Forward Networks’ flagship product, Forward Enterprise, delivers a vendor-agnostic “digital twin” of the network, designed for both cloud and on-prem networks
The network, once seen as little more than plumbing in the datacenter, is at the center of distributed IT operations. Ensuring network operations and protecting them from cyberattacks has become paramount to modern enterprises.
“You can almost imagine that networks would be on par with power and water and electricity and that kind of stuff,” Nikhil Handigol, co-founder of Forward Networks, tells The Next Platform. “You cannot imagine a modern business functioning without its network functioning. On one hand, networks were super critical for big businesses and are becoming increasingly critical. On the other hand, they’re becoming more and more complex and more and more fragile, both from a connectivity perspective and from a security perspective. From a connectivity perspective, they were so fragile that one misconfiguration could take the entire network down. It’s still the case.”... [READ MORE ON THE NEXT PLATFORM]
This is the second of a two-part series. Read part 1 about the current state of networking and how digital twins are being used to help automate the process, and the shortcomings involved.
As noted in part 1, digital twins are starting to play a crucial role in automating the process of bringing digital transformation to networking infrastructure. Today, we explore the future state of digital twins – comparing how they’re being used now with how they can be used once the technology matures.... [READ MORE on VentureBeat]
Designing, testing, and provisioning updates to data digital networks depends on numerous manual and error-prone processes. Digital twins are starting to play a crucial role in automating more of this process to help bring digital transformation to network infrastructure. These efforts are already driving automation for campus networks, wide area networks (WANs), and commercial wireless networks... [READ MORE on VentureBeat]
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Aug. 8, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Great Place to Work® and Fortune magazine have honored Forward Networks as one of the 2022 Best Small Workplaces. This is Forward Networks' first time being named to this prestigious list, this year coming in at 20th place nationally. Earning a spot means that Forward Networks is one of the best companies to work for in the country.
To determine the Best Small Workplaces list, Great Place to Work analyzed the survey responses of over 30,000 employees from Great Place to Work-Certified™ companies with 10 to 99 U.S. employees. In that survey, 100% of Forward Networks' employees said Forward Networks is a great place to work. This number is 43% higher than the average U.S. company.
"Everyone at Forward Networks is excited to creating a new software category that fundamentally changes how networks are managed," said David Erickson, Co-founder and CEO, Forward Networks. "Our shared passion is the foundation of the supportive and empowering work environment we strive to continuously improve. We're honored to be named to the National Best Places to Work list."
The Best Small Workplaces list is highly competitive. Great Place to Work is the only company culture award in America that selects winners based on how fairly employees are treated. Companies are assessed on how well they are creating a great employee experience that cuts across race, gender, age, disability status, or any aspect of who employees are or what their role is.
"It's not the size of an organization that makes it great, but how the organization treats its people," says Michael C. Bush, CEO of Great Place to Work. "And these small workplaces have proven that the inspiring cultures they've created go head-to-head with those of any large corporation. Leaders at these companies put their people first, and in return, achieve stronger business results than the average workplace."
In June of this year, Forward Networks was also ranked as one of the Best Workplaces in the Bay Area.
About Forward Networks Forward Networks is revolutionizing the way large networks are managed. Forward's advanced software delivers a "digital twin" of the network, enabling network operators to ensure that the network is agile, predictable, and secure. The platform supports devices from all major networking vendors and cloud operators, including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.
Forward Networks was founded in 2013 by four Stanford Ph.D. graduates and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Investors include Goldman Sachs, Andreessen Horowitz, Threshold Ventures, and A. Capital.
About the Best Small Workplaces™ Great Place to Work selected the Best Small Workplaces by analyzing the survey responses of over 30,000 employees from Great Place to Work-Certified™ companies with 10 to 99 U.S. employees. Company rankings are derived from 60 employee experience questions within the Great Place to Work Trust Index™ survey. Great Place to Work determines its lists using its proprietary For All methodology to evaluate and certify thousands of organizations in America's largest ongoing annual workforce study, based on over 1 million survey responses and data from companies representing more than 6.1 million employees this year alone. Read the full methodology.
To get on this list next year, start here.
About Great Place to Work® Great Place to Work is the global authority on workplace culture. Since 1992, it has surveyed more than 100 million employees worldwide and used those deep insights to define what makes a great workplace: trust. Its employee survey platform empowers leaders with the feedback, real-time reporting and insights they need to make data-driven people decisions. Everything it does is driven by the mission to build a better world by helping every organization become a great place to work For All™.
SANTA CLARA, Calif., June 20, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Great Place to Work and Fortune magazine have honored Forward Networks as one of this year's Best Workplaces in the Bay Area. This is Forward Networks' first time applying for and being named to this prestigious list. Earning a spot means that Forward Networks is one of the best companies to work for headquartered in the highly competitive Bay Area.
This year's Best Workplaces in the Bay Area award is based on employee feedback collected through America's largest ongoing annual workforce study of over 1 million employee survey responses and data from companies representing more than 6.1 million U.S. employees. In that survey, 100% of Forward Networks' employees said Forward Networks is a great place to work. This number is 43% higher than the average U.S. company.
"We're thrilled and humbled that every one of our employees have said we're a great place to work," said David Erickson, Co-founder and CEO, Forward Networks. "Creating an outstanding company culture has always been a priority for the founders; being named to this prestigious list in a region known for taking care of employees the first time we've applied is a phenomenal recognition of our efforts."
The Best Workplaces in the Bay Area list is highly competitive. Great Place to Work, the global authority on workplace culture, selected the list using rigorous analytics and confidential employee feedback. Companies were only considered if they are a Great Place to Work-Certified™ organization and headquartered in the Bay Area.
Great Place to Work is the only company culture award in America that selects winners based on how fairly employees are treated. Companies are assessed on how well they are creating a great employee experience that cuts across race, gender, age, disability status, or any aspect of who employees are or what their role is.
"As employee demands and expectations have dramatically changed over the past year, these companies have risen to the occasion—and it's not been easy," says Kim Peters, executive vice president of global recognition, research & strategic partnerships at Great Place to Work. "Their hard work and dedication to listen to and care for the well-being of every employee, and support them in a way that's meaningful to all, is the standard all organizations will be held to."
About Forward Networks
Forward Networks is revolutionizing the way large networks are managed. Forward's advanced software delivers a "digital twin" of the network, enabling network operators to verify intent, predict network behavior, and simplify network management. The platform supports devices from all major networking vendors and cloud operators, including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.
Forward Networks was founded in 2013 by four Stanford Ph.D. graduates and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Investors include Goldman Sachs, Andreessen Horowitz, Threshold Ventures, and A. Capital.
About the Best Workplaces in the Bay Area™
Great Place to Work selected the Best Workplaces in the Bay Area by gathering and analyzing confidential survey responses from its study of thousands of companies representing more than 6.1 million U.S. employees at Great Place to Work-Certified™ organizations. Companies must be headquartered in the Bay Area to be eligible. Company rankings are derived from 60 employee experience questions within the Great Place to Work Trust Index™ survey. Read the full methodology.
Great Place to Work is the global authority on workplace culture. Since 1992, it has surveyed more than 100 million employees worldwide and used those deep insights to define what makes a great workplace: trust. Its employee survey platform empowers leaders with the feedback, real-time reporting and insights they need to make data-driven people decisions. Everything it does is driven by the mission to build a better world by helping every organization become a great place to work For All™.
By Craig Johnson, Senior Technical Solutions Architect, Forward Networks
Visibility and complexity, problems that have plagued cybersecurity and IT practitioners for decades, are still huge issues. A 2021 IDG survey found that 81% of practitioners struggle to identify the depth of a breach, and 68% find it challenging to identify what devices are in the network and its topology. This is not surprising. The network is now a piece of critical infrastructure that can't afford to go down, and its depth and breadth in the cloud and on premise is not something that many organizations could have imagined in the early ‘90s.
A Problem Already Too Big, and Growing
Security practitioners have always maintained that you cannot secure what you can't see, but what we can't see keeps growing. Take common vulnerabilities as an example. As of June 10, 2022, there were over 177,000 known CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) listed in the NIST Database. While security teams KNOW that remediating these vulnerabilities should be a priority, keeping up with numbers that high just isn't scalable for even the largest and most well-funded organizations.
While statistics may vary, security organizations are dealing with almost 55 critical vulnerabilities PER DAY and some recent data shows that organizations are taking nearly two months to remediate critical risk vulnerabilities, with an average mean time to remediate (MTTR) of 60 days. This is due to sheer volume, as well as difficulty in sharing prioritized, actionable information in a manner that is easy for network engineers to understand and act on. For example, when the network team receives the information, it's a raw report lacking specificity (e.g. which alerts are new). Without this level of detail, the process is still time-consuming and prone to human error... [READ MORE on VMBLOG]
SANTA CLARA, Calif., June 7, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Business Intelligence Group today announced that Forward Networks has won the 2022 Fortress Cyber Security Awards in the Network Security category. The industry awards program sought to identify and reward the world's leading companies and products that are working to keep our data and electronic assets safe among a growing threat from hackers.
Forward Networks is the only provider of network digital twin technology that delivers network agility, predictability, and security for on-premises and multi-cloud environments. The Forward Enterprise platform was designed to simplify the management of large, complex, multi-vendor networks and mitigates the biggest issue businesses face with network and security operations: risk. It collects detailed topology, configuration, and state information across the entire infrastructure, and uses that information to create a mathematical model of the network. This "digital twin" serves as the single source of truth for the network, and is presented in an actionable way that helps network and security professionals identify, contain, and prevent security incidents with greater ease and efficiency than ever. Security-focused features enable security engineers to determine the blast radius of compromised devices immediately, view an always up-to-date security posture matrix, prioritize remediation of cybersecurity vulnerabilities (CVEs), analyze their end-to-end network segmentation policies, including end-points, and verify compliance in the cloud.
"Our network digital twin provides a single source of truth across on-premises and multi-cloud environments to reduce the time it takes for security professionals to diagnose and remediate vulnerabilities while allowing them to prove compliance with mathematical certainty," said Chiara Regale, vice president of product and user experience at Forward Networks. "Being recognized as a Network Security Leader in the 2022 Fortress Cyber Security Awards is an incredible honor, as it validates that our efforts to give network and security professionals fast, easy access to actionable insights are valued by the industry and security professionals."
"We are so proud to name Forward Networks as a winner in the 2021 Fortress Cyber Security Awards program," said Maria Jimenez, Chief Nominations Officer, Business Intelligence Group. "As our society continues to evolve and become more reliant on networks and data, companies like Forward are critical at providing the protection and trust consumers demand."
To learn more about Forward Networks security capabilities please visit us at RSA conference in booth 3217, Moscone Center, San Francisco CA June 6 – 9, or request a live demo.
About Forward Networks
Forward Networks is revolutionizing the way large networks are managed. Forward's advanced software delivers a "digital twin" of the network, enabling network operators to verify intent, predict network behavior, and simplify network management. The platform supports devices from all major networking vendors and cloud operators, including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.
Forward Networks was founded in 2013 by four Stanford Ph.D. graduates and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Investors include Goldman Sachs, Andreessen Horowitz, Threshold Ventures, and A. Capital.
The Business Intelligence Group was founded with the mission of recognizing true talent and superior performance in the business world. Unlike other industry award programs, these programs are judged by business executives having experience and knowledge. The organization's proprietary and unique scoring system selectively measures performance across multiple business domains and rewards those companies whose achievements stand above those of their peers.
SOURCE Forward Networks, Inc.
Forward Networks, a provider of network digital twin technology that delivers network agility, predictability, and security for on-premises and multi-cloud environments, made an announcement this week around new capabilities added to the Forward Enterprise platform that will give security and network operations professionals a single, actionable and contextual view of the network.
To learn more, VMblog reached out to David Erickson, the co-founder and CEO of Forward Networks.
VMblog: Can you describe what you announced this week? And what does it mean for customers?
David Erickson: This week we announced new capabilities for our award-winning Forward Enterprise platform, that will help network and security professionals better understand and remediate vulnerabilities throughout the network, including endpoints. We've integrated with Rapid7 to combine end-device vulnerability data with robust and always-up-to-date connectivity analysis. Additionally, we've enhanced flexibility to define a security posture matrix. Now the security posture can be using the L2 through L4 segmentation methodology many enterprises have already employed in their network, e.g. VRFs, on-premises and cloud subnets, and cloud security groups. Forward Enterprise also now supports L7 path search capabilities using attributes such as user IDs, user group IDs, and application IDs to provide more granular connectivity insight... [READ MORE on VMBLOG]
New Product Features and Rapid7 Integration Provide End-to-End Security Posture Verification and Enhanced Visibility to Help Engineers Accurately Prioritize Remediation
SANTA CLARA, Calif., June 2, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Forward Networks, the only provider of network digital twin technology that delivers network agility, predictability, and security for on-premises and multi-cloud environments, today announced new capabilities within the Forward Enterprise platform that give security and network operations professionals a single, actionable and contextual view of the network.
By integrating with Rapid7, a leading provider of security analytics and automation, Forward Networks is combining end-device vulnerability data with robust and always-up-to-date connectivity analysis to help enterprise organizations address the challenges of the security talent shortage and flood of unactionable data. The combined data uniquely positions security teams to prioritize remediation efforts with mathematical accuracy.
"Forward Networks is the only company with a mathematically-based network digital twin that can accurately model current and possible network behaviors, information critical for security teams who need to act quickly and accurately," said David Erickson, Co-founder, and CEO of Forward Networks. "With this information just mouse clicks away, security teams can better assess the vulnerability of their network and prioritize remediation and prevention efforts by focusing on the exposures that present the greatest possible risk. Modeling a diverse group of hardware vendors, cloud providers, and integration partners, Forward Networks uniquely serves the needs of network, security, and cloud operations teams with a single source of truth so they can work strategically and proactively."
There are many tools that evaluate device vulnerabilities, but without the knowledge of how that device is connected to the network, security teams only have a limited view of potential exposure. Often, they choose to focus on keeping devices up to date no matter what vulnerabilities are detected, or they focus on vulnerabilities without considering the exposure of individual systems and devices. With the Rapid7 integration, Forward Networks is the only company that can show an organization's actual risk including on-premises, multi-cloud, and SD-WAN in an actionable single screen. This type of data presentation helps teams focus on the work that will have the most impact on the network.
Enhanced flexibility to define security posture matrix: In addition to using firewall zones to determine areas with full connectivity, partial connectivity or full isolation, the posture can now be defined using network entities like VRFs, on-premises, and cloud subnets, and cloud security groups.
L7 Security Analysis: To help offer administrators more granular control and visibility, Forward Enterprise now supports L7 path search capabilities. Administrators can use the same procedures as L2-L4 path tracing to construct intelligent queries that deliver detailed connectivity and security posture also when security policies are defined using Layer 7 constructs like URLs, App-Ids, User-Groups, and User-Ids. Time saved on defining the problem can be spent solving it and proactively enhancing network performance.
Forward Enterprise is designed to simplify the management of large, complex, multi-vendor networks. It mitigates the biggest issue businesses face with network operations: risk. By creating a mathematical model of the entire network infrastructure, the software delivers a "digital twin" that serves as the single source of truth for the network. The actionable information presented in the platform helps engineers ensure their network is agile, predictable, and secure.
Forward Networks' new security features and Rapid7 integration will be available in July, and will be offered as part of standard licensing at no additional cost.
About Forward Networks
Forward Networks is revolutionizing the way large networks are managed. Forward's advanced software delivers a "digital twin" of the network, enabling network operators to verify intent, predict network behavior, and simplify network management. The platform supports devices from all major networking vendors and cloud operators, including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.
Forward Networks was founded in 2013 by four Stanford Ph.D. graduates and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Investors include Goldman Sachs, Andreessen Horowitz, Threshold Ventures, and A. Capital.
Forward Enterprise Makes the Cloud More Agile, Predictable, and Secure
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Feb. 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Forward Networks, the only company offering visibility and intent capabilities across the entire network estate, including on-premises, hybrid-cloud, private cloud, public cloud, and multi-cloud instances, today announced enhancements to the Forward Enterprise platform. Forward Enterprise now provides unprecedented visibility into network configuration and behavior in an actionable, vendor-agnostic format, enabling all organizations to conduct business in the cloud with certainty. In addition, the new cloud capabilities give IT teams a 360-degree view of both physical and virtual environments, as well as a single pane of glass for end-to-end in-depth connectivity analysis and policy and security verification.
Forward Enterprise creates a digital twin of an enterprise environment across on-premises devices, as well as hybrid multi-cloud environments. IT teams can instantly troubleshoot, verify intent, and predict network behavior by computing all possible traffic paths. The new platform enhancements also ensure security policies are enforced and prevent costly multi-cloud routing mistakes.
"For enterprises running large and complex networks, the cloud promised agility, economics, and security, but it has delivered complexity, expense, and risk," said David Erickson, Co-Founder and CEO, Forward Networks. "Our new platform enhancements were developed after listening to our customers detail their pain points and will help enterprises take the next right step in their cloud journey. They now have the same visibility and transparency into multi-cloud network traffic as on-prem environments and can be confident that they have the necessary information to make networks more reliable and secure."
CLOUD WITH CONFIDENCE Unlike the proprietary tools cloud providers offer subscribers, Forward Enterprise provides visibility, insight, and troubleshooting capabilities across multiple clouds. Using this insight, professionals can often remediate potential problems before they materialize, saving time and money. Forward Enterprise is the only platform on the market capable of building a software model of all major networking vendors and services at scale, including for hybrid multi-cloud environments. It also offers complete integration with the top cloud platforms, including Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). In addition, the platform computes all possible traffic paths for unparalleled insight into network behavior, including how some changes can impact network behavior and compliance verification.
Single source of truth (and pane of glass). Forward Enterprise allows Networking, Security, and Cloud professionals to look at the same data when troubleshooting or verifying network behaviors. The single pane of glass model delivers actionable information in an intuitive, vendor-agnostic manner.
Verify cloud security posture complies with corporate policy. IT Professionals now have unprecedented access to relevant infrastructure data to prevent incidents. Using the same award-winning custom verification capabilities that Forward Enterprise delivers on-prem, IT professionals can be alerted any time a cloud configuration is outside of the network compliance policy. Timely alerts enable teams to quickly remediate the situation before there's an incident.
Secure application provisioning in the cloud. Using custom verification and intent checks, developers and cloud operators can instantly ensure that new applications' paths adhere to corporate governance policies. Eliminating manual policy checks streamlines the process and positions companies to recognize revenue on new offerings faster.
Hop by Hop visibility. Traditionally, traffic flows moving from the on-premise environment to cloud, within the cloud, and between clouds are extremely difficult to analyze and verify. Through its mathematical modeling capabilities, the Forward Enterprise platform computes all possible traffic flows and provides detailed insight into how on-premises devices and cloud elements transform and direct traffic..
End expensive multi-cloud routing mistakes. Custom verification checks alert engineering immediately when a non-compliant multi-cloud traffic pattern is deployed. This allows enterprises to remediate the errant routing and prevents associated billing surprises.
The new capabilities are generally available today, and pricing is based on pay-as-you-grow cloud consumption that does not require a large upfront investment.
About Forward Networks Forward Networks is revolutionizing the way large networks are managed. Forward's advanced software delivers a "digital twin" of the network, enabling network operators to verify intent, predict network behavior, and simplify network management. The platform supports devices from all major networking vendors and cloud operators, including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.
Forward Networks was founded in 2013 by four Stanford Ph.D. graduates and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Investors include Goldman Sachs, Andreessen Horowitz, Threshold Ventures, and A. Capital.
