AI
Fortinet Advances Continuous AI Protection with the Acquisition of Virtue AI
Virtue AI will enhance the Fortinet AI-Native Security Fabric with continuous agentic AI validation and runtime protection across the AI lifecycleSUNNYVALE, Calif., Aug. 17, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fortinet® (NASDAQ: FTNT), the global cybersecurity leader driving the convergence of networking and security, today announced it has acquired Virtue AI, an innovator in AI runtime protection, automated AI validation, and security for autonomous AI systems. The acquisition advances the company’s broad
About this update from Fortinet, Inc.
Virtue AI will enhance the Fortinet AI-Native Security Fabric with continuous agentic AI validation and runtime protection across the AI lifecycle SUNNYVALE, Calif., Aug. 17, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fortinet® (NASDAQ: FTNT), the global cybersecurity leader driving the convergence of networking and security, today announced it has acquired Virtue AI, an innovator in AI runtime protection, automated AI validation, and security for autonomous AI systems. The acquisition advances the company's broader Security for AI strategy and vision for securing the agentic enterprise, building on Fortinet's existing AI security solution portfolio, including its FortiGate Hyperscale Firewall. As organizations rapidly deploy AI applications and autonomous agents, their attack surface expands beyond traditional networks, users, endpoints, applications, and cloud workloads. It now includes prompts, models, agents, Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools, application programming interface (API) calls, and AI infrastructure. Organizations need to adopt AI with confidence, keep it secure in production, and trust it behaves as intended. Fortinet met that need earlier this year with FortiAIGate, which safeguards large language models (LLMs) from prompt injections, data leakage, model poisoning, excessive resource consumption, and other emerging AI-specific risks. Virtue AI extends that security to AI models, applications, and agentic systems from development through runtime, leveraging Virtue AI's Guardian Agent abilities and key product capabilities, including: "AI is fundamentally changing enterprise computing, and security must evolve just as quickly," said Ken Xie, Founder, Chairman of the Board, and Chief Executive Officer at Fortinet. "Virtue AI's technology will advance our vision for continuous AI assurance, helping customers govern and protect AI systems throughout their lifecycle and while operating them confidently at enterprise scale." According to Gartner®, "the market for securing AI ecosystems and AI agents is rapidly expanding; products and tools are expected to expand from $2.8 billion in 2026 to $16.4 billion by 2030."[1] Fortinet believes that anticipated market expansion reflects evolving industry demand to secure the AI era. Customers already rely on the Fortinet AI-native Security Fabric for integrated protection across networks, endpoints, clouds, applications,...