Described are examples for providing a system for managing configuration and policies for a virtualized wide area network (vWAN) support on a wide area network (WAN). The vWAN includes a plurality of virtual network entities associated with geographic locations including the physical computing resources of the WAN and virtual connections between the virtual network entities. The system includes a network safety component for managing configurations and policies of the vWAN on the WAN. The network safety component receives a change to a policy or configuration of the vWAN from an operator of a network connected to the vWAN. The network safety component evaluates a set of safety rules for the operator based on the change and a network state of a physical WAN underlying the vWAN. The network safety component generates an error message in response to at least one of the set of safety rules failing the evaluation.