Fortinet acquires Virtue AI for AI runtime protection

Fortinet acquired Virtue AI, a company focused on AI runtime protection and automated AI validation for autonomous AI systems. The deal added capabilities that Fortinet said target protection and validation for AI from development through runtime.

Fortinet said the expansion of AI application and autonomous agent deployments extends the attack surface beyond traditional networks, endpoints, applications, and cloud workloads to include prompts, models, agents, Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools, API calls, and AI infrastructure. Fortinet referenced FortiAIGate as an earlier measure for LLMs against prompt injections, data leakage, and model poisoning.

Fortinet described Virtue AI’s capabilities as including agentic system red-teaming, agent protection with governance and visibility, continuous AI validation, and real-time guardrails. It said red-teaming tested autonomous agents for exploitable weaknesses across more than 50 sandboxed environments and 14 domains, and that agent protection monitored agent behavior and blocked malicious tool calls. It also said continuous validation generated audit-ready evidence and that guardrails enforced customizable policies across text, images, video, audio, and AI-generated code.

The acquisition was positioned as complementing FortiAIGate and strengthening Fortinet’s runtime security capabilities, with coordinated enforcement and FortiGuard Labs threat intelligence. Fortinet said it would not disclose financial terms and that the amount paid was immaterial to its business. “AI is fundamentally changing enterprise computing, and security must evolve just as quickly,” said Ken Xie, Founder, Chairman of the Board, and Chief Executive Officer at Fortinet. “Virtue AI’s technology will advance our vision for continuous AI assurance, helping customers govern and protect AI systems throughout their lifecycle and while operating them confidently at enterprise scale.”

Provided by Globe Newswire on behalf of Fortinet. Click to read original content. The original article was written by Decision Insights Editorial.