Fortinet has announced a new integrated solution with NVIDIA that embeds advanced security directly into accelerated data center infrastructure, addressing the growing demands of AI factories, private cloud, and high-performance computing environments. The collaboration enables FortiGate VM, Fortinet’s virtual cloud firewall, to run natively on NVIDIA BlueField-3 data processing units (DPUs), shifting critical security functions away from host CPUs and into the infrastructure fabric itself.
By running firewalling, segmentation, and zero-trust policy enforcement on the DPU, the solution allows enterprises to secure latency-sensitive AI workloads without impacting application or GPU performance. This approach is designed to help organizations maintain strong isolation, consistent policy enforcement, and high throughput as they scale AI and private cloud deployments.
“AI factories demand a new class of secure, accelerated infrastructure—one that delivers performance without compromising isolation or control.”
— Kevin Deierling, Senior Vice President of Networking, NVIDIA
According to Fortinet, enterprises modernizing their data centers are facing unprecedented traffic volumes and performance expectations. Integrating FortiGate VM with BlueField-3 enables security to scale in step with accelerated computing, while simplifying operations across hybrid, multicloud, and AI-centric environments. Core protections are enforced within an isolated trust domain, improving multitenant separation and reducing the risk of lateral movement.
John Whittle, Chief Operating Officer at Fortinet, said the integration offers a practical way for organizations to align security with modern performance demands. By offloading firewalling and segmentation to the DPU, enterprises can reduce latency, improve isolation, and apply zero-trust controls consistently across their infrastructure.
“As organizations modernize their data centers for AI, private cloud, and edge workloads, security must scale without becoming a performance bottleneck. By integrating FortiGate VM directly on NVIDIA BlueField-3 DPUs, we are embedding firewalling, segmentation, and zero-trust controls into the infrastructure itself—improving isolation, reducing latency, and enabling consistent policy enforcement without impacting critical workloads.”
John Whittle, Chief Operating Officer at Fortinet
Powered by FortiOS, FortiGate VM delivers next-generation firewall capabilities with centralized visibility and management. When deployed on NVIDIA BlueField, these capabilities are executed at line rate, enabling high-speed inspection and policy enforcement without burdening the host system.
The solution is particularly relevant for cloud service providers, telco edge deployments, and large enterprises operating multitenant private clouds. It supports scalable architectures that require hardware-accelerated inspection, service chaining, and secure workload isolation.
Support for FortiGate VM on NVIDIA BlueField begins with FortiOS 7.6.3. Fortinet said validated hardware configurations and deployment guidance are available through its sales channels, enabling customers to adopt infrastructure-embedded security as they build and scale AI-driven data centers.