Fortinet turns its firewall footprint into an AI security on-ramp

The fastest way to bring a new security capability into the enterprise has never been a new product. It’s a new license for something the customer already owns. Fortinet Inc. understands this better than most, as it has continued to add features to its FortiGate firewall. This week, the company announced it is applying that strategy to the most pressing security problem facing information technology leaders today: securing artificial intelligence. On Monday, the company announced the FortiGuard Inline AI Security Service, a cloud-delivered subscription that brings AI-specific inspection and guardrails to FortiGate firewalls. Customers turn it on, and FortiGate begins inspecting prompts, model responses and Model Context Protocol tool traffic in real time, without the customer having to deploy and manage a separate AI security stack. The engine behind the service is FortiAIGate, Fortinet’s AI gateway, which received a new set of capabilities, including technology from the Virtue AI acquisition the company closed in August. AI security has shifted from a niche to a land grab in under two years. Palo Alto Networks Inc. bought Protect AI; Check Point Software Inc. acquired Lakera; F5 Inc. purchased CalypsoAI; and Cisco Systems Systems Inc. procured Robust Intelligence. Forrester tallied more than $2…