Fortinet revamped its FortiOS operating system with new artificial intelligence (AI)-enhanced features designed to accelerate threat detection and mitigation and improve network visibility.

FortiOS is a core piece of Fortinet’s Security Fabric, which pairs the company’s software with hardware running on custom ASICs. The update introduces more than 300 new features and improvements to the vendor’s security operating system.

“One of the most significant enhancements is the speed and accuracy with which FortiOS 7.2 can detect and prevent threats,” CMO John Maddison wrote in a recent blog post.

Traditionally, sandboxing has been a performance-intensive task that results in a poor user experience or having to hunt down malware inside the network after the fact, he explained.

“FortiOS 7.2’s new inline sandbox service resolves this by transforming a traditional detection sandbox capability into a real-time, in-network prevention to stop both known and unknown malware with minimal impact on operations,” Maddison wrote.

On the topic of threat detection, the update adds an inline cloud access security broker (CASB) to Fortinet’s FortiGuard firewalls and integrates with the company’s FortiClient – part of the vendor’s secure access service edge (SASE) architecture – for inline zero-trust network access (ZTNA).

The capabilities are backed by an outbreak detection service that promises to automatically identify and respond to new threats.

But for companies struggling to keep up with the onslaught of attacks, the update also adds support for Fortinet’s security operations center-as-a-service offering. The service allows customers to hand off tier-one analysis to Fortinet, enabling security teams to focus their energy on high-priority threats.

Fortinet also debuted a dedicated intrusion prevention system (IPS) aimed at financial and other highly regulated markets looking to consolidate these capabilities under a single firewall appliance.

Finally, on the topic of monitoring, FortiOS gains new OT and IoT discovery and segmentation tools that automatically detect, classify, and apply the appropriate policy to these devices. The service is available on Fortinet’s firewalls or as part of the company’s network access control platform: FortiNAC.

These features come amid a flood of enhancements to the company's security portfolio. Highlights include improved analytics and monitoring within the vendor’s Secure SD-WAN offering; HTTP 3.0 support on the company’s firewalls; and an improved dashboard for the company’s ZNTA offering.