March 11, 2026 – Fortinet^®(NASDAQ: FTNT), the global cybersecurity leader driving the convergence of networking and security, has announced FortiOS 8.0, the latest release of the operating system that powers the Fortinet Security Fabric. Introduced as part of Fortinet’s Secure Networking innovation at Fortinet Accelerate 2026, FortiOS 8.0 delivers powerful new AI-driven security, next-generation Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), and quantum-safe capabilities to help organisations simplify their security architectures while delivering consistent protection and performance across the entire digital infrastructure.

Ken Xie, Founder, Chairman of the Board, and Chief Executive Officer, Fortinet, said, “FortiOS 8.0 reflects more than 25 years of continued innovation at the intersection of networking and security. 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.”

As organisations accelerate digital transformation initiatives, including generative AI (GenAI) adoption, hybrid work, and cloud-first strategies, security teams face growing pressure to scale protection without increasing complexity. FortiOS 8.0 addresses these challenges by advancing secure networking through a unified operating system that provides deeper visibility, stronger control, and future-ready security across the network edge, cloud, and data centre.

FortiOS 8.0 introduces advancements across three core areas of innovation, AI-driven security, next-generation SASE, and quantum-safe protection, helping organisations securely support modern connectivity models while preparing for what comes next.

Securing AI Usage With Deep Visibility and AI-aware Controls

As organisations rapidly adopt GenAI and autonomous agents, FortiOS 8.0 introduces new capabilities to help them understand, govern, and secure AI usage across the network.

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, enabling security teams quickly identify risky or unknown AI usage, reduce compliance exposure, and enable safe AI adoption without reacting after an incident.
• AI-aware application control, allowing approved GenAI tools while blocking risky actions that could expose sensitive data, so employees benefit from AI-driven productivity while protecting intellectual property, customer data, and regulated information.
• Model Context Protocol (MCP) and agent-to-agent (A2A) visibility, revealing hidden AI activity and interactions between applications, agents, and tools, reducing blind spots where data could be mishandled or exfiltrated and giving security teams greater control over how information flows across systems.
• 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, closing a common data exfiltration loophole and helps organisations avoid breaches, fines, and reputational damage.
• AI agents across the Fortinet Security Fabric, simplifying troubleshooting and configuration through guided, conversational workflows for firewall and software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) environments, reducing the operational burden on IT teams, shortening response times, and minimising configuration errors that can lead to outages or security gaps.

Advancing the Edge With Next-generation SASE

FortiOS 8.0 strengthens Fortinet’s next-generation SASE capabilities to support performance-sensitive, regulated, and mission-critical environments.

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. 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. This flexibility is increasingly essential as privacy, residency, and national security requirements expand across global markets.
• 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, improving resiliency, availability, and performance across distributed environments for improved application performance, and stronger resiliency for critical sites.

Extending Quantum-safe Security

FortiOS 8.0 continues Fortinet’s leadership in preparing organizations for a post-quantum future by expanding quantum-safe cryptography across products and protocols.

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.
• Enhanced secure sockets layer (SSL) deep inspection strengthened by hybrid key exchange and post-quantum-safe cryptography, revealing threats concealed within encrypted traffic while maintaining strong end-to-end encryption without silently downgrading connections.
• Quantum-safe SASE capabilities, exposing threats hidden in encrypted traffic through enhanced SSL deep inspection with hybrid key exchange and post-quantum-safe cryptography, while protecting critical access paths, including management access and agentless VPN, with quantum-resilient security delivered directly through Fortinet firewalls.

Enabling Secure Growth Today and Tomorrow

With FortiOS 8.0, Fortinet continues to advance its secure networking vision by delivering a unified platform that evolves with the business. By reducing complexity, improving operational efficiency, and embedding future-ready security directly into the network, FortiOS 8.0 provides organisations with a scalable foundation to support digital transformation, AI adoption, and long-term resilience in an increasingly dynamic threat landscape.

Additional Resources

• Learn more about FortiOS 8.0.
• Read more about the Fortinet Security Fabric.
• Learn more about the Fortinet Open Ecosystem.
• Visit fortinet.com/trust to learn about Fortinet innovation, collaboration partners, product security processes, and enterprise-grade products.
• Read about how Fortinet customers are securing their organisations.
• Learn about Fortinet’s commitment to product security and integrity, including its responsible product development and vulnerability disclosure approach and policies.
• Follow Fortinet on X, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. Subscribe to Fortinet on our blog or YouTube.

About Fortinet

Fortinet (NASDAQ: FTNT) is a driving force in the evolution of cybersecurity and the convergence of networking and security. Our mission is to secure people, devices, and data everywhere, and today we deliver cybersecurity everywhere you need it with the largest integrated portfolio of over 50 enterprise-grade products. Well over half a million customers trust Fortinet’s solutions, which are among the most deployed, most patented, and most validated in the industry. The Fortinet Training Institute, one of the largest and broadest training programs in the industry, is dedicated to making cybersecurity training and new career opportunities available to everyone. Collaboration with esteemed organisations from both the public and private sectors, including CERTs, government entities, and academia, is a fundamental aspect of Fortinet’s commitment to enhance cyber resilience globally. FortiGuard Labs, Fortinet’s elite threat intelligence and research organisation, develops and utilises leading-edge machine learning and AI technologies to provide customers with timely and consistently top-rated protection and actionable threat intelligence. Learn more at https://www.fortinet.com, the Fortinet Blog, and FortiGuard Labs.