Platform Discussions

Where My Network Survey Lessons Really Began: High-Security Environments I’ve spent years surveying some of the most complex, layered, and mission-critical networks in high-security environments. One of the most impactful experiences came from supporting the Air Force’s Base Infrastructure Management (BIM) initiative—a massive effort to modernize, standardize, and truly understand the state of base-area network (BAN).These networks weren’t designed once; they were designed over time—by different teams, different contractors, and different mission owners. Every environment had its own personality, its own quirks, and its own technical ghosts. And when BIM kicked off, it quickly

One of the greatest strengths of using a digital twin is being able to separate the routing and firewall behavior of a particular traffic flow.For example, suppose we have a web application that is not functioning properly because traffic from the Internet cannot reach a public virtual-ip that is mapped to private IP on a top-of-rack switch on port 80.We enter this path search in the Forward Network Search bar.We can see immediately that the traffic is being blocked on an edge firewall (atl-edge-fw01). However, we don’t know what would happen to the traffic if it is permitted through this firewall and continues along its path.Are all the routing protocols properly configured to deliver the traffic to its destination? Is there another firewall in the path that would block the traffic?We

The CISA advisory AA25‑239A details a sophisticated espionage campaign attributed to Chinese state-sponsored actors, collectively referred to as Salt Typhoon. Why Does Salt Typhoon Matter?These actors are targeting vulnerable network infrastructure — including routers and switches — to gain initial access, persist in the environment, move laterally, and exfiltrate sensitive data. In

As a valued customer, your insights play a crucial role in helping us continually enhance the Forward platform. We would appreciate it if you could take a few minutes to share your experience by leaving a review on G2.Your feedback is completely anonymous, and the review process takes only about 10 minutes. As a thank you, the first 50 reviewers with an approved review will receive a $50 USD gift card from G2. The G2 team will send your gift card once your review is published.

It always starts the same way. A team decides it’s time to get serious about network automation. They want to move fast, be resilient, eliminate toil, and reduce outages. Everyone’s on board. There’s talk of Python scripts, intent-based networking, even AI-powered predictions. But then someone finally asks the most basic question: “Do we actually know what IPs are in use?” Cue the awkward silence. Someone eventually mutters, “We’ve got a spreadsheet.”Honestly, I get it. I’ve been there. Most of us have. If you’ve got a few dozen devices and a small team, tracking IP allocations in Excel or Google Sheets might be enough. But once your environment scales—even modestly—that house of cards starts to wobble. Multiple admins start mak

Date: 10/14/2025Time: 6:00 PM – 6:30 PM Pacific (9:00 PM – 9:30 PM Eastern)Duration: Approximately 30 minutesForward Quest will undergo scheduled maintenance this evening to improve platform performance. During this time, the site may be temporarily unavailable.Please note: Avoid starting a new Quest challenge during the maintenance window. Any active sessions may be interrupted. Thanks for competing and leveling up in Forward Quest!

As part of my onboarding with Forward Networks, I’ve been exploring its native dashboarding capabilities. While the built-in dashboards offer useful insights, I’m not fully convinced they’ll meet the specific reporting needs of our leadership team.To address this, I’m evaluating two integration options:SharePoint: Using the Forward API to retrieve and transform data, then render dashboards tailored to our requirements directly within SharePoint. Grafana Cloud: If SharePoint proves limiting, I’ll explore leveraging our existing Grafana Cloud instance for more flexible visualization.Has anyone integrated Forward with either platform? I’d really appreciate any experiences, suggestions, or recommendations.Below is the format I think supports the SLT teams requirements.

Just posting up a simple Python script that allows you to make API calls from behind a proxy that also requires authentication.I have capitalised things that you need to customise.  Of course it isn’t good practice to have usernames and passwords in your script so this is just for illustrative purposes.import requestsimport base64api_user = "YourApiUser"api_pass = "YourApiPassword"api_creds = api_user + ":" + api_passapi_bytes = api_creds.encode("ascii")api_encoded = base64.b64encode(api_bytes)print(api_encoded)api_string = api_encoded.decode("ascii")proxies = { "http": "http://YourProxyUser:YourProxyPassword@ProxyServerIp:ProxyPort", "https": http://YourProxyUser:YourProxyPassword@ProxyServerIp:ProxyPort",}try: response = requests.get("https://fwd.app/api/networks", proxies=proxies, headers={"Authorization"

CISA just issued Emergency Directive 25‑03 mandating actions to identify and mitigate a campaign exploiting zero‑day vulnerabilities in Cisco ASA / Firepower devices. While the directive is written for federal agencies, the threat is relevant to any organization using those platforms. Below is a summary, risk assessment, and recommended mitigations — along with what Forward Networks is doing to support customers. What’s Going OnCampaign targets Cisco ASA and Firepower / FTD appliances Exploits include unauthenticated RCE and privilege escal

Flagging an important warning from the FBI / IC3, and sharing resources to help you assess and reduce risk. Alert Number: I-082025-PSA - Russian Government Cyber Actors Targeting Networking Devices, Critical Infrastructure The High-LevelThe FBI is alerting that Russian FSB cyber actors (aka Center 16 / “Berserk Bear” / “Dragonfly”) are actively exploiting a known vulnerability in Cisco Smart Install (SMI) — CVE-2018-0171 — to target networking devices globally. These actors are using SNMP (especially older/insecure versions v1 and v2) and unpatched / end-of-life devices to:Collect configuration files. Modify configs to insert or enable unauthorized access. Do reconnaissance inside victim networks, with particular int

We’re excited to announce the launch of the newly reinvented Forward Quest — a monthly interactive challenge designed to put your Forward Networks skills to the test. Play Forward Quest What is Forward Quest?Forward Quest is an online game experience built around real-world network engineering scenarios. Each challenge is timed, and your results are added to a community leaderboard where you can see how you stack up against other Forward users. Why play?Forward Quest is more than just a game — it’s a fun way to:

If you’ve ever waded into the world of cybersecurity, you’ve probably run across the acronyms CWE, CVE, and KEV. They sound similar, and they’re all related to security flaws — but each serves a different purpose. Here’s a clear breakdown: CWE (Common Weakness Enumeration)Think of CWE as a blueprint of mistakes. Maintained by MITRE, CWE is a catalog of weakness types — ways that software or hardware can go wrong. A CWE is not tied to a single product; instead, it describes a class of design or coding errors. CWEs can be abstract (like “improper input validation”) or very specific (like “integer overflow in arithmetic operations”). Example: CWE-269 (Improper Privilege Management), which outlines the general problem of failing to correctly enforce privilege levels.

Curious about AWS but not sure where to start? In this step-by-step walkthrough, I’ll show how to set up your own AWS Free Tier account, configure billing safeguards, and follow best practices for security and user management. Whether you’re preparing for certifications or just experimenting with cloud services, this guide will help you get started with confidence.   Cloud infrastructure has become essential in today’s IT landscape, and gaining hands-on experience with AWS (Amazon Web Services) is a valuable step for any engineer. The AWS Free Tier allows you to experiment with building, using, and tearing down AWS services at little to no cost—an excellent way to learn without breaking the budget.In this article, I’ll walk you through: Why you might want to create an AWS Free Tier account How to set one up safely

I have created the Forwords Network account .Why I can not login this vis this link.Forward Enterprise | Forward Networks Docs

Could you help simulate the staging of new BGP peers, route-maps, and new routes to understand how they might impact route path behavior?  I am planning to stage a change that involves adding a new link and BGP peer, with the expectation that routes will prefer the new path after the change. Can this scenario be simulated in the forward network to validate the expected behavior?  So far, I’ve attempted to simulate the changes, and I can see the new/modified interfaces and the transit IPs. However, I don’t see the BGP peer.  Am I missing something in the simulation process? Any guidance would be appreciated.  Are there any limitation with the simulation feature.  

we are using below format to collect the data from Fortinet firewall for custom command. endconfig globalshow system dnsshow system ntp can anyone check and confirm ,these will not impact anything ,if i remove config gloabl , than command will not run. 

This is for On-Prem environments, to securely retrieve the CVE database file through automation. Create a secure env file (path of your choosing) for your Forward SAAS credentials This keeps secrets out of code and scriptsexport FWD_USERNAME='your_username'   # <-- Replace with your Forward SAAS UNexport FWD_PASSWORD='your_password'   # <-- Replace with your Forward SAAS PW Add the Python script (path of your choosing) to download the CVE index This is the meat and potatoes of retrieving the file for SAAS#!/usr/bin/env python3import requests, osfrom requests.auth import HTTPBasicAuth

Hello Forward Networks!I have a question regarding if it's possible to add support to resolve FQDNs in the Path Search API? Or would we have to rely on our own DNS servers to make the resolutions first to then add the discovered IP Address to the source or destination. Can it be possible for Forward Networks to model FQDNs as independent objects? Apologies if this seems like a silly ask!Thank you

Forward Enterprise can integrate with ServiceNow in the following ways: Incident Management - Opening or updating a ServiceNow ticket based on an intent verification failure or change:Forward Docs - Create ServiceNow Incidents CMDB Integration - Pushing updates to the CMBD database with data from Forward Enterprise:Forward Docs - CMDB Integration As a Data Connector with NQE - Extracting data from ServiceNow using an NQE query for use in

need to get api nodes url

we are using below NQE Query to get the NTP Server details , i need to remove some static value in  server coloum, ciscontppattern=``` ntp server {server:string}```;getServers(device) =  foreach match in blockMatches(device.files.config, ciscontppattern)   select { serverIP: match.data.server}; foreach device in network.deviceslet platform = device.platformwhere device.platform.vendor == Vendor.CISCO  select {  device: device.name,   vendor: device.platform.vendor,    tags: device.tagNames,    os: device.platform.os,    OSVersion :platform.osVersion,  servers: (foreach server in getServers(device)            select server.serverIP)}  Example : i dont want to show entry those have server value - “Inte”

Hi allHas anyone onboarded Arista WIFI yet, the models we have are managed centrally via CV-CUE the Wifi version of cloudvision, although you can extract some commands via SSH.Had a quick look around and couldn’t find anything, I will in the meantime dig around about custom devices 😀Thanks

We currently use Ansible playbooks to add or delete network devices to our various NMS tools. I want to add Forward Networks to this job so newly added devices or old devices being removed are part of this automation. When FN discovers a device it appears to use sysName for the “Name” of the device. The API however requires me to provide the name value. Is there anyway to just use the management IP to add it to FN and have FN set the name like it does during its own discovery?

In the early days of my Air Force career, the tech control facility was filled with the aroma of coffee and the buzz of technology. Each morning, my role was clear: brew the perfect cup for my boss and run countless validation checks through the CLI, ensuring each day started on the right note. Does this sound familiar? Maybe not the coffee but certainly hunched over the keyboard staring at a CRT screen using the CLI to search across hundreds of devices. These were monotonous tasks, logging in to each device one after the next, looking for significant events and up/down statuses, then documenting that information to provide an update to the division chief. It made me wonder if there was a way to automate this drudgery.  It has been 20 years since then and I am now an intern with Forward. It has been a fantastic opportunity to advance my skills in Linux, Python, and deepen my understanding of the role of DevOps in technology organizations.  Key takeaways I have