Fortinet acquires Virtue AI to strengthen security for autonomous AI systems
Fortinet has acquired Virtue AI to add continuous AI validation, agent protection and real-time safeguards to its AI-Native Security Fabric as enterprises accelerate deployment of autonomous AI systems.
Virtue AI's technology is expected to complement Fortinet's existing AI security capabilities, including FortiAIGate, which protects large language models against threats such as prompt injection, data leakage, model poisoning and excessive resource consumption.
BENGALURU: Cybersecurity company Fortinet has acquired Virtue AI, an innovator in AI runtime protection, automated AI validation and security for autonomous AI systems, in a move aimed at strengthening its capabilities to secure enterprises deploying agentic artificial intelligence.
The acquisition will enhance Fortinet’s AI-Native Security Fabric with continuous agentic AI validation and runtime protection across the AI lifecycle, the company said in a media release.
As enterprises increasingly deploy AI applications and autonomous agents, their attack surface is expanding beyond conventional networks, endpoints and cloud workloads to include prompts, AI models, agents, Model Context Protocol tools, API calls and AI infrastructure.
Virtue AI’s technology is expected to complement Fortinet’s existing AI security capabilities, including FortiAIGate, which protects large language models against threats such as prompt injection, data leakage, model poisoning and excessive resource consumption.
A key component of the acquisition is Virtue AI’s Guardian Agent technology, which brings capabilities spanning agentic system red-teaming, agent protection and governance, continuous AI validation and real-time guardrails.
Its red-teaming capabilities test autonomous agents across more than 50 sandboxed environments and 14 high-stakes domains, including simulated prompt-injection and Model Context Protocol-based attacks against leading agent frameworks.
The technology also provides visibility into AI agents and tools operating within enterprise environments, helps identify unsanctioned AI applications and agents, scans MCP tools and source code for hidden risks, monitors agent behaviour and can block malicious tool calls before they are executed.
Fortinet said Virtue AI’s continuous validation capabilities can identify new risks arising from model updates and policy fine-tuning. Automated red-teaming covers hundreds of attack vectors and more than 1,000 risk categories, with multimodal testing and reporting designed to support security, risk and compliance teams.
The platform’s real-time guardrails can enforce policies across text, images, video, audio and AI-generated code, helping prevent harmful content, sensitive data exposure, jailbreaks and vulnerable code from reaching users or downstream systems.
“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 of Fortinet. He said Virtue AI’s technology would advance Fortinet’s vision for continuous AI assurance and help customers govern and protect AI systems throughout their lifecycle.
The acquisition comes as the market for securing AI ecosystems and AI agents expands rapidly. Fortinet cited Gartner’s forecast that products and tools for securing AI ecosystems and agents could grow from $2.8 billion in 2026 to $16.4 billion by 2030.
Fortinet said the acquisition will complement FortiAIGate and strengthen its AI runtime security capabilities through Virtue AI’s automated validation and real-time protection, combined with coordinated enforcement and FortiGuard Labs threat intelligence.
Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Fortinet said the consideration paid was immaterial to its business.
