Zero Trust is an increasingly essential framework for securing modern networks, especially within federal civilian branch and defense organizations. Forward Networks provides a platform to help organizations adopt a Zero Trust approach, offering visibility into networks and ensuring proper access control, compliance, and automation. Though this post focuses on meeting the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Zero Trust requirements, it's helpful for any organizations that need to implement Zero Trust and manage their network infrastructure efficiently.

Key Insights on Zero Trust and Network Management

1. The Changing Landscape of Network Infrastructure

As networks have evolved, many components are now virtualized or located in data centers across the globe, adding complexity to management. Organizations must ensure accountability for all networking equipment, regardless of whether it’s in the cloud or on-premises. To maintain visibility and control, Forward Networks integrates with existing network environments using credentialed access to gather real-time data on network devices, routing, and configurations.

2. Introducing Zero Trust: A Holistic Security Model

Zero Trust is a security model designed to reduce the risk of unauthorized access by limiting trust levels across the network. The Department of Defense (DoD) and other government bodies have adopted Zero Trust frameworks, such as the DoD's Zero Trust Capability Model. This model emphasizes several key pillars: identity, devices, network, data, and automation. Each pillar plays a role in ensuring secure access across networks, protecting data, and preventing potential breaches.

Key Components of Forward Networks in Supporting Zero Trust

1. Device Pillar: Comprehensive Inventory and Access Control

One of the foundational elements of Zero Trust is maintaining a real-time, accurate inventory of devices connected to the network. Forward Networks enables organizations to perform credentialed scans to create a full, detailed inventory of network devices, including make, model, vendor, and location. The platform also pulls in critical information such as device security tags and compliance details.

Beyond simple inventory, Forward Networks normalizes and presents data from different vendors in a unified format, allowing users to view rules from Cisco firewalls and Palo Alto firewalls in a consistent manner. This ensures that access control policies are uniformly enforced across the network. Additionally, users can identify compliance issues and vulnerabilities in devices, leveraging data from sources like the National Vulnerability Database.

2. Network Pillar: Routing, Enforcement Points, and Intent Checks

A critical aspect of Zero Trust is ensuring that traffic from devices traverses the network through policy enforcement points, such as firewalls. Forward Networks allows users to visualize traffic flows and identify any paths that might bypass these enforcement points, ensuring that policy checks are not violated.

Using Forward Networks’ topology visualization and intent checks, users can analyze the traffic between locations, verify whether policies are being enforced, and confirm that traffic is not bypassing critical security controls. Additionally, the platform enables users to continuously monitor network segmentation and check for potential violations in real-time.

3. Automation Pillar: Streamlining Security Operations

Automation is a key component of any modern Zero Trust implementation. Forward Networks provides tools that enhance automation by integrating with vulnerability scanners like Rapid7 and Tenable. The platform allows users to assess exposure points, ensuring that vulnerable devices are not accessible to external threats.

With exposure analysis, security teams can view which devices on the network are exposed to potential attacks based on their vulnerabilities and connectivity to the wider network. This automation significantly reduces the time spent manually analyzing logs or firewall configurations, allowing teams to focus on higher-level security strategies.

Additionally, Forward Networks provides an API for integrating with other platforms, offering organizations the flexibility to automate routine tasks such as scanning for vulnerabilities, monitoring device compliance, or alerting security teams of potential risks.

4. User and Identity Management in Zero Trust

In a Zero Trust framework, user identity and behavior play a crucial role in determining access levels. Forward Networks tracks user-level access rules in firewalls and ensures that only authorized users can access certain parts of the network. For instance, it can enforce access control policies that restrict sensitive resources to specific user groups.

The Forward platform’s intent checks continuously monitor user-based rules, flagging any deviations from established policies. If it is possible for unauthorized users to gain access to restricted network areas, Forward Networks alerts administrators and provides detailed insights into what changes were made and how they affect network security.

Query

Here’s an example query of how Forward Networks can help with Zero Trust. When devices connect to the network, we must ensure the device posture is at an appropriate level before granting access. Basically, should we trust the device. But in order to do this we have to continuously make sure our network devices are configured for 802.1X or comply to connect. Forward Networks does this by building a digital twin of the network based on network device configuration and state. Any device attached to the network becomes either a link in the network topology or an edge port connecting to a end point. The edge ports are put into a vendor agnostic data model which allows for a simple query to list each host (ie. end point) connected to the network. The network device and interface for the connected host is then compared to your comply to connect policy.
Long story short, Forward finds all the hosts and simplifies checking if the network device is configured properly.

/**
 * @intent Shows hosts discovered on the network and verify the configuration of the device and interface for Comply to Connect
 */

c2cPattern = 
```
aaa authentication dot1x default group radius
dot1x system-auth-control
```;

c2cInterfacePattern = 
```
interface {name:string}
 access-session host-mode {mode:string}
```;

hosts =
foreach device in network.devices
foreach host in device.hosts
where isPresent(host.macAddress)
select {
  Device: device.name,
  Interfaces: host.interfaces,
};

foreach device in network.devices
where length(device.hosts )> 0
let c2c = hasBlockMatch(device.files.config, c2cPattern)
let c2cInt = (foreach match in blockMatches(device.files.config, c2cInterfacePattern) select match.data.name)
foreach host in device.hosts
select {
  "Device Name": device.name,
  "Interface Name": host.interfaces,
  "Device C2C Ready": c2c,
  "Host Interface C2C Ready": min(host.interfaces) in c2cInt,
  "Host Name": host.name,
  "Host IP": host.addresses,
  "Host MAC": host.macAddress,
  "MAC Vendor": ouiAssignee(host.macAddress)
}

Conclusion

Forward Networks plays a critical role in helping organizations implement and manage a Zero Trust security framework. By providing deep visibility into network devices, routing paths, and user access policies, the platform enables organizations to secure their networks against internal and external threats. Additionally, its automation capabilities streamline security processes and reduce the manual effort needed to monitor compliance and vulnerabilities.

For organizations looking to adopt Zero Trust, Forward Networks offers powerful tools to enforce security policies, ensure compliance, and maintain network visibility. Learn more by visiting Forward Networks and discover how the platform can support your Zero Trust journey.