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Fortinet, a global cybersecurity leader, has announced an integrated solution with NVIDIA to address this by running its FortiGate VM virtual cloud firewall directly on the NVIDIA BlueField-3 Data Processing Unit (DPU). This integration embeds core security functions like firewalling, segmentation, and zero-trust policy enforcement into the data center infrastructure itself, aiming to secure AI workloads with higher performance, stronger isolation, and simpler operations than traditional host-based models.
Fortinet integrates its FortiGate VM firewall to run on NVIDIA BlueField-3 DPUs.
Security functions are offloaded from the host CPU to the DPU for zero performance impact.
The solution provides isolated infrastructure acceleration for AI factories and private clouds.
Benefits include high-throughput inspection, zero-trust segmentation, and simplified policy enforcement.
It targets high-density AI clusters, edge services, and multitenant cloud architectures.
Supported starting with FortiOS 7.6.3 with a validated deployment guide.
The collaboration represents a shift in securing accelerated computing environments. Traditional host-based firewalls can struggle with the massive traffic loads and low-latency demands of AI workloads. By running FortiGate VM on the BlueField DPU, security inspection, segmentation, and zero-trust controls are executed in an isolated hardware domain separate from the host CPUs and GPUs. This "infrastructure-offloaded" model eliminates competition for host resources, reducing latency and enabling line-rate throughput for security policies without slowing critical AI computations.
A key advantage is the enhanced isolation and segmentation capability for multitenant or multi-workload AI environments. The BlueField DPU provides an isolated trust domain purpose-built for separating the security plane from compute workloads. This allows organizations to enforce granular zero-trust network segmentation policies directly within the infrastructure fabric, containing threats and improving compliance without the performance penalty typically associated with software-based microsegmentation.
The integration is designed to reduce operational complexity in modern data centers. By converging networking and security offloads onto the DPU, the solution reduces the number of components and hops in the data path. It supports standard interfaces like Open vSwitch (OVS) and is tailored for scalable multitenant architectures, making it suitable for cloud service providers, telecommunications edge deployments, and enterprise private clouds that require hardware-accelerated inspection and service chaining at scale.
“As enterprises are modernizing their data centers to support AI, private cloud and edge applications require much higher throughput than traditional workloads,” said John Whittle, Chief Operating Officer at Fortinet. “Integrating FortiGate VM on BlueField-3 DPU gives customers a practical way to keep security aligned with these new performance demands. By moving firewalling, segmentation, and zero-trust controls on the DPU, we help organizations improve isolation, reduce latency, and simplify consistent policy enforcement across their environments.”
“AI factories demand an entirely new class of secure, accelerated infrastructure,” said Kevin Deierling, Senior Vice President of Networking at NVIDIA. “By running FortiGate VM directly on NVIDIA BlueField-3 DPUs, we’re extending the model of infrastructure-offloaded services to include advanced security. This collaboration allows organizations to enforce firewalling, segmentation and zero-trust policies at line rate, without impacting GPU workloads.”
The Fortinet and NVIDIA collaboration signals a maturation of security for AI-scale infrastructure. By embedding enterprise-grade security directly into the accelerated data path via DPUs, it provides a blueprint for organizations to build high-performance AI factories that are secure by design, addressing the fundamental conflict between robust protection and the need for unimpeded computational speed.
About Fortinet
Fortinet is a driving force in the evolution of cybersecurity and the convergence of networking and security. Our mission is to secure people, devices, and data everywhere, and today we deliver cybersecurity everywhere our customers need it with the largest integrated portfolio of over 50 enterprise-grade products. Well over half a million customers trust Fortinet's solutions, which are among the most deployed, most patented, and most validated in the industry.
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