Privacy Policy

Who we are

CiscoTools.dev is a product of Brody Networks LLC, a North Carolina limited liability company ("we", "us"). For anything about this policy or your personal information, contact [email protected].

Brody Networks LLC, a North Carolina limited liability company
4030 Wake Forest Rd Ste 349, Raleigh, NC 27609
[email protected]

The short version

Nine of the eleven tools on this site are free, hosted tools; the other two, Network Configurator and NetOps Widgets, are free downloads that run entirely on your own machine (see below). Of the nine hosted tools, six (Config Diff, the IOS↔NX-OS Translator, Config Sanitizer, the Compliance Checker, the Subnet & VLAN Planner, and Config Template Manager) send the text you paste to our server to be processed and send back a result, and none of that text is written to a database or a log — unless you are signed in to a Pro account and click Save, which keeps exactly what you saved against your account until you delete it. Three (the free Script Builder, the BGP Best-Path Explainer, and the Interface Cleanup Auditor) never leave your browser at all. This site sets one cookie, and only if you create a Pro account. We use one cookieless analytics tool that counts visits, which tool you used, and the page that linked you here. We do not sell, rent, or share personal information with anyone, for any purpose.

The free tools, exactly what happens to what you paste

• Config Diff, IOS↔NX-OS Translator, Config Sanitizer, Compliance Checker. The configuration text or file you submit is sent to our server over HTTPS, read into memory, processed, and returned in the response. It is never written to a database, never logged, and never kept after the response is sent, unless you are signed in to a Pro account and click Save (Config Diff and Config Sanitizer offer this; see Pro accounts below for what that stores). An uploaded file large enough to spool to disk is handled by the web framework's own temporary-file mechanism and deleted the moment the request ends.
• Subnet & VLAN Planner. The prefix and VLAN sizes you enter (not a device configuration) are sent to our server to compute the allocation and are handled the same way: in memory, never stored, unless you are signed in to a Pro account and explicitly click Save.
• Config Template Manager. Templates, variables, and generated configs stay in your browser tab and are never sent to our server — unless you are signed in to a Pro account and click "Save to account," which loads and stores your named project against your account (GET/PUT /api/pro/saved/templates) until you delete it. The separate "Save to browser" button is different and always local: it writes to a key named cisco_config_template_project in your own browser's local storage, on your device only; we never see it.
• Network Script Builder. The free builder runs entirely in your browser. Only the Pro features (custom commands, the config-mode section) ask our server to generate the script text, in memory, not stored (except, as above, if you click Save).
• BGP Best-Path Explainer, Interface Cleanup Auditor. Both are 100% client-side. Nothing you paste, whether hand-typed candidate paths or real show command output, is ever sent to CiscoTools.dev.

Network Configurator and NetOps Widgets (the downloads)

It runs on your machine, against your network, with your credentials. CiscoTools.dev never touches a device, never sees a credential, and never proxies a connection: we serve the file, the docs, and a license check. The one thing that does reach ciscotools.dev is the license check: your CiscoTools API key and the app's version number, nothing else, no inventory and no telemetry. See the Network Configurator and NetOps Widgets pages for the full detail on how that check works and what happens if it fails.

Pro accounts

Creating a Pro account collects an email address and a password. The password is never stored in plain text: it is hashed with PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256 at 600,000 iterations, a random salt per password, following OWASP's current guidance for password storage without a native scrypt implementation available on this server. Signing in sets one cookie, ct_session, holding a random session token; it is HttpOnly (invisible to page JavaScript) and SameSite=Lax, expires after 30 days, and carries nothing about you beyond that token. Pro accounts can also hold an API key (used to call the tools from a script or to unlock Pro in the downloadable apps) and, only when you take the explicit action to save one, named projects, diff history, rule packs, or plans for the tools listed above. We keep what you save exactly as you saved it, with no automatic expiry, until you delete it yourself — the one exception is the Compliance Checker's custom rule packs, which you can optionally set to expire after 30, 90, or 365 days.

A forgotten-password request emails a one-time reset link. The token in that email is stored on our side only as a one-way hash, expires after 45 minutes, and can never be used a second time.

Upgrading to Pro uses Stripe Checkout. Your card number is typed on Stripe's own hosted checkout page and never reaches CiscoTools.dev's servers; what we receive and store is your email, a checkout session id, a payment status, and a short event log (for example "checkout completed" or "subscription cancelled") with no card data in it. Starting a checkout also sends Stripe your email address and an internal account id, so it can associate the payment with your account.

The SanitizeDrop download page

The desktop version of the sanitizer asks for an email address before handing you the download. We store that email, the platform you picked, and where you came from, and use them to send you the download and let you know about updates to SanitizeDrop and our other apps. There is no unsubscribe mechanism yet, so we do not promise one. We also record the IP address and browser user agent of that one request, unlike the rest of this site's analytics, so we can tell a real request from abuse of the download link; those two fields are cleared to nothing after 30 days, and the email stays. We also keep a second, append-only backup copy of every submission — email, platform, source, and timestamp only, never an IP address or user agent — and a private internal notification (a text message to our own team) goes out within minutes of each submission, so we can watch for abuse of the download link.

The chat widget

The chat bubble on this site is an AI assistant built by Brody Networks and powered by Claude (Anthropic). It is a separate service we operate, not a third-party ad or tracking script. When you send it a message, that message and a session id are sent to Anthropic to generate the reply; our own server stores the session id, the plain IP address of the session, and the message transcript, so the assistant can hold a conversation and so we can improve it. The session id lives in your browser's session storage, not a cookie, and clears when you close the tab. Chat sessions and their transcripts are deleted after 90 days.

Leads and forms in general

Every form on this site tells you above its submit button what it is collecting personal information for and links to this policy.

Cookies and browser storage

This site sets exactly one cookie, ct_session, and only once you sign in to a Pro account — it is strictly necessary to keep you signed in and is not used to track you across sites. The free, anonymous tools set no cookie at all. The only thing this site writes to your browser's local storage is the Template Manager's optional, explicit "Save to browser" action, described above; nothing is written automatically. Session storage holds the chat widget's session id when you open it, and clears when the tab closes. Because the only cookie here is strictly necessary (keeping you signed in after you asked to be), and nothing else is set without an explicit action on your part, this site shows no cookie consent banner.

Analytics

We run our own first-party, cookieless analytics (no vendor, no external script). It counts page views, which tool was used, the page that linked you here (the referrer, if your browser sent one), and four account milestones — account created, signed in, checkout started, checkout completed — each logged the same way. Your visitor identifier is sha256(a random per-install salt : today's date : your IP address : your browser's user agent), cut to 16 characters. Your raw IP address and user agent are never written to the database, only that hash, and the date baked into the hash means the same visitor hashes to a different value tomorrow, so there is no way to link your visits across days. We use this only to see, in aggregate, which pages and tools get used. Events older than 13 months are deleted automatically.

Other companies this site loads

• Cloudflare fronts this entire site (tunnel and CDN) and sees the ordinary connection metadata that implies: your IP address, the page you requested, and standard request headers. It acts as our infrastructure provider, not an advertiser.
• Google Fonts. The web app pages (the eleven tools, at ciscotools.dev/#/…) load two fonts from fonts.googleapis.com and fonts.gstatic.com, and Google receives the IP address and user agent of that font request, the same as it would for any font request to Google's servers. Server-rendered pages like this one, including every tool's landing page, use your device's own fonts and load nothing from Google.
• Anthropic processes messages sent to the chat widget, as described above.
• Stripe processes card payment for Pro, as described above. It receives your email address and an internal account id when you start a checkout, and the card details you type on its own page, which never reach us.
• Google Workspace / Gmail carries the password-reset email. When you request a reset, it receives the email address you're sending to and the reset link, via the mailbox that sends it on our behalf.

Retention, in general

Where this policy does not name a specific window above, we keep personal information only as long as it is useful for the purpose it was collected for, or as required by law, and delete it after. You can ask us to delete yours sooner at any time.

Your rights

Depending on where you live, including under the EU and UK GDPR, the California Consumer Privacy Act, and similar state privacy laws, you may have the right to know what personal information we hold about you, correct it, have it deleted, object to some kinds of processing, and opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information (we do not sell or share personal information, so there is nothing here to opt out of). To exercise any of these, email [email protected] and tell us what you want. We verify the request using the email address associated with your data and reply within the window the applicable law sets, generally 30 to 45 days.

Children

This site offers software tools for network engineers and is not directed to children under 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

Changes

If we change how we handle personal information, we update this policy and its effective date before the change takes effect.

Effective date: September 23, 2026.