Fortinet collaborates with Equinix on AI security

Networking security company Fortinet has made its FortiAIGate AI security platform available on the Equinix Distributed AI Hub, a validated reference architecture for AI security and governance. The implementation is aimed at providing organisations with a simpler way to secure and govern AI as models, data and other aspects of the AI ecosystem become increasingly distributed.

The Equinix Distributed AI Hub is designed to connect AI agents, models, data, compute and cloud providers using secure and high throughput interconnections. Implementing FortiGate on the reference architecture will enable the platform to inspect AI traffic, enforce security policies, protect sensitive data and provide visibility into AI use within environments using the architecture. FortiAIGate will act as an AI security guardrail within the hub.

Fortinet’s platform will inspect prompts and responses across large language models (LLMs) and model context protocol traffic, help organisations control per-token LLM costs by setting budgets and alerts, and gain visibility into shadow AI use across the organisation. To help maintain AI performance, the network layer utilises GPUs to handle security inspection without a performance impact on AI workloads.

Fortinet and Equinix are also collaborating on network security through FortiGate VM on Equinix Network Edge.

Fortinet EVP of Marketing Anthony James said enterprise AI is evolving rapidly.

“Enterprise AI is quickly moving beyond isolated applications to distributed environments where models, agents, data and infrastructure span clouds and geographies,” he said. “Security needs to be built into that architecture from the start. By bringing FortiAIGate to the Equinix Distributed AI Hub, we are giving customers a simple way to secure AI interactions, protect sensitive data, maintain control over where that data is processed, and scale AI with confidence.”

Equinix VP for Partnerships and Ecosystem Development Maryam Zand said AI is not centralised: “[This] means enterprises need security that extends across every environment. Enterprises need to connect models, data and clouds while retaining control over their architecture and security choices,” she said. “Our distributed AI hub brings those resources together through private interconnection.

“The validated architecture with Fortinet gives customers a way to apply FortiAIGate security and governance to AI interactions across that connected environment.”

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