Forward Enterprise 
for Federal Networks

Verify the status of mission-critical networks –instantly and continuously –
 with Forward Enterprise

Instant and continuous network verification

Expanding multi-cloud approaches and the promise of instant scalability, mobility, and efficiency for agile, mission-ready services makes it hard for IT teams to secure and manage their evolving, hybrid networks

Current tools can’t fully meet the scale and complexity of federal network silos, on-premises systems, and multiple clouds. Users, devices, applications, boundaries, and policies shift daily. 
Network, security, and cloud teams need a new, more efficient way to visualize and verify that networks can be trusted to support agency missions. 

Forward Enterprise’s digital twin, a mathematically accurate network model, provides agencies with complete network transparency. A digital twin lets federal IT teams visualize, verify, search, and predict network behaviors at the speed and efficiency they need to secure government data and be more responsive to changing missions.
  • PROACTIVELY ENFORECE ZERO-TRUST POLICIES ACROSS DISTRIBUTED AGENCY ESTATES

    ✓  See through the chaos of sprawling, siloed IT – no matter the size or diversity, Forward Enterprise can scale it, normalize the data, and make it easy to understand

    ✓  Understand traffic flows and behaviors to head off unintentional security violations before bad actors can find them

    ✓  Prove sensitive workflows or high side networks are isolated with documentation

    EASE THE BURDEN OF TIME-INTENSIVE MANUAL NETWORK PROCESSES ON OVERSTRETCHED IT TEAMS

    ✓ Maintain compliance without time-consuming manual data calls using purpose-built intent checks with proactive action alerts if violations are found

    ✓ Troubleshoot issues faster without escalating by using a plain language search for instant, actionable insight
  • TAME UNEXPECTED COSTS AND PERFORMANCE ISSUES FROM RAPIDLY EVOLVING MISSION IT

    ✓ Overcome the difficulty of finding inefficient pathways or expensive routing errors with pathway transparency that can be shared with providers for accountability

    ✓ Build a library of best practices and automate compliance for more control over future performance

    VERIFY THE SECURITY OF APPLICATION PROVISIONING TO QUICKLY MEET CHANGING MISSION NEEDS

    ✓ Sandbox, test, and prevent unintended consequences or outages

    ✓ Use purpose-built intent checks to prove app safety in seconds

Forward Enterprise provides a smarter approach to network assurance at the speed federal missions demand

Scaling hybrid cloud environments to meet new demands for services, remote work, and support warfighter operations means IT teams need to manage and secure very different environments. As cloud smart adoption continues, a centralized network model can help provide visibility across the blend of on-premises systems and legacy IT, cloud, and cloud-native applications, and different cloud providers and security tools to efficiently defend sensitive data and improve performance without new certifications and expertise.

Forward Enterprise’s intuitive, context-rich digital twin scales the complexity of large, distributed multi-vendor clouds and on-premises environments to provide unified visibility across agency estates and helps IT move fast to uncover insight needed to act.
  • A DIGITAL TWIN THAT SCALES ON-PREM AND CLOUD WITH MATHEMATICAL CERTAINTY

    Multi-vendor network model that scales distributed complexity and normalizes data across federal on-premises data centers, legacy systems, and multi-vendor clouds so IT teams can cut through the noise and data fidelity questions and get to the action fast.

    SINGLE AUTOMATED SOURCE OF TRUTH

    Unified, mathematically accurate view with automated analysis to verify network behaviors at the speed federal agencies need to secure constantly evolving architectures from fast-moving threats. Understand all potential traffic and instantly troubleshoot issues.
  • SIMPLE, FAST NETWORK QUERIES TURN NETWORK ENGINEERS INTO EXPERTS

    Say goodbye to old diagrams, siloed expertise, and frequent escalations with the ability to search complex networks like a database and get instant, context-rich answers. Diagnose quickly without escalation and free up senior architects to focus more time on projects that deliver mission value.

    PURPOSE-BUILT, AUTOMATED INTENT CHECKS TAKE OVER THE TIME-INTENSIVE NETWORK TASKS

    Custom verification checks can continuously audit and document the state of networks to prove compliance in seconds or provide actionable alerts when unintended violations are found. Additionally, custom verification checks can proactively certify the safety of new apps and updates in a sandbox environment for security checks developers can run on their own.

  • INTEGRATIONS AND APIs EXTEND EFFICIENCIES

    Splunk, ServiceNow, Itential, Ansible, and more with Forward’s REST APIs

    AT-A-GLANCE VISUALS AND DASHBOARDS SURFACE IMMEDIATE INSIGHT FOR AGENCY PRIORITIES

    Enforce zero-trust policies with a zone-to-zone security matrix and use executive dashboards to track the most important KPIs according to agency priorities

  • REWIND TIME, FAST FORWARD RESILIENCY WITHOUT WASTING RESOURCES

    In the case of a security event, go back in time for answers that prove innocence or provide rich context on the state of the network at different points in time for future threat prevention



A few ways federal agencies can put Forward Enterprise’s unified visibility and fast insight to work for immediate value

IT architectures help agencies move faster on critical priorities, such as increasing the productivity of federal workers and warfighters in the field or adopting cost-effective managed services. These architectures are good as long as mission services remain protected and surprises don’t consume limited budgets and resources. 

That’s easier said than done when managing agency network reconfigurations and new tools or accelerating SaaS release cycles and compliance mandates. Gaining centralized visibility and automated efficiencies is crucial to verify the security and performance of changing networks.
  • SEARCH YOUR ENTIRE HYBRID 
    MULTI-CLOUD FEDERAL NETWORK

    Search function

    Search network behavior, configuration, and state network-wide with an intuitive and powerful tool. Find any device on your network, including its connections and all forwarding behavior, for fast root-cause isolation and incident remediation. Perform complete end-to-end path analyses across your network for both on-prem and cloud infrastructure.

    VERIFY AND PROVE NETWORK INTENT IN SECONDS

    Verify function

    Verify that your network is configured and behaving exactly as intended across on-prem, cloud, and virtual overlay networks. Set, check, and customize policies for your entire network. Continuously audit your network and receive alerts of non-compliance.

  • PREDICT NETWORK BEHAVIOR AND UNDERSTAND IMPACTS BEFORE NEW RELEASES AND UPDATES

    Predict function

    Understand the outcome of network configuration changes for ACL and NAT environments. Proactively identify potential connectivity and security policy violations. Sandbox and test configurations and apps to determine their impact on traffic flow before production.

    POWERFUL FORENSICS WITH BEHAVIOR DIFFS TO PREVENT FUTURE THREATS

    Snapshot and Compare functions

    Set up predefined network scans to ensure configuration and state information – store snapshots for historical records. Behavior Diffs allow side-by-side comparison in one quick view of configuration file changes for any device, between any points in time. Identify what policy rules and behavior checks have changed between snapshots. Quickly see new device connections, topology changes and interface updates. Learn how routes are altered due to changes with the ability to filter results by VRF, next-hop address, IP destination, and more.


Learn more about how Forward Enterprise moves federal cybersecurity forward

VISIT FEDERAL NETWORK SECURITY PAGE

Use cases for federal network challenges

BLAST RADIUS DETECTION

Immediately identify compromised hosts and other potentially compromised devices and contain threats to your enterprise network — fast


READ USE CASE

ZERO TRUST VALIDATION

Cut through the noise of complex and increasingly distributed architectures to rapidly visualize security postures and verify compliance with zero
trust policies.

READ USE CASE

ZONE-TO-ZONE SECURITY MATRIX

Determine, at a glance, which zones in your network have full, partial, or no connectivity and whether network policies for security, including for zero trust, are working as expected.

READ USE CASE

AUTOMATED SECURE APPLICATION PROVISIONING

Expedite the app deployment cycle, while also reducing security risks for your users -- and your orgnianziation — through continuous monitoring and validation of the app’s security posture post-deployment.
READ USE CASE

CVE VULNERABILITY AND 
EXPOSURE MANAGEMENT

The at-a-glance insight available through the Forward platform is critical for agency environments in which the sheer number of vulnerabilities arising each day can quickly outpace IT teams’ ability to respond.
READ USE CASE

CLOUD SECURITY VERIFICATION

Visualize topology and hop by hop traffic analysis on-prem, on-prem to cloud, and cloud to cloud; all in a single view. Verify zone-to-zone security policy compliance, on prem and in the cloud. Prove compliance in the cloud.

WATCH WEBINAR

Cloud Capabilities

Delivering a digital twin of federal hybrid multi-cloud environments and solving the problem of network visibility across clouds
EXPLORE FORWARD NETWORKS CLOUD CAPABILITIES FOR FEDERAL

Replace outdated network maps with a mathematically accurate network model

Transform network verification

The network digital twin from Forward Network provides a single source of truth with automated, actionable analysis. It’s the difference between time-consuming, reactive troubleshooting and proactive network assurance and verification. 
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Watch a Forward Fix

Real network engineers demonstrate how to solve everyday problems with Forward Enterprise.
  • STREAMLINING AND SCALING FEDERAL AUTOMATION WORKFLOWS [4:46]

    See how Forward helps teams fully realize the benefits of workflow automation by delivering a consistent method for collecting and parsing device configuration and state information which is presented in a vendor-agnostic data model for automation workflows. 

    BUILDING A CUSTOM SPLUNK APP TO TRIGGER COLLECTIONS [2:39]

    Forward Networks API integration with Splunk makes it easy to create custom apps and alerts that trigger new collections when events such as configuration changes take place.  



    NETWORK QUERY ENGINE MAKES AUDITING FEDERAL NETWORKS A CINCH [3:46]

    The Forward Networks Query Engine Library is a repository of common use cases that solve the most frequent customer issues. Using the library, engineers can select pre-defined queries and instantly audit the network to ensure it's behaving as expected. 

  • SPLUNK INTEGRATION MAKES UNDERSTANDING BGP EASY [4:04]

    Understanding a BGP Event on a specific device and its impact across the network is made simple using a custom Splunk app integrated with Forward Enterprise. Scot Wilson shows how to create the app which allows engineers to visualize event impact overlayed on network topology. API integration makes it easy to visualize and understand the information using assistance checks. 

    MERGED SNAPSHOTS UNIFY FEDERAL ESTATES [6:16]

    Visualizing the detailed topology and device configuration and state information for your entire network is now one click away.  Merging the snapshots allows operators to understand packet behavior across multiple networks, visualize physical topology, and investigate logical packet behavior. Technical Solution Architect Scot Wilson demonstrates how to use this feature to understand traffic in tunnels and underlay transport layers. 

    AUTOMATED NON-COMPLIANCE DETECTION ALERTS FOR CONTINUOUS ATOS [6:05]

    Automated Compliance checks within the Forward Networks platform provide continuous verification that the network is compliant with security policies and that configuration drift has not wormed its way into your network. Technical Solutions Architect Eric Gates demonstrates how to set them up in minutes for never-ending peace of mind. 



See for yourself

Schedule a demo with a product expert and see what Forward can do for your network.
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