An user may define failover events in a network device by customizing the network device's response to a failure on the network. Specifically, an user may instruct the network device to activate or deactivate one or more interfaces, or undergo any number of additional communications, upon a perceived network failure or critical interface failure. This enables the network device to initiate or terminate connectivity with one or more network devices, as well as optionally performing failover to a standby network device, to enable the network device to more smoothly handle failover procedures and transition traffic to the network device that will be responsible for communication after failover has been effected.