Fortinet expands FortiEndpoint with AI monitoring, data controls to tackle shadow AI risks

Fortinet Tackles AI Security Through Unified Endpoint Protection

Fortinet announced significant updates to its FortiEndpoint platform, introducing capabilities designed to help organizations navigate the complexities of AI security in distributed work environments. The expansion, unveiled at Fortinet Accelerate 2026, brings AI visibility and control, data loss prevention, and FortiAI-Assist into a unified endpoint protection system delivered through a single agent, console, and license1

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. These additions represent Fortinet's response to the growing challenge of shadow AI, where employees adopt AI applications and agents without approval, creating security gaps that threat actors increasingly exploit.

The platform integrates with the broader Fortinet Security Fabric, allowing risk signals from individual devices to inform access and policy decisions across the company's security and networking products1

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. "Organizations need a simpler and more effective way to manage security as their environments become more complex and AI-enabled," said Michael Xie, founder, president, and chief technology officer at Fortinet2

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. The updates are scheduled for release in the third quarter of 2026.

AI Visibility and Control to Combat Unsanctioned Tools

The first major capability centers on tracking AI use across company devices. FortiEndpoint now provides administrators with centralized visibility into both sanctioned and unsanctioned AI applications, agents, and web tools running on endpoints, including detailed information about who is using them. Security teams can implement granular guardrail policies to allow, restrict, monitor, or block these tools based on corporate security, compliance, and data security requirements2

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This approach addresses a critical gap in AI-enabled environments where employees frequently adopt AI tools without IT approval. The single view helps organizations surface shadow AI, identify unmanaged applications, and understand user activity patterns. By monitoring adoption trends, security teams can make informed decisions about which AI tools to officially sanction and which pose unacceptable risks to the organization.

Data Loss Prevention Targets Sensitive Data Leakage

The second innovation focuses on preventing sensitive information from escaping corporate control. FortiEndpoint now includes native data loss prevention capabilities that inspect information as it moves to AI applications, agents, and web services1

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. The system automatically flags material such as personally identifiable information, intellectual property, and financial records before it leaves the device, helping organizations securely adopt AI while maintaining compliance controls.

Built-in user coaching provides real-time prompts about acceptable use, offering policy guidance to help users understand proper AI usage without impacting productivity2

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. This approach aims to reduce risky behavior through education rather than pure restriction. By integrating data security directly into the endpoint platform, Fortinet eliminates the need for organizations to deploy separate point products or add another management layer to their security stack.

FortiAI-Assist Simplifies Security Operations

The third component, FortiAI-Assist, brings generative AI capabilities into the platform to streamline daily security operations. Analysts can use natural language to investigate events, pull up summaries, flag high-risk devices, and troubleshoot problems1

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. The assistant provides contextual insights, policy recommendations, and risk guidance to help teams strengthen governance, prioritize threats, and scale threat hunting efforts2

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These assisted workflows complement zero-trust access capabilities that continuously score device health and compliance. The system adjusts access privileges as risk levels change, creating adaptive protection that responds to real-time context2

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. This dynamic risk scoring helps organizations enforce access policies based on current device posture rather than static rules.

Strategic Consolidation in AI-Era Endpoint Security

The FortiEndpoint expansion continues Fortinet's strategy of consolidating security functions to reduce complexity. The company previously expanded generative AI across seven products in late 2024 and brought its FortiGate-VM firewall to Nvidia's BlueField-3 chips for AI data centers in December1

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. By unifying endpoint protection, secure remote access, and data security through one platform, Fortinet addresses the fragmentation that can slow security teams and limit visibility across distributed environments.

As AI agents and applications become embedded in everyday work, organizations face mounting pressure to balance innovation with protection. The integration of endpoint telemetry and risk context with connected security controls through the Security Fabric enables stronger adaptive access and policy enforcement across the enterprise2

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. This approach positions security operations to respond more effectively as threat actors develop increasingly sophisticated techniques to exploit gaps across users, devices, applications, and data.