Fortinet Advances Continuous AI Protection With Virtue AI Acquisition
The Fortinet Virtue AI acquisition strengthens Fortinet’s push into continuous artificial intelligence security as organisations rapidly deploy AI applications and autonomous agents.
Fortinet® (NASDAQ: FTNT), the global cybersecurity leader driving the convergence of networking and security, has acquired Virtue AI, an innovator in AI runtime protection, automated AI validation, and security for autonomous AI systems.
The acquisition advances Fortinet’s broader Security for AI strategy and its vision for securing the agentic enterprise. It also builds on the company’s existing AI security portfolio, including its FortiGate Hyperscale Firewall.
Fortinet Virtue AI Acquisition Targets A Growing AI Attack Surface
As organisations deploy AI applications and autonomous agents, their attack surface moves beyond traditional networks, users, endpoints, applications, and cloud workloads.
Security teams must now account for prompts, models, autonomous agents, Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools, application programming interface (API) calls, and AI infrastructure.
That shift creates a new security challenge. Organisations need to adopt AI with confidence while protecting production systems and ensuring AI behaves as intended.
Fortinet addressed part of that challenge earlier this year with FortiAIGate. The platform protects large language models (LLMs) against prompt injections, data leakage, model poisoning, excessive resource consumption, and other emerging AI-specific risks.
The Fortinet Virtue AI acquisition extends those capabilities across AI models, applications, and agentic systems, from development through runtime.
Virtue AI brings its Guardian Agent abilities and several security capabilities into the Fortinet portfolio.
Agentic System Red-Teaming
Virtue AI tests autonomous agents for exploitable weaknesses across more than 50 sandboxed environments and 14 high-stakes domains.
Testing includes simulated prompt-injection attacks and MCP-based attacks against leading agent frameworks. This approach gives security teams a way to identify weaknesses before attackers can exploit them.
Agent Protection, Governance, And Visibility
Virtue AI provides visibility into agents and AI tools operating across an organisation’s environment.
The technology discovers unsanctioned AI applications and agents, scans MCP tools and source code for hidden risks, and monitors agent behaviour.
It can also block malicious tool calls before those actions reach downstream systems.
Continuous AI Validation
Continuous validation allows organisations to identify new security risks after model updates and policy fine-tuning.
Automated red-teaming covers hundreds of attack vectors and more than 1,000 risk categories. It also includes multimodal testing and on-demand reporting for security, risk, and compliance teams.
The platform can generate audit-ready evidence to support security and compliance reviews.
Real-Time Guardrails
Virtue AI enforces customisable policies across text, images, video, audio, and AI-generated code.
These controls aim to prevent harmful content, sensitive data exposure, jailbreaks, and vulnerable code from reaching users or downstream systems.
Fortinet Virtue AI Acquisition Supports Continuous AI Assurance
Ken Xie, Founder, Chairman of the Board, and Chief Executive Officer, Fortinet, said, “AI is fundamentally changing enterprise computing, and security must evolve just as quickly. Virtue AI’s technology will advance our vision for continuous AI assurance, helping customers govern and protect AI systems throughout their lifecycle while operating them confidently at enterprise scale.”
The acquisition reflects a broader cybersecurity challenge. Enterprises increasingly need security controls designed specifically for artificial intelligence rather than controls adapted from traditional infrastructure.
According to Gartner®, “the market for securing AI ecosystems and AI agents is rapidly expanding; products and tools are expected to expand from US$2.8 billion in 2026 to US$16.4 billion by 2030.”[1]
Fortinet believes that anticipated market expansion reflects evolving industry demand to secure the AI era.
Fortinet Expands AI Runtime Security
Customers already rely on the Fortinet AI-native Security Fabric for integrated protection across networks, endpoints, clouds, applications, and AI deployments.
The Fortinet Virtue AI acquisition complements FortiAIGate and strengthens Fortinet’s AI runtime security capabilities with automated validation and real-time protection.
Fortinet plans to combine those capabilities with coordinated enforcement and FortiGuard Labs threat intelligence. Together, they will help organisations secure AI systems throughout their lifecycle.
Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Fortinet said the consideration paid for Virtue AI is immaterial to its business.
Additional Resources
- Read more about the Fortinet AI-Native Security Fabric.
- Learn how Fortinet secures the AI Application Stack with FortiAIGate.
- Visit fortinet.com/trust to learn more about Fortinet innovation, collaboration partners, product security processes, and enterprise-grade products.
- Follow Fortinet on X, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. Subscribe to Fortinet on its blog or YouTube.
GARTNER is a trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates.
[1] Gartner, Forecasting the $16.4 Billion Opportunity in Securing AI, Shailendra Upadhyay, 30 July 2026
About Fortinet
Fortinet (NASDAQ: FTNT) is a driving force in the evolution of cybersecurity and the convergence of networking and security. Our mission is to secure people, devices, and data everywhere, and today we deliver cybersecurity everywhere our customers need it with the largest integrated portfolio of over 50 enterprise-grade products. Well over half a million customers trust Fortinet’s solutions, which are among the most deployed, most patented, and most validated in the industry.
The Fortinet Training Institute, one of the largest and broadest training programs in the industry, is dedicated to making cybersecurity training and new career opportunities available to everyone.
Collaboration with esteemed organisations from both the public and private sectors, including Computer Emergency Response Teams (“CERTS”), government entities, and academia, is a fundamental aspect of Fortinet’s commitment to enhance cyber resilience globally.
FortiGuard Labs, Fortinet’s elite threat intelligence and research organisation, develops and utilises leading-edge machine learning and AI technologies to provide customers with timely and consistently top-rated protection and actionable threat intelligence.
Learn more at https://www.fortinet.com, the Fortinet Blog, and FortiGuard Labs.
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