Fortinet buys Virtue AI to bolster AI security portfolio

Fortinet has acquired AI runtime protection, automated AI validation and autonomous AI systems security company Virtue AI as part of its Security for AI strategy.

Fortinet plans to use the acquisition to enhance its AI security solution portfolio, including its FortiGate Hyperscale Firewall, which is designed for high-end data centres and other AI infrastructure.

The company’s FortiAIGate solution meanwhile safeguards large language models from prompt injections, data leakage, model poisoning, excessive resource consumption and other emerging AI-specific risks.

Virtue AI’s capabilities will extend that security to AI models, applications and agentic systems. The company says its Guardian Agent platform is designed to allow security teams to test autonomous agents for exploitable weaknesses across more than 50 sandboxed environments, identify new risks across AI model updates, and provide visibility into agents and AI tools running on their environment.

Fortinet founder and CEO Ken Xie said security must evolve rapidly to address the fundamental changes AI is making to enterprise computing.

“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,” he said.

Gartner projects that the market for securing AI ecosystems and AI agents will grow from US$2.8 billion ($3.95 billion) this year to US$16.4 billion by 2030.

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