Fortinet has acquired Virtue AI, a specialist in AI runtime protection, automated AI validation and security for autonomous AI systems, as it extends its reach into safeguarding agentic enterprise deployments.
The deal builds on Fortinet’s wider Security for AI strategy and adds to a portfolio that already includes the FortiGate Hyperscale Firewall, with the aim of protecting AI systems from development through to live operation by folding in Virtue AI’s Guardian Agent capabilities.
Fortinet points to a shifting threat landscape as the driver behind the move: as organisations roll out AI applications and autonomous agents at pace, their exposure now stretches beyond conventional networks, users, endpoints, applications and cloud workloads to cover prompts, models, agents, Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools, API calls and AI infrastructure itself.
The company launched FortiAIGate earlier this year to shield large language models from prompt injections, data leakage, model poisoning and excessive resource consumption, and Virtue AI’s technology is intended to carry that protection further across models, applications and agentic systems.
Among the capabilities joining Fortinet’s stable are agentic system red-teaming, which tests autonomous agents for weaknesses across more than 50 sandboxed environments and 14 high-stakes domains, including simulated prompt-injection and MCP-based attacks against leading agent frameworks.
The acquisition also adds governance and visibility tools that surface unsanctioned AI applications and agents, scan MCP tools and source code for hidden risks, track agent behaviour and stop malicious tool calls before they execute.
A continuous validation function checks for new risks with every model update and policy change, running automated red-teaming across hundreds of attack vectors and more than 1,000 risk categories while producing audit-ready evidence for compliance reviews. Real-time guardrails round out the offering, enforcing customisable policies across text, images, video, audio and AI-generated code to keep harmful content, sensitive data, jailbreaks and vulnerable code from reaching users or downstream systems.
Fortinet describes itself as the global cybersecurity leader behind the convergence of networking and security, and says customers already depend on its AI-native Security Fabric for integrated protection spanning networks, endpoints, clouds, applications and AI deployments. It expects the newly acquired capabilities, paired with FortiAIGate and FortiGuard Labs threat intelligence, to give organisations greater confidence in securing AI systems across their entire lifecycle.
Fortinet founder, chairman of the board and CEO Ken Xie 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.”
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