Fortinet Introduces FortiOS 8.0 to Expand Secure Networking with Secure AI Controls, Fabric-based AI Agents, Flexible SASE, and Simplified SD-WAN
SUNNYVALE, Calif. and LAS VEGAS, March 10, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fortinet® (NASDAQ:FTNT), the global cybersecurity leader driving the convergence of networking and security, today 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.
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.
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 POP in customer-controlled locations, such as on-premises, private data centers, or co-location, while maintaining centralized 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 points of presence (POPs), and fully sovereign deployments within customer data centers. 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, centralized management, and reporting for improved availability and traffic optimization 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 VPN connectivity, using Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) certificates such as ML-DSA for authentication and key establishment.
- Enhanced 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 organizations 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 organizations.
- Learn about Fortinet's commitment to product security and integrity, including its responsible product development and vulnerability disclosure approach and policies.
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