Fortinet Acquires Virtue AI for Advanced AI Security

Fortinet has acquired Virtue AI, a company specializing in AI runtime protection and security for autonomous AI systems. This move expands Fortinet's efforts to safeguard enterprise AI deployments. The deal builds on Fortinet’s existing Security for AI strategy. It adds Virtue AI’s Guardian Agent capabilities to Fortinet’s portfolio, which already includes the FortiGate Hyperscale Firewall. The goal is to protect AI systems from development through to live operation. Fortinet highlights a changing threat landscape as the reason for this acquisition. As organizations deploy AI applications and autonomous agents rapidly, their exposure now includes prompts, models, agents, API calls, and AI infrastructure itself. Virtue AI's technology is designed to extend protection across models, applications, and agentic systems. This includes capabilities like agentic system red-teaming, which tests autonomous agents for weaknesses across over 50 sandboxed environments. The acquisition also adds governance and visibility tools to identify unsanctioned AI applications and agents. Additionally, a continuous validation function checks for new risks with every model update and policy change. This produces audit-ready evidence for compliance reviews. Real-time guardrails enforce customizable policies across various content types, preventing harmful content or vulnerable code from reaching users. Fortinet believes these newly acquired capabilities, combined with its existing tools, will give organizations greater confidence in securing AI systems throughout their entire lifecycle.