Fortinet expands FortiAI across its security fabric platform

Fortinet, a global cybersecurity provider driving the convergence of networking and security, has announced significant FortiAI innovations embedded across the Fortinet Security Fabric platform. These updates are designed to enhance protection against emerging threats, simplify and automate security and network operations, and support secure use of AI-enabled services by employees.

“Fortinet’s AI advantage stems from the breadth and depth of our AI ecosystem, developed over more than a decade and supported by more patents than any other cybersecurity vendor,” said Michael Xie, Founder, President, and Chief Technology Officer at Fortinet. “By embedding FortiAI throughout the Fortinet Security Fabric platform, including new agentic AI capabilities, we are helping customers reduce the burden on their security and network analysts while improving the speed, efficiency, and accuracy of their operations. At the same time, we have expanded coverage across the Security Fabric to allow customers to monitor and manage the use of GenAI-enabled services within their organisations.”

The need for AI-driven protection and security for AI systems

To defend against increasingly sophisticated threats many of which now leverage AI to bypass security measures, automate attacks, and exploit vulnerabilities organisations must adopt security solutions that incorporate AI. Equally important is the protection of an organisation’s own AI systems from data poisoning, adversarial manipulation, and unauthorised access. Without comprehensive protection, AI can become both a target and a tool for cybercriminals.

Fortinet reports that it holds over 500 AI patents (issued and pending) and brings more than 15 years of AI innovation to its solutions. Its AI-driven security aims to counter advanced threats while ensuring AI systems remain protected and reliable.

New FortiAI capabilities

FortiAI now extends across Fortinet’s full AI-driven approach to security and network operations, offering protection for digital environments and safeguarding AI models and large language models (LLMs). Integrated into the Fortinet Security Fabric, it delivers intelligent, autonomous capabilities that counter advanced threats, optimise operations, and support secure AI adoption.

This latest expansion introduces enhancements in two key areas:

FortiAI-Assist: AI-driven support for network and security operations

FortiAI-Assist integrates Generative AI, agentic AI, and AIOps to simplify and enhance operations through intelligent automation and analysis. Key capabilities include:

• Agentic AI for Network Operations
  Autonomous network management via the GenAI assistant supports configuration updates, policy management, validation and correction of existing configurations, and the resolution of issues all without manual intervention.
  GenAI and AIOps capabilities also enable automated network optimisation and troubleshooting across wired, wireless, and SD-WAN networks, identifying and addressing potential issues before users are affected.

• Agentic AI for Security Operations

  • Automated alert triage ranks notifications by risk, context, and historical trends, suppressing duplicates and prioritising high-confidence threats, either system-side or directly for analyst review, depending on organisational preference.

  • Adaptive threat hunting analyses logs, traffic, and user behaviour to proactively detect potential threats.

  • Root-cause analysis leverages AI-driven reasoning to trace the origin, method, and impact of attacks.

  • Threat intelligence enrichment enhances defence by identifying attacker tactics and correlating data across incidents.

FortiAI-Protect: Strengthening threat detection and AI governance

FortiAI-Protect provides advanced threat detection powered by AI and includes tools for assessing contextual risk and controlling access to third-party GenAI applications. These updates expand the benefits of FortiGuard AI-powered Security Services for both new and existing customers. Key features include:

• AI Application Monitoring
  Tracks over 6,500 AI-related URLs, including GenAI applications. Security teams are provided with additional context such as intended use cases, training models, and data routing details.

• Access and Content Control
  Zero-trust principles allow administrators to restrict access to shadow AI or high-risk tools. With visibility into application metadata, including geolocation and training model details, administrators can define and enforce AI usage policies organisation-wide.

• Improved Threat Analysis and Malware Protection
  Enhanced machine learning and large-scale data analysis enable detection of emerging malware. Continued refinement of contextual analysis helps reduce false positives and improves detection precision.

• Advanced Attack Safeguards
  Ongoing development of IPS (Intrusion Prevention System) machine learning models improves detection of novel attack techniques.

Fortinet’s approach to securing AI models, infrastructure, and data

Organisations can securely adopt AI with FortiAI-SecureAI, which leverages the Fortinet Security Fabric to protect AI infrastructure from network-based threats, secure APIs and web applications, and defend cloud-native AI workloads across major cloud platforms. FortiAI-SecureAI aims to preserve data integrity, prevent LLM data leakage, protect intellectual property, enforce zero-trust access, and support early detection and response to threats.

Data privacy considerations

FortiAI employs a multi-layered approach to data protection, with strict privacy controls. Data shared with the Fortinet GenAI assistant is not used to train LLMs, and all queries are processed locally to ensure data remains within the organisation’s environment. Sensitive data is blocked or masked before being passed to the language model.