Name: How AI-enabled digital twins will transform network management
Start: 2025-06-11T18:00:00Z
End: 2025-06-11T18:00:38.000Z
Location: BrightTALK

Forward Networks is a leader in network analytics and intent-based networking solutions. Our BrightTALK channel focuses on the technology, marketing and solutions in this rapidly evolving space.

Let’s face it: your network is a complex, hairy beast. It eats protocols for breakfast, consumes configs for lunch, and sometimes the state outputs from its packet dinner can be… unpleasant.

If your network beast includes hardware and software from dozens of vendors, spread across multiple data centers and clouds, and runs mission-critical applications with challenging security requirements… then join Brandon Heller, Forward Networks CTO and Co-founder, for this 30-min session/demo featuring real-life examples from large “beastly” enterprise networks that found a path to reliability, agility, and security.

Top 5 Network Issues That a Digital Twin Can Solve in Under a Week

If you've ever looked at your firewall rules and thought, "What is all this, and why is it still here?", you're not alone. Most of us are stuck managing decades of inherited rules across multiple vendors--half of which no one remembers adding, but everyone's too afraid to delete. Audits are a nightmare, compliance reviews take weeks, and just figuring out which rules are still relevant can feel like digital archaeology.
Join Forward Networks Technical Evangelist Mike Lossmann as he goes over our Firewall Rule Management feature.   Mike will demonstrate how Forward's mathematical model transforms firewall governance, delivering continuous network insight, proactive risk mitigation, and simplified collaboration across teams.
If you've ever wanted to clean up your firewalls without losing sleep (or breaking production), this session is for you. Tune in Thursday, November 20th to see how Forward Networks makes firewall governance finally… sane.

Taming the Firewall Beast: Firewall Management with a Network Digital Twin

Are you curious about what a digital twin can do for your network? Join us for this introductory session where Mike Lossmann will cover the important basics: how does it work? what problems does it solve? what does deployment look like? what results should you expect? what are the typical use cases? 
If you are responsible, even partially, for the reliability and security of an enterprise network, this webinar is for you.

Network Digital Twin 101: just the basics

Agentic AI offers exciting possibilities for enterprise IT, but realizing its potential in network and security operations requires more than just automation—it demands accurate data and enforceable trust.

In this session, Dr. Nikhil Handigol, co-founder of Forward Networks and a leading expert in agentic AI, will explore the technical requirements and real-world considerations for deploying AI agents in complex network environments. Drawing from live demonstrations and lessons learned in the field, Dr. Handigol will illustrate how digital twin technology enables reliable AI-driven decision-making through behavioral modeling, comprehensive network context, and verification safeguards.

Participants will gain insight into:
 • What makes agentic AI different from traditional automation
 • How to minimize risk by managing autonomy and controlling agent behavior
 • Why trustworthy, normalized network data is essential for AI success

The session will also cover strategies for integrating AI agents into existing workflows—such as IT ticketing and security audits—without compromising operational integrity. Whether you’re evaluating agent-based architectures or already experimenting with LLMs in IT operations, this session offers a grounded, technical perspective on what it takes to make agentic AI work in practice.

Beyond the Hype: What Agentic AI Can Do for Your Security and IT Operations

Misaligned configurations and inaccurate IPAM data are leading causes of failed change plans, outages, and audit risk—with the average network outage costing $300,000+ (According to Gartner). As an Infoblox Ecosystem Partner, Forward Networks now offers a certified integration that automatically syncs verified, real-time network data into Infoblox NIOS—no scripts, no manual updates to provide organizations a unified, accurate view of their network behavior and address space, increasing operational efficiency and governance across teams and maximizing network resiliency.

In this technical demonstration, you’ll learn how to:
Automatically populate Infoblox NIOS with verified structured IP and device data including subnets, VLANs, MAC addresses, and more to ensure configuration and intent alignment across environments and improve NCCM.

With No-Code Simplicity, create mapping profiles that suit your needs, with an intuitive user interface. Forget about manual scripting or command-line tasks, focus on what matters.

Seamlessly transition from NetMRI with an Infoblox-certified path forward for NetMRI users seeking more reliable, scalable, and secure operations.

Demo: Certified Infoblox NetMRI Replacement and Improve Change Control with verified IPAM data

Federal agencies face mounting technical debt that threatens both innovation and security. From aging infrastructure and vendor sprawl to unmanaged vulnerabilities, complexity is creating unacceptable levels of cyber risk. Join Forward Networks’ Director of Product, Security, Renata Budko, and CIA veteran Rodney Alto, Head of Federal Strategy and Security, Forward Networks for a practical discussion on how federal IT teams can quantify, prioritize, and eliminate technical debt—without disrupting mission-critical operations.

This session will explore how a network digital twin provides a single authoritative source of network truth to:

Identify and reduce end-of-life equipment risk

Prioritize CVEs based on real exposure paths

Continuously validate configuration compliance

Improve visibility across hybrid and multi-vendor environments

Attendees will learn how to modernize securely, reduce operational burden, and build defensible KPIs for risk and compliance reporting.

Who should attend: Federal IT engineers, cybersecurity professionals, and infrastructure managers responsible for network health, security posture, and modernization planning.

Save Your Agency Money, Get Ahead of Technical Debt Quickly

Agentic AI is reshaping the enterprise software landscape with autonomous, goal-driven systems that promise operational speed, scale, and intelligence. But while the opportunities are massive, the risks are equally significant—particularly when these agents act on inaccurate, incomplete, or siloed data.

In this 45-minute discussion, Dr. Nikhil Handigol, Co-founder of Forward Networks, and Howard Holton, CTO of GigaOm, explore the critical role that network digital twins play in de-risking agentic AI adoption. They share expert insight into what’s driving the surge in agentic AI, what’s holding it back, and how enterprises can use digital twins to build trust, enforce verification, and avoid unintended consequences.

What You’ll Learn:

-  Why accurate, context-rich data is essential for safe and effective agentic AI

-  How a network digital twin acts as both a trustworthy data layer and a verification engine

-  Key risks of autonomous agents in enterprise networks—and how to mitigate them

-  The difference between monitoring tools and behaviorally-accurate digital twins

-  Real-world use cases where digital twins prevent outages, accelerate response, and support AI-driven automation

-  How enterprises can prepare their infrastructure, data, and teams for agentic AI

Who Should Watch:

-  CIOs, CISOs, and technology executives evaluating AI adoption strategies

-  Network and security architects looking to modernize their data infrastructure

-  Enterprise AI/ML teams working on safe deployment of autonomous agents

-  IT leaders concerned with governance, verification, and operational risk in AI systems

Agentic AI Can Help—or Harm. How a Digital Twin Keeps It in Check

Security teams are under pressure to manage risk, validate Zero Trust policies, and respond to threats in increasingly complex hybrid networks. Traditional tools offer limited context—and that’s where a network digital twin changes the game.

In this session, Forward Networks Technical Evangelist Mike Lossmann will demonstrate how a mathematically-accurate digital replica of your network can deliver the visibility and context SecOps teams need to:

Prioritize vulnerabilities based on real exposure paths

Instantly visualize blast radius and attacker reachability

Continuously validate firewall, segmentation, and Zero Trust policies

Detect and investigate misconfigurations before they cause damage

Ensure cloud security matches on-prem standards

You'll see real examples of how network digital twin technology eliminates blind spots, accelerates incident response, and strengthens your security posture—without deploying agents or disrupting operations.

Ideal for: Security operations engineers, threat response analysts, and network security leads looking to modernize their workflows.

Supercharge SecOps with a Network Digital Twin

Preparing for a network audit is no small task. Whether you're aligning with HIPAA, PCI DSS, NIST, ISO 27001, GDPR, or internal standards, ensuring your network is secure, compliant, and performing as expected often requires a significant investment of time, resources, and coordination. And once the audit is over, the countdown begins again.

But what if audit readiness wasn’t a point-in-time effort?

In this webinar, Scot Wilson, Systems Engineer at Forward Networks, will demonstrate how continuous monitoring powered by a network digital twin can transform compliance from a stressful, manual process into an automated, always-on capability. Learn how enterprises can leverage mathematical modeling of their network to maintain up-to-date visibility, ensure adherence to policy, and pass audits with confidence—no scramble required.

This session is ideal for IT, compliance, and security professionals looking to streamline operations and reduce audit preparation time.

Pass Your Network Audit Through Continuous Monitoring

GigaOm analyst, Howard Holton and Forward Networks VP of product and UX, Chiara Regale will discuss how enterprises can use digital twin technology. This discussion will uncover:
- How to reduce risk, improve operations and deliver meaningful ROI
- How a digital twin increases visibility and enhances security in multi-cloud environments
- Ways to prevent config drift or config misalignment using a digital twin
- How a digital twin can shorten change windows

How to Mitigate Risk and Improve Operations with a Network Digital Twin

Join Forward Networks Technical Evangelist Mike Lossmann as he unveils our powerful new Firewall Rule Management feature—designed to streamline security operations and deliver millions in annual savings compared to traditional manual methods. In this session, Mike will demonstrate how this groundbreaking capability transforms firewall governance, delivering real-time visibility, proactive risk mitigation, and simplified collaboration across teams.

Key capabilities include:

Device Inventory & EOL Tracking to flag outdated firewall OS versions.

Configuration Management to enforce hardening and compliance standards.

CVE Management to expose and remediate OS-level vulnerabilities.

Blast Radius Analysis to surface what’s truly at risk behind each firewall.

Intent Verification & Reachability to eliminate unnecessary open ports.

Security Zone Mapping to align rule sets with actual application needs.

Gain Control with a Digital Twin: Transform Firewall Ops and Ensure Policy Compliance

With cyber threats growing more complex, federal agencies need a smarter approach to prioritizing risk and strengthening their security posture. Not all threats pose the same level of risk—some are mitigated by existing controls, while others remain dangerously exposed. Understanding residual risk requires full visibility into your Cyber Space Terrain, something only achievable with an end-to-end network Digital Twin.


Join us for a live webinar on March 27 to learn how Forward Networks’ Digital Twin enables federal agencies to:

Prioritize vulnerabilities based on actual exposure and mitigating controls
Identify and address potential zero-day threats before they become critical
Gain full visibility across on-premises and multi-cloud environments
Optimize cybersecurity resources to protect mission-critical systems

Cyber Threat Prioritization

See how the Forward Enterprise firewall rule management feature streamlines change validation, detects unintended network impacts, and simplifies routing policy cleanup for NetOps and SecOps teams.

Firewall Rule Management

Policymakers, oversight bodies like DHS CISA, CIOs and CISOs, need accurate and timely data to drive decisions and actions in many different areas. These areas include where to invest in cybersecurity readiness, monitoring threats and risks, ensuring compliance and improving coordination among federal agencies. Often known as a Cyber Data Call, these place a heavy burden on cyber and IT organizations since data is spread across systems and siloed on network devices. Gathering the raw data, normalizing it across silos and answering Cyber Data Calls can take weeks or months.

Authoritative Data drives faster and more accurate responses to Cyber Data Calls. During this webinar, we will go over how to gather and use Authoritative Data on your network to rapidly answer a Cyber Data Call, improving response time to minutes or hours and coordination among federal agencies.

Using Authoritative Data to Handle Cyber Data Call

Managing a complex network demands precise and up-to-date information, yet achieving a single source of truth (SSOT) for your network is a significant challenge. Many enterprises rely on multiple sources of truth (SOTs), but conflicting SOTs introduce risk—how can engineers be certain which one is accurate? How can IT teams ensure there are no unidentified devices hidden in the network? Without accurate data, critical tasks like managing CVEs become nearly impossible—you can't secure or remediate devices you don’t even know exist.

By integrating and cross-populating SOTs, administrators gain unprecedented levels of detail about the network and its devices. This session will demonstrate how the Forward Networks Digital Twin collects, augments, and consolidates network information across multiple SOTs to create a comprehensive and accurate SSOT. Using tools like device decorators, Forward Networks ensures seamless troubleshooting, efficient remediation, and a more secure network environment.

Key highlights include:
Why a single source of truth matters: Gain insights into how an accurate SSOT improves troubleshooting, enhances compliance, and streamlines operations.
Challenges of tools like Netbox: Learn why manual updates and integration issues often lead to inaccuracies and inefficiencies in managing network inventory.

How a Network Digital Twin transforms your approach: See how Forward Networks automatically reconciles and updates your network data, eliminating the need for manual intervention and ensuring your inventory is always 100% accurate.

Join Technical Solutions Architect and cloud expert Craig Johnson, along with Technical Product Marketing Leader Mike Lossmann, for an interactive demonstration of how Forward Enterprise simplifies the creation and maintenance of a single source of truth (SSOT), empowering you to focus on achieving your objectives with confidence and ease.

Save Time and Reduce Risk: How a Digital Twin Makes Maintaining a Single Source of Truth Effortless

Explore the power of Forward Enterprise's network digital twin platform in this comprehensive session led by Mike Lossmann, our resident demo expert. This in-depth overview highlights 13 critical use cases that demonstrate how digital twin technology revolutionizes network operations and management.  

Key Use Cases Covered:
1. Change Control  
2. Network Compliance and Audits  
3. Inventory Management
4. Workflow Automation  
5. Incident Response  
6. Vulnerability Management  
7. Zero Trust Verification  
8. Continuous Cloud Security Audit  
9. Cloud Service Assurance
10. End-to-End Hybrid Multi-Cloud Visibility  
11. Path Verification Analysis  
12. Outage Prevention  
13. Troubleshooting  

Learn how Forward Enterprise enables organizations to optimize network performance, ensure security compliance, and achieve unmatched visibility across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Discover how a digital twin can drive proactive incident resolution, zero-trust strategies, and automated workflows to reduce risks and streamline operations.

Forward Enterprise Full Demo

Zero Trust .... But Verify
Zero trust security is a necessity in modern cybersecurity frameworks, endorsed by comprehensive directives from the United States Department of Defense (DoD) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). The DoD Zero Trust Strategy alongside the DoD Zero Trust Capability Execution Roadmap offers in-depth guidance designed to facilitate any organization's transition to a robust Zero Trust model. 

Join Federal Security Expert Scot Wilson and Federal Technology Solutions Architect Sean Deveci to learn how organizations are using Forward Enterprise to simplify their Zero Trust journey. They will demonstrate how leveraging a network digital twin can empower both government and private sector organizations to seamlessly implement and verify a Zero Trust architecture. 

During the session, Scot and Sean will demonstrate how Forward Enterprise supports several of the Zero Trust foundational pillars identified by the DoD: 

*Device: Rigorous device security and control mechanisms (CVE, STIGs, config hardening). 

*Application & Workload: Protection strategies for applications and their workloads. 

*Network & Environment: Segmentation and Security posture verification across diverse environments. 

*Automation & Orchestration: Enhancing response capabilities through automation. 

*Visibility & Analytics: Advanced analytics for proactive security management.

How to follow DoD Zero Trust Guidelines

Join AI and Networking experts Howard Holton from GigaOm and Nikhil Handigol from Forward Networks for an insightful webinar exploring the symbiotic relationship between AI and digital twins. Gain essential insights to navigate the evolving technological landscape as we discuss how generative AI is set to revolutionize network management by enhancing the capabilities of network digital twins. Delve into the potential "dark side" of AI that IT leadership should be vigilant about. Don't miss out on this comprehensive discussion that will shape your understanding of AI-enabled digital twins and their impact on network management.

How AI-enabled digital twins will transform network management

Network Architecture

Network Management

Artificial Intelligence

Generative AI

Network Infrastructure

Digital Transformation

digital twin

genai

Network Automation

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How AI-enabled digital twins will transform network management

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Forward Networks