Fortinet has acquired Virtue AI to expand its security capabilities for AI models, applications and autonomous agents, adding runtime protection, automated validation and governance tools to its broader Security for AI strategy.
The acquisition strengthens Fortinet’s efforts to secure what it describes as the agentic enterprise, where AI systems increasingly act autonomously across applications, APIs, tools and enterprise workflows.
Financial terms were not disclosed. Fortinet said the consideration paid is immaterial to its business.
Virtue AI adds agentic security capabilities
Virtue AI focuses on securing AI systems throughout development and runtime.
Its technology is designed to address emerging attack surfaces that include prompts, models, AI agents, Model Context Protocol tools, API calls and the supporting AI infrastructure.
That expands security requirements beyond traditional areas such as networks, endpoints, applications and cloud workloads.
Agentic red-teaming becomes part of Fortinet portfolio
One of Virtue AI’s core capabilities is automated red-teaming for autonomous AI systems.
The platform can test agents across more than 50 sandboxed environments and 14 high-stakes domains, including simulated prompt-injection attacks and MCP-based attacks against agent frameworks.
The objective is to identify exploitable weaknesses before AI systems are deployed more broadly.
Governance and visibility extend to AI agents and tools
Virtue AI also provides visibility into AI agents and tools running within an enterprise environment.
Its capabilities include discovering unsanctioned AI applications, scanning MCP tools and source code for risks, monitoring agent behaviour and blocking malicious tool calls before execution.
This becomes increasingly important as enterprises adopt more autonomous systems capable of interacting directly with applications and business data.
Continuous AI validation supports compliance
Virtue AI includes automated validation designed to identify new risks when models, policies or fine-tuning configurations change.
The company says its automated red-teaming covers hundreds of attack vectors and more than 1,000 risk categories.
The platform can also generate audit-ready evidence for security, risk and compliance teams.
Real-time guardrails protect multimodal AI
The acquisition also adds policy controls across text, images, video, audio and AI-generated code.
These guardrails are designed to block harmful content, sensitive data leakage, jailbreak attempts and vulnerable code before outputs reach users or downstream systems.
This gives Fortinet a broader security layer around multimodal and agentic workloads.
FortiAIGate remains central to wider strategy
Fortinet launched FortiAIGate earlier this year to protect large language models against risks including prompt injection, data leakage, model poisoning and excessive resource consumption.
Virtue AI complements that platform by extending protection across models, applications and autonomous agents from development through runtime.
The combined approach brings AI validation, runtime security and enforcement into Fortinet’s wider AI-native Security Fabric.
AI security market expected to grow rapidly
Fortinet cited Gartner estimates suggesting that the market for securing AI ecosystems and AI agents could grow from $2.8 billion in 2026 to $16.4 billion by 2030.
That projected increase reflects the growing need for dedicated controls around enterprise AI systems as adoption moves from experimentation to operational deployment.
Source: MEA Tech Watch Press Reporter
