Fortinet introduces AI-driven security, SASE capabilities into OS of security platform

Fortinet has released FortiOS 8.0, an update to the operating system powering the company’s Fortinet Security Fabric cybersecurity platform, delivering AI-driven security, Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) and quantum-safe capabilities.

The release is intended to help customers simplify their security architectures and deliver consistent protection and performance across enterprise digital infrastructure.

Key AI-driven enhancements include FortiView for AI attack surface and shadow AI, providing real-time visibility into how AI applications and services are used across the organisation and distinguishing sanctioned from unsanctioned tools, as well as AI-aware application control, allowing approved GenAI tools while blocking risky actions that could expose sensitive data.

Model Context Protocol (MCP) and agent-to-agent (A2A) visibility, revealing hidden AI activity and interactions between applications, agents, and tools is also introduced, as is enhanced data loss prevention (DLP) with optical character recognition (OCR), detecting sensitive data embedded in images, scans, and screenshots that bypass traditional text-based inspection.

New and enhanced SASE capabilities include SASE Outpost, extending SASE enforcement closer to users and applications by deploying a SASE point of presence (POP) in customer-controlled locations, such as on-premises, private data centres, or co-location, while maintaining centralised cloud management. This means users can maintain local enforcement where needed without building separate stacks.

Sovereign SASE deployment options, offering a multilayer data sovereignty model for granular control over regional log retention, control-plane residency, sovereign POPs, and fully sovereign deployments within customer data centres, is also included, as is unified SD-WAN bundles, including integrated overlay and underlay connectivity, centralised management, and reporting for improved availability and traffic optimisation as well as simplified procurement and support.

Multipath IPsec tunnels also aim to improve resiliency, availability, and performance across distributed environments for improved application performance, and stronger resiliency for critical sites.

Quantum-safe enhancements include quantum-resilient cryptographic controls, securing critical management access paths, including agentless virtual private network (VPN) connectivity, using post-quantum cryptography (PQC) certificates such as ML-DSA for authentication and key establishment.

“FortiOS 8.0 reflects more than 25 years of continued innovation at the intersection of networking and security,” said Ken Xie, Fortinet chairman of the board and chief executive.

“As organisations embrace AI, cloud, and increasingly encrypted environments, a unified operating system is essential to reduce complexity, improve visibility, and ensure security can scale without slowing the business.”