Fortinet, the global cybersecurity leader driving the convergence of networking and security, 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 SASE, and quantum-safe capabilities to help organizations simplify their security architectures while delivering consistent protection and performance across the entire digital infrastructure.
“FortiOS 8.0 reflects more than 25 years of continued innovation at the intersection of networking and security,” said Ken Xie, Founder, Chairman of the Board, and Chief Executive Officer at Fortinet. “As organizations 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.”
A Unified Platform for the Future of Secure Networking
As organizations 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 center.
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FortiOS 8.0 introduces advancements across three core areas of innovation, AI-driven security, next-generation SASE, and quantum-safe protection, helping organizations securely support modern connectivity models while preparing for what comes next.
Securing AI Usage with Deep Visibility and AI-Aware Controls
As organizations 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 organization 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 organizations avoid breaches, fines, and reputational damage.
- AI agents across the Fortinet Security Fabric, simplifying troubleshooting and configuration through guided, conversational workflows for firewall and SD-WAN environments, reducing the operational burden on IT teams, shortening response times, and minimizing configuration errors that can lead to outages or security gaps.
SOURCE: GlobeNewswire