All news with #fortinet tag

🔒 A threat actor tracked as Storm-2561 is distributing spoofed enterprise VPN clients impersonating vendors such as Ivanti, Cisco, and Fortinet to harvest corporate VPN credentials. The campaign uses SEO poisoning to push victims to convincing fake vendor pages that link to a GitHub-hosted ZIP containing a malicious MSI installer. When run, the installer places a fake Pulse.exe, drops a loader (dwmapi.dll) and a Hyrax infostealer variant (inspector.dll), captures credentials and configuration files, then displays an installation error and redirects victims to the legitimate vendor site to avoid immediate suspicion.

🏆 At Fortinet Accelerate 2026, Fortinet honored the 2025 Partner of the Year Award winners for outstanding contributions to secure networking, cloud modernization, OT protection, and managed services across the Americas, APAC, and EMEA. Winners — from global system integrators like HCLTech and NTT DATA to distributors such as TD SYNNEX and regional leaders — demonstrated excellence in customer success, innovation, and technical execution. The awards highlight partner adoption of the Fortinet Security Fabric to reduce complexity and converge networking and security for hybrid and distributed environments. Recognition also emphasized growth in Unified SASE, SecOps, MSSP offerings, and OT security implementations.

🚀Fortinet has refreshed the Engage Partner Program to align partner rewards with platform-led customer outcomes across Secure Networking, Unified SASE, and AI-driven security operations. The update moves recognition beyond point-of-sale to lifecycle contributions such as architecture design, deployment, and managed services, and introduces clearer global tiers and specialization paths. Partners gain profitability incentives, expanded training (updated NSE content), and a new Partner Portal to streamline deal registration and operational workflows.

🔒 Security researchers warn of a campaign abusing FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall appliances to extract service account credentials and network configuration files. Attackers exploited disclosed vulnerabilities (for example, CVE-2025-59718, CVE-2025-59719, CVE-2026-24858) or weak credentials to create persistent admin accounts and loosen firewall policies. Compromised service accounts were used to authenticate to Active Directory, enroll rogue workstations, and enable lateral movement prior to detection.

🔐 Fortinet investigated recent reports of AI-assisted attacks and found no exploitation of FortiGate vulnerabilities; attackers instead exploited exposed management ports and weak single-factor credentials using automated password spraying. The novel concern is that conversational AI prompts and cloud resources can now automate target discovery, credential guessing, vulnerability assessment, and exploitation at scale with no coding required. Fortinet stresses defense-in-depth and rapid remediation.

🏆 Fortinet has been named a Gartner Peer Insights™ Customers’ Choice for SD‑WAN for the seventh consecutive year, reflecting sustained customer confidence. In the February 2026 Voice of the Customer report, Fortinet Secure SD‑WAN earned a 4.8/5 overall rating and a 96% willingness to recommend based on 202 verified reviews through December 31, 2025. Customers highlight integrated networking and security via FortiOS, ASIC-accelerated performance, and centralized orchestration with FortiManager as key differentiators in deployment, support, and operational simplicity.

🔒 The Fortinet NSE 8 Cybersecurity Expert credential represents the pinnacle of technical achievement within Fortinet’s certification program, validating deep design, configuration, and troubleshooting skills for complex enterprise environments. Candidates must demonstrate theoretical, conceptual, and practical mastery, plus extensive real-world experience and continuous learning. The article highlights Swedish partner Avoki, which now counts four NSE 8s among its senior engineers, and notes the company’s 2026 integration into iteam. Readers are invited to sign up for an ebook launching March 17 to learn more about paths to NSE 8.

🔒 FortiAIGate provides dedicated runtime protection for private AI and LLM deployments by monitoring every input and output between applications and models. It detects and blocks threats such as prompt injection, jailbreaking, model poisoning, data exfiltration, and excessive compute abuse while enforcing governance policies in real time. Built for Kubernetes and hybrid environments, it integrates with Fortinet Security Fabric, offers dashboards mapping OWASP Top 10 LLM risks, and uses multi‑GPU and SmartNIC acceleration to preserve performance and control costs.

🚨 Security researchers say an open-source, AI-native offensive platform called CyberStrikeAI was used to automate mass scanning and exploitation of Fortinet FortiGate appliances, contributing to compromises of more than 600 devices across 55 countries. Team Cymru traced activity to a Russian-speaking actor after analyzing an IP address and observed 21 unique IPs running the tool between January 20 and February 26, 2026. The tool's GitHub maintainer, known as Ed1s0nZ, has published a range of exploitation and AI-jailbreak utilities and shows interactions with organizations linked to Chinese state cyber capabilities.

🔍 Researchers warn that the open-source platform CyberStrikeAI was observed on infrastructure linked to a recent campaign that compromised hundreds of Fortinet FortiGate devices. Team Cymru analysts identified the service banner on port 8080 at 212.11.64[.]250 and saw communications between that host and targeted FortiGate appliances. The platform integrates over 100 security tools with AI agents to automate end-to-end attack chains, enabling lower-skilled operators to carry out complex exploitation.

🔒 In February 2026 ESET Chief Security Evangelist Tony Anscombe highlights a series of notable incidents: widespread misuse of commercial generative AI, a novel Android malware campaign, increased ATM jackpotting, and destructive attacks against critical infrastructure. Researchers tied more than 600 compromised FortiGate devices in 55 countries to exposed management ports and weak credentials, while ESET documented PromptSpy, the first known Android malware abusing generative AI for context-aware UI manipulation. The FBI warned US ATM operators about a rise in jackpotting, and ESET analyzed a DynoWiper case targeting an energy company. Businesses are urged to strengthen access controls, enforce MFA, close exposed management ports, and improve monitoring for GenAI-related abuse.

🔐 Fortinet's Academic Partner Program partners with the University of South Australia to expand access to cybersecurity careers by delivering NSE training, hands-on labs, and free exam vouchers that remove financial barriers. With more than 800 partner institutions worldwide and a goal to train 1 million individuals by 2026, the initiative readies students for internships and full-time roles. Industry networking events with distributors such as Wavelink translate certification into interviews and hires, while practical lab work builds technical confidence and employability.

🛡️ The 2025 Global Cybersecurity Skills Gap Report shows that human risk and workforce shortages—not technology alone—are driving frequent, costly breaches: in 2024, 86% of organizations experienced at least one breach and 28% reported five or more. Awareness deficits, phishing, and skills gaps account for most incidents, so training must be preventive, continuous, and role-based. Fortinet pairs security products with a broad training and certification program to help organizations close these gaps and improve detection, response, and recovery.

🔒 FortiGate-as-a-Service (FGaaS) delivers full FortiGate firewall capability as a cloud-hosted, consumption-based service running on purpose-built Fortinet hardware in Fortinet-managed, ISO- and SOC 2-certified data centers. It combines the performance and deep inspection of on-prem FortiGate with unified management, FortiGuard threat services, and optional SOC/MSSP-managed operations for faster deployment and predictable OpEx pricing.

🔍 This Fortinet analysis dissects a recent multi-stage campaign deploying Agent Tesla, which targets Windows users with credential theft and keylogging. The chain uses spearphishing with RAR attachments containing obfuscated JSE loaders that fetch encrypted PowerShell scripts and reflectively load .NET assemblies in memory. Operators leverage process hollowing, virtualization and sandbox checks, and SMTP-based exfiltration to minimize detection. Fortinet telemetry and cross-product protections are highlighted to help organizations mitigate the threat.

📡 Fortinet announced Alliance Partnerships with Parsec Technologies and Westermo to deliver ruggedized, rapidly deployable secure connectivity for mobile and fixed cyber-physical systems. The Parsec Emergency Connectivity Kit (ECK) packages preconfigured Fortinet devices with rugged enclosures and high-gain antennas for quick field deployment, available as Bloodhound (mobility) and Pitbull (resilience) models. Westermo integration brings WeOS switches and cellular routers into the Fortinet Security Fabric via IPsec, while FortiAuthenticator and FortiPAM extend identity and privileged access controls for industrial sites.

🛡️ AWS security researchers report a Russian-speaking attacker compromised more than 600 FortiGate firewalls between January 11 and February 18, 2026, by exploiting weak or default passwords rather than product vulnerabilities. The actor used a Google Gemini-based AI tool to pivot to additional hosts and deployed reconnaissance tools written in Go and Python. Analysts found clear signs of AI-assisted code generation. Experts urge strong passwords and enabling MFA.

🛡️Fortinet has achieved IEC 62443-4-1 Maturity Level 2 (ML2) certification for its Secure Product Development Lifecycle (SPDL). This independent certification verifies that Fortinet’s secure development processes are formalized, documented, repeatable, and consistently applied across design, development, verification, validation, release, and maintenance of its security products. SPDL embeds threat modeling, secure-by-design engineering, automated and manual testing, supply chain integrity controls, and a transparent FortiGuard Labs PSIRT vulnerability disclosure process to improve product integrity for IT, OT, and critical infrastructure customers.

🤖 Amazon Threat Intelligence says a Russian-speaking actor used commercial generative AI services to compromise hundreds of FortiGate firewalls by exploiting exposed management interfaces and weak, single-factor credentials. Between Jan. 11 and Feb. 18 the group breached over 600 devices across 55+ countries, then accessed Active Directory, extracted credential databases, and targeted backups. Amazon recommends fundamental controls — restrict management access, enforce MFA, patch perimeter devices, improve segmentation, and enhance detection — noting the attacker’s toolkit and operational plans were largely AI-generated and publicly left on infrastructure used in the campaign.

🔍 Amazon Web Services reported a low-skilled, Russian-speaking actor used commercial GenAI services to run an opportunistic campaign that compromised over 600 FortiGate devices across more than 55 countries between 11 January and 18 February 2026. The attacker scanned internet-exposed management interfaces, attempted commonly reused credentials and relied on AI-assisted scripts to parse stolen configurations and automate VPN access. AWS noted no exploitation of FortiGate vulnerabilities and that AWS infrastructure was not involved. Defenders are urged to prioritize patching, credential hygiene and post-exploitation detection.