Cybersecurity is front and center as part of our national defense strategy. Civilian networks responsible for life-sustaining services such as water and power must be protected with the same vigor as networks that host sensitive data.
To accomplish this the Department of Homeland Services developed the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program in 2012. CDM supports government-wide and agency-specific efforts to provide risk-based, cost-effective cybersecurity solutions for protecting federal civilian networks by providing financial assistance to civilian government agencies as they focus on improving their security posture by:
Forward Networks is an approved vendor in all 8 functional capability categories. The data collected and analyzed by the Forward Networks platform is instrumental to ensuring that the network security posture matches expectations.
Forward Enterprise helps agencies comply with CISA Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 23-1. Using Forward Enterprise, security professionals can identify vulnerabilities before becoming a threat. Because Forward Networks can scan your network multiple times per day without performance degradation, it delivers timely, actionable alerts to security professionals. In conjunction with third-party application integrations, the level of detail in alerts empowers engineers to remediate any errant configurations or known critical vulnerabilities before they cause an incident. The three most popular security use cases are:
To learn more about Forward Networks’ work with federal agencies, visit https://www.forwardnetworks.com/federal/.
Security has been a top concern for years, and the reasons for this focus are increasingly clear. Government agencies are being asked by the President and governing agencies to make changes that will protect the integrity of their network and the safety of the nation.
Most recently, the Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency (CISA) issued Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 23-1. The BOD requires agencies to have a comprehensive accounting of what is in their networks. Given the size and complexity of agency networks, this is a challenging mandate to comply with. Most tools currently available cannot gather the required data in a timely manner, often taking several days to complete a scan that reaches all network endpoints. Even then these scans lack critical data required for an appropriately strong security posture.
It’s often said security is a journey not a destination; that’s also true of compliance. There are many elements, but the most important is accessible, actionable data. Forward Enterprise has several features that help agencies successfully comply with directives and enforce their security posture.
Forward Enterprise helps agencies comply by using Forward Enterprise; security professionals can identify vulnerabilities before they become a threat. Because Forward Networks can scan your network multiple times per day without performance degradation, it delivers timely, actionable alerts to security professionals. In conjunction with third-party application integrations, the level of detail in alerts empowers engineers to remediate any errant configurations or known critical vulnerabilities before they cause an incident. The three most popular security use cases are:
To learn how Forward Networks can help your agency comply with BOD 23-1 read our solution guide or book a private meeting where our federal technical experts will focus specifically on how to address your concerns.
www.forwardnetworks.com/federal
By George Lawton, VentureBeat
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]
By George Lawton, 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]
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."
For information about the Forward Networks please visit www.forwardnetworks.com/security. For information about the annual Fortress Cyber Security Awards, please visit https://www.bintelligence.com/fortress-cyber-security-awards.
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.
About Business Intelligence Group
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.
Like many companies, we are adapting to and creating our new normal. At Forward Networks, this will be a hybrid work strategy, where employees will have flexibility but come into the office two or three days a week. Our new approach is based on employee input and designed to create a collaborative environment while protecting the work from home flexibility many employees have come to love. You may wonder, why are we opting for a hybrid workplace?
A hybrid work strategy offers a multitude of benefits that best creates a happy and productive environment for all employees. It enables employees who require in-person collaboration – such as engineering departments – to come into the office and work on projects as needed while affording the option to work at home on days when they need to concentrate on individual tasks.
This approach also helps us recruit the best talent for the job without being tied to specific regions. As we’ve embraced remote collaboration technologies, our teams are finding ways to build relationships and collaborate effectively no matter where they are located.
In the past year, we’ve proven that engineering can be done productively in a remote setting, allowing us to expand our recruitment pool nationwide. For these employees, a hybrid work environment may mean coming into the office monthly or quarterly so they can build relationships with coworkers from all departments without having to move. As a result, Forward Networks’ workforce grew by approximately 40% during the pandemic.
While hybrid workplaces are beneficial, they can come with challenges. Cybersecurity is among the biggest concerns of hybrid or remote working and rightfully so. Cybersecurity risks have undoubtedly increased as a dispersed workforce makes data management trickier. With cybercrimes becoming more sophisticated over time, these risks will only continue to become more abundant.
Luckily, security is an inherent part of our culture, and employees help each other reduce risk. We believe that security is not only technology driven – it’s a mindset. Even the smallest efforts can go a long way. For example, reminding each other to use secure links for virtual meetings. It’s critical for companies, including ours, to have guard rails built into operations so that they can approach security and potential threats in a proactive manner.
Beyond cybersecurity, remote or hybrid work can bring new challenges for leadership. Management is going the extra mile to create an inclusive culture that has a conscious approach to relationship building.
Transition is inevitable in the business world, but when companies need a stable culture, hiring individuals that fit is critical. At Forward Networks, even as we conduct a fully remote hiring process, we work hard to get to know the candidate beyond what was on their resume. This ensures that we hire individuals that are the right fit in terms of attitude and aptitude. New hires often tell management that they’re really happy to be here and the experience of joining is unlike anything they’ve experienced in their careers; they feel “at home,” which is the highest compliment we could ask for.
We’re also dedicated to creating an environment where people can work in the manner that allows them to be their most productive, while embracing their personality. This involves fostering good communication and creating an open, honest environment that embraces each individual’s personal and professional contributions. For example, we strive to emulate the in-person experience as much as possible, such as setting up social channels solely for employees to get out of their work mode and catch up on topics outside of the workplace. Similarly, hosting game nights (e.g., remote bingo, Family Feud, Name that Tune, etc.) or cocktail hours are some of the activities we’ve put in place to bridge the gap.
At the end of the day, we are people first and professionals second. It is mission-critical to give people the flexibility to work the way they need to – enabling employees to work as their best selves. That way, employees are able to thrive at work, which ultimately helps the company achieve long-term success.
Interested in joining our team? Check out our open positions on our careers page.
Discovered on December 9, 2021, the log4Shell vulnerability is one of the most talked-about vulnerabilities in computing. Because simple text can be used to take control of a device and download anything that is Internet-accessible, companies are taking it seriously. As they should – log4Shell has the maximum CVSS score of 10 (CVSS, Common Vulnerability Scoring System, is an industry-standard for ranking vulnerabilities).
The threat is real, and so is the hunt for information – a Google search turns up almost 4 million results. It’s likely that every enterprise is impacted at some level, and most teams have taken the obvious steps to protect themselves.
But given that most global enterprises have hundreds of devices that have simply been forgotten – it’s very likely that there are entry points lurking unbeknownst in your network.
One of our customers, a global enterprise with 20 data centers and hundreds of thousands of devices, ran a scan to detect vulnerable devices. The scan turned up a vulnerable host, but the team didn’t know its physical location. When your network spans the globe, trying to find one IP address is like flying into a city trying to find one person by going door to door. It’s not a task many people would want, but the company needed to locate and remediate the host.
The security leader responsible for remediation didn’t have weeks to track this device down. Instead, he ran a simple search in Forward Enterprise that located the device in seconds. It was a ghost server in a lab that everyone thought was decommissioned.
Rather than being vulnerable for weeks and spending countless hours trying to track the device down, they identified the problem, located the device, and powered it down the same day – and they were able to do all of this in a “self-service” fashion because the Forward interface is easy to use and understand.
In addition to the saved hours – they know with mathematical certainty that the vulnerability is remediated and they are no longer at risk.
Learn more about how Forward Enterprise can help your security operations team remediate log4Shell by reading the use case.
Or, if you have no time to waste (and who does?), request a demo and we’ll show you exactly how we can help in your situation.
Is it just me or is the announcement of a significant CVE becoming a holiday tradition? Discovered on December 9, 2021 by Minecraft players, the Apache Log4Shell vulnerability is uniquely insidious because it infects servers which are traditionally well insulated from attacks, perceived as unreachable by intruders, and not at risk for CVEs. Log4Shell is an entirely different can of worms that proves this assumption wrong.
Using simple text-based chats, Log4Shell essentially gives bad actors the keys to your kingdom by enabling them to download anything web accessible and gain ACE (arbitrary code execution) privileges. At that point, Java reads the log entry as a command and executes it, empowering bad actors to download anything that is network accessible from the infected host.
You’ve probably updated your software and even investigated the vendors you think may have been vulnerable. That means that your network is safe today, but how do you know what was previously at risk? Without historical snapshots and diffing capabilities, you don’t. And that means you may actually still be exposed.
Forward Networks customers are not guessing – they are using Forward Enterprise to verify if all hosts, including the ones potentially breached, can communicate with the Internet. Consequently, those hosts that are Internet accessible are the ones that need to be immediately looked at and remediated. Using the blast radius feature, Forward customers can determine in seconds where in the infrastructure compromised end-hosts can and could have reached. Additionally, the network snapshots collected over time provide the necessary data to identify all devices that may have been previously infected or communicated with an infected host.
Forward Networks does not use Log4j in our shipping software (including past versions). If you are a Forward Networks customer and have additional questions, please contact your Customer Support Architect or email support@forwardnetworks.com.
There are almost 165,000 known CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) listed in the NIST Database. In October of 2020, the NSA published a list of the 25 CVEs most likely to be exploited by Nation-State attackers in China; Checkpoint software found over 3 million attempts to penetrate networks or steal files using these known vulnerabilities. But I don’t think I need statistics to scare anyone into thinking that CVE management is critical to security -- the problem is how can you stay on top of the onslaught? The volume of alerts combined with network complexity makes it nearly impossible to sort through which pose a significant risk to the enterprise and which are not applicable to your company’s networking estate.
All too often, the process of remediating alerts — locating devices, applying the patches, and implementing other fixes — gets pushed to the back burner because security teams are pulled away to focus on seemingly more pressing matters (what’s on fire at the moment). This creates an ideal situation for malicious actors constantly on the hunt for any security gap they can exploit.
Forward Networks has a way for security and network engineers to manage and prioritize CVE alerts easily, effectively, and confidently. Our Forward Enterprise platform now features operating systems (OS) vulnerability mitigation functionality. In one dashboard, security operations teams can see, at a glance, all the key details they need to know about the latest CVE alerts — from the severity level of the alert to how many and which devices in your network are impacted by it.
The OS vulnerability mitigation functionality is informed by the NIST National Vulnerability Database and the device and configuration data we collect through our platform from your enterprise network. With access to up-to-date, actionable vulnerability insights automatically curated within Forward Enterprise, your security and network teams can act fast to prioritize and fix severe vulnerabilities. They’ll also know for sure which fixes they can set aside temporarily without creating unnecessary risk for the business.
Monitoring and prioritizing CVE alerts requires vigilance — but it shouldn’t be a full-time job for highly skilled (and expensive) operations professionals. See our use case to learn more about the CVE vulnerability mitigation functionality that’s now available in the Forward Enterprise platform.