Federal Agency Modernizes Mission-Critical Networks Through Automation & Orchestration with Itential

INDUSTRY

Public Sector: US Federal Agency

Prime Contractor: Leidos

GOALS

Ensure Compliance Across Distributed Infrastructure
Mitigate Risk & Strenghten Security Posture
Improve Internal Controls & Verification
Reduce Outages & Operational Overhead

USE CASES

IP Network Baseline Configuration Compliance - Verification & Reporting
Network Interface Description Configuration Compliance - Verification, Remediation, & Reporting
L3 VPN Provisioning Reads

INTEGRATIONS

Key Results

Automated compliance verification and remediation across multiple device types.

Eliminated vulnerabilities from out-of-date configurations and legacy devices.

Refactored automation scripts to require less manual intervention, boosting engineer productivity.

Accelerated L3 VPN provisioning reads with a roadmap for automated writes.

Established a scalable automation framework for ongoing modernization.

Challenge

Legacy Device Configurations Create Vulnerabilities & Impact Federal Compliance

Because federal environments require vendor approvals and strict security controls, devices often remain in service longer than in commercial settings – raising the risk of configuration drift and compliance gaps.

The network team recognized that automation was essential to keep configurations current and policy-aligned, but any solution had to fit a secure federal stack and support an Authority to Operate (ATO).

With a small team and limited existing automation (NSO, some Python and Ansible), they needed a platform that could make immediate progress and scale.

They selected three initial use cases to demonstrate value quickly:

Verification and reporting for IP network baseline configuration compliance.
Verification, remediation, and reporting for interface-description compliance.
Read operations for L3 VPN provisioning (with writes targeted next).

Focusing first on verification and reporting ensured accurate, up‑to‑date configurations to meet federal security requirements, while setting the groundwork for more advanced automations like L3 VPN writes and brownfield service management.

Over time, we’ve been a little slow to adopt new tools, or even devices due to federal regulations. But to scale our network, our capabilities, we need to rapidly change how we’re working to manage configuration compliance with our team.

Senior Network Engineer

Solution

Advancing Network Modernization with Itential

Federal network teams often face the same constraints: legacy hardware, limited tooling, small teams, and uncompromising compliance.

Under the GSM‑O II contract, Leidos selected Itential to modernize how this agency manages configurations across legacy and modern devices. Itential provides a secure, scalable automation and orchestration platform proven in federal production, with multiple deployments operating under ATO and supporting continuous ATO through built‑in evidence and policy enforcement.

Building remediation workflows in Itential was really easy to pick up and seeing what we’ve done with our first few use cases, I can already tell the team will be able to do a lot more as we keep building workflows.

Senior Network Engineer

The agency met its initial targets with Itential’s:

Pre-Built Integrations with Cisco NSO, Cisco NED, and Kafka, plus autogenerated connectors for bespoke systems.
Configuration compliance and drift remediation for CLI based devices and API driven services.
Automated remediation of non non-compliant devices in minutes to close security gaps quickly.
Out-of-the-box compliance reporting with historical views to spot and eliminate recurring issues.
Low-code workflow canvas to rapidly design end to end orchestrations using modular assets.
Itential Automation Gateway to onboard existing Python and Ansible scripts into governed workflows.
Reusable automation libraries that scale across additional use cases and teams.
Granular RBAC and secure sharing so only authorized users can execute change operations.
On-premises deployment option to support air-gapped and classified environments.

Business Impact

What They’ve Achieved & the Roadmap to Network Modernization

By automating verification, reporting, and remediation for baseline and interface description compliance, the team now maintains confidence that configurations are current and consistent across domains and device types.

They’ve moved beyond slow, custom Python scripts toward a governed, low code orchestration model that preserves existing script value while extending capability and control.

Each step builds on the Itential foundation to increase delivery speed, strengthen security posture, and sustain compliance.

Next on the roadmap:

Enable L3 VPN provisioning writes to complement existing read operations.
Migrate a broad range of brownfield services into governed Itential workflows.
Support cloud migration to GMS for enhanced scalability.
Expand automation into the optical transport network and optical layer.
Integrate more deeply with other GMS systems, including ticket management and event streaming.

Why Itential

Why Itential Is Trusted by the Public Sector

Itential provides the automation and orchestration fabric that lets agencies modernize in place – turning complex, multi-vendor infrastructure into a programmable, auditable service layer.

Proven in federal production and aligned to Zero Trust outcomes, Itential hardens posture while accelerating delivery, so day‑one deployments are compliant by design and day‑two changes remain resilient and traceable.

Agencies deploying Itential report faster change velocity, measurable reduction in attack surface, and thousands of engineer hours redirected from manual upkeep to mission priorities.