creates a mathematically-accurate, vendor-agnostic digital copy of the network across on-prem and cloud environments. This always-accurate replica offers a unified view of your configuration and state data, vulnerabilities, and connectivity. With this insight, IT teams can identify security gaps, enforce policy compliance, and eliminate unnecessary spending on expired support contracts or unused equipment.

Budgeting should not be hard.

One Fortune 500 financial services company, which processes nearly a billion transactions annually, leveraged Forward Networks to transform its approach to budgeting and lifecycle planning. Managing over 35,000 switches, routers, and security devices across global regions, the company previously faced a massive annual scramble just to understand what needed replacing and when. With the digital twin, their IT leadership now performs “press-button” budget forecasting based on end-of-life (EOL) and end-of-support (EOS) data entered just once and reused indefinitely.

What once took weeks now takes hours.

Using the digital twin, the company generates quarterly and long-term cost projections—by region, platform, and vendor—with just a few clicks. This means not only tighter alignment with regional budgets, but also proactive planning for contract renewals and hardware refresh cycles. The time once spent generating a budget is now dedicated to more strategic projects and ensuring network security and resilience.

Technical debt is a cyber adversary’s best friend.

Federal agencies face even steeper consequences when aging infrastructure is ignored. As retired CIA advisor, Rodney Alto noted, “Technical debt is a cyber adversary’s best friend.” Unsupported devices lacking patches or visibility become entry points for attackers. Agencies often lack a formalized modernization program, relying instead on underfunded operations teams to handle both day-to-day firefighting and long-term refresh planning. Even the most meticulous and dedicated IT leaders can’t overcome today’s technical debt without automated, trustworthy data.

Forward’s digital twin technology solves this by delivering:

Authoritative inventory data across multi-vendor, hybrid environments
EOL/EOS visibility to drive timely upgrades and avoid unsupported hardware
Automated CVE analysis to prioritize mitigation efforts based on CVEs actually present in the network and exposure
Security posture assessment through continuous validation of firewall and segmentation policies

Federal CISOs and IT leaders can’t afford to ignore the rising costs—financial and strategic—of unmanaged technical debt. Whether you’re trying to secure mission-critical infrastructure or simply forecast your next fiscal year, accurate data is your strongest ally.

Join us live on Tuesday, August 5, 2025, at 11:00 a.m. PT to hear more from Rodney Alto and Renata Budko, Director of Product, Security at Forward Networks. Don’t worry if you can’t join live; the session will be available on demand.

Winner of over 20 industry awards, Forward Enterprise is the best-in-class network modeling software that customers trust

Visit our press room Hear from Gartner

From Fortune 50 institutions to top level federal agencies, users agree that Forward Enterprise is unlike any other network modeling software

Evaluate the reviews Chat with an expert