WWT's Take on Fortinet Accelerate 2026

As a Platinum Sponsor, WWT highlighted its Edge to Cloud architectural blueprint alongside extensive FortiSASE validation efforts, reinforcing its ability to translate strategy into operational success. These demonstrations showcased how organizations can confidently adopt and scale Fortinet technologies across distributed environments while maintaining performance, security, and simplicity.

The event also served as a catalyst for deeper collaboration. Executive engagements strengthened alignment between WWT and Fortinet leadership, while meaningful interactions with global customers expanded existing relationships and opened new opportunities. More than 250 qualified leads were generated, reflecting strong market interest in WWT's validated approach to security transformation.

In parallel, the Cyber Range Capture the Flag experience gained significant traction, with strong interest and registrations signaling demand for hands-on, immersive security training. This momentum underscores WWT's commitment to not only delivering solutions but also enabling customers and partners to build practical expertise.

WWT's Collective Take on Fortinet Accelerate 2026

The biggest announcement was FortiSOC — and I'll be honest, this is something we've been waiting for. Anyone who's deployed the full Fortinet SecOps stack knows the pain of juggling FortiAnalyzer, FortiSIEM, FortiSOAR, and FortiTIP as separate products with separate consoles and separate data models. FortiSOC is Fortinet's answer to that — a cloud-delivered service that collapses all of those into one experience. Single console, unified data model, one place for log ingestion, correlation, case management, behavioral analytics, the whole thing. It's still in preview so I'm keeping my expectations measured until we get hands-on, but the direction is exactly right. Tool sprawl is a real problem for our mid-market customers especially, and this could meaningfully simplify what we're deploying and supporting.

The AI story also got a lot more interesting. FortiAI has been a copilot up until now — helpful, but still requiring a human to drive. What they showed at Accelerate was the shift toward actual agentic execution — meaning FortiAI can now take actions across the SOC autonomously, not just suggest them. Alert triage, threat hunting, investigation steps — the agent handles those end to end. They also added MCP support which keeps context persistent across the detection, investigation, and response workflow. For our customers running lean SOC teams, that's a meaningful capability gap being closed. Overall a strong show — now we wait to see how the FortiSOC preview translates into GA and what the licensing looks like in practice.

Also, The FortiEndpoint consolidation was the other thing that caught my attention — ZTNA, SASE, EPP, EDR, and DLP all coming through a single agent is a much cleaner story to bring to customers than what we've been selling. Less friction on the deployment side, less to manage on the customer side. 

What a whirlwind at Fortinet Accelerate 2026! Getting to share the stage with Warren and Lucas for "Securing Digital Transformation from Edge to Cloud: WWT's Integrated Approach" was honestly one of those moments I will always remember. Nothing beats being in the same room with brilliant people, nerding out over the industry's biggest challenges together!

And our "better together" story? It just got a whole lot sweeter. FortiSASE is now officially woven into the fabric of WWT's Unified SASE go-to-market strategy, and when great partners align like this, the possibilities are truly endless. 

Fortinet Accelerate 2026 did not disappoint on the announcement front! FortiOS 8.0 stole the show, arriving packed with some truly exciting updates. Sovereign SASE brings granular control over data residency and the brand new AI-aware application controls give security teams real-time visibility into shadow AI activity across the network. Translation? No more guessing which GenAI tools are quietly making themselves at home in your environment. Full visibility, full control, and honestly, it is about time!

Together, WWT and Fortinet are not just keeping up with the future of secure networking, we are helping build it. So much good stuff ahead and we get to do it as a team. Here is to what comes next!

Walking the floor at my first Fortinet Accelerate, the momentum was palpable — especially when conversations moved past the marketing buzzwords of SASE, SSE, and ZTNA and into how these architectures actually get deployed in the real world. That's what drew me in. After enough years in the network and security trenches, you know that "embracing change" usually looks less like a bold vision and more like staring at a fragmented environment asking, "Wait, who approved that firewall rule?" The traditional perimeter didn't just dissolve — it moved into hybrid data centers, multi-cloud environments, and employees' living rooms. We can no longer rely on rigid, centralized choke points, and the announcements at Accelerate reflected that reality head-on.

One area where that real-world focus resonated was the continued evolution of Fortinet's secure browser plugin. FortiClient's web browser plugin for HTTPS web filtering allows EMS administrators to improve detection and enforcement of web filter rules on HTTPS sites directly at the endpoint, and what started as a straightforward filtering extension has quietly grown into something far more capable. Originally introduced for the Chrome browser on Windows endpoints, the plugin later expanded to Microsoft Edge and now covers Firefox as well — reflecting the browser diversity we actually see across client environments. Recent EMS versions introduced the ability to enforce the web filtering plugin in private and incognito browsing modes, which closes a gap our engineers have flagged for years: users simply switching to an incognito window to sidestep policy. It's a small change on paper, but in practice it eliminates one of the most common and frustrating bypass techniques we encounter during security assessments.

Where the secure browser story gets particularly interesting for our clients is in the data protection layer. The Secure Browser profile allows administrators to approve or restrict file uploads and downloads for specific domains, and prevent users from pasting content out of those domains — applying DLP-style controls at the browser level for targeted sites without requiring a separate data protection tool or agent. When you pair that with FortiOS 8.0's new FortiView for AI attack surface and shadow AI, which provides real-time visibility into how AI applications and services are used across the organization and distinguishes sanctioned from unsanctioned tools, you start to see a coherent answer to the question every CISO is asking right now: how do I let my people use browser-based AI tools without watching sensitive data walk out the door? For those of us helping clients architect these controls day to day, the secure browser plugin is no longer a checkbox feature buried in an EMS profile — it's becoming a meaningful enforcement point in a world where the browser is, for all practical purposes, the new perimeter. Some of the broader platform capabilities previewed at Accelerate haven't yet received confirmed availability dates or pricing, so we'll continue tracking the roadmap and sharing practical guidance as these features move into production.

Conclusion

And that's a wrap on Fortinet Accelerate 2026! From the buzzing hallway conversations to the big stage moments, one thing is crystal clear: the partnership between WWT and Fortinet is firing on all cylinders and the road ahead is incredibly exciting. The innovations, the energy, and the "better together" momentum we witnessed at Accelerate 2026 are already making their way into everything we build and deliver for you. Have questions or want to dig deeper into how WWT and Fortinet can help your organization navigate its journey from edge to cloud? Reach out to one of our experts and let's keep the conversation going!