Fortinet acquires Virtue AI, secures agentic AI

As enterprises move more AI applications and autonomous agents into production, the security problem is getting wider. Fortinet is responding by acquiring Virtue AI, a company focused on AI runtime protection, automated validation and security for autonomous AI systems.

The acquisition expands Fortinet’s broader Security for AI strategy and adds to its existing portfolio, including FortiAIGate and FortiGate Hyperscale Firewall. Financial terms were not disclosed, with Fortinet stating that the consideration paid was immaterial to its business.

The security challenge is moving beyond traditional systems

The rise of agentic AI is changing what enterprises need to protect. The attack surface now includes prompts, models, agents, Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools, API calls and AI infrastructure, alongside traditional networks, endpoints, applications and cloud workloads.

FortiAIGate already protects large language models against risks such as prompt injection, data leakage, model poisoning and excessive resource consumption. Virtue AI adds another layer, extending protection across AI models, applications and agentic systems from development through runtime.

From testing agents to watching them live

Virtue AI brings several capabilities into Fortinet’s AI security approach. Its Guardian Agent technology supports agentic system red-teaming across more than 50 sandboxed environments and 14 high-stakes domains.

The platform can also discover unsanctioned AI applications and agents, scan MCP tools and source code for risks, monitor agent behaviour and block malicious tool calls before they act.

Continuous AI validation is another key part of the acquisition. Automated red-teaming covers hundreds of attack vectors and more than 1,000 risk categories, while testing can be repeated as models and policies change.

Real-time guardrails add controls across text, images, video, audio and AI-generated code, with policies designed to prevent harmful content, sensitive data, jailbreaks and vulnerable code from reaching users or downstream systems.

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