How do you arm your customers with cutting-edge technology to protect against new and emerging threats, particularly as Quantum Computing advances?

As Quantum Computing advances, the threat landscape keeps evolving at pace. Quantum computers can perform complex calculations at unprecedented speeds and can easily break current encryption standards. Cybercriminals are already storing encrypted traffic to decrypt in the future, with a particular focus on industries that handle highly sensitive data that remains relevant over long periods, such as telecommunications, financial services, government and healthcare.

Fortinet’ s unified operation system, FortiOS, helps organisations with highly sensitive data deploy encryption algorithms and key distribution methods that can withstand quantum-powered attacks, stack algorithms for more robust protection and easily transition to post-quantum security.

Can you tell us about the current state of Operational Technology( OT) cybersecurity and areas for improvement to ensure a secure and ever-expanding IT / OT threat landscape?

We have been researching the state of cybersecurity in Operational Technology in organisations for seven years and we are seeing that organisations are taking OT security more seriously today.

We see this trend reflected in a notable increase in the assignment of responsibility for OT risk to the C-suite, alongside an uptick in organisations selfreporting increased rates of OT security maturity. Everyone from the C-suite on down needs to commit to protecting sensitive OT systems and allocating the necessary resources to secure their critical operations.

There are a number of things organisations need to look at to secure the ever-expanding IT / OT threat landscape. These include establishing visibility to see and understand everything that is on their OT network, harden the OT environment with strong network policy controls at all access points to reduce intrusions, integrating OT into security operations( SecOps) and incident response planning, cutting down on vendor sprawl by moving to a platform-based approach, as well as looking into AI-powered threat intelligence for near-real-time protection against the latest threats, attack variants and exposures.

With the growing convergence of IT and OT what unique challenges does Fortinet see in securing OT environments and how are you addressing them?

The IT / OT air gap is largely gone. Once isolated OT systems are now deeply interconnected with enterprise IT environments. At the same time, cyberthreats against critical infrastructure and across industries such as energy, transportation and manufacturing continue to grow, with phishing, ransomware and OT-specific threats prevalent.

Fortinet research has shown that while responsibility for OT cybersecurity has moved to the C-Suite and OT maturity is growing, awareness of blind spots is also rising. Many OT environments still depend on aging infrastructure, with many industrial control systems( ICS) more than a decade old and often unable to receive direct patches or firmware updates. While modernisation is underway, compensating controls and virtual patching remain crucial to protecting these legacy systems.

At the same time, threat actors are advancing. AI-powered attack techniques, the growing scale of Ransomware-as-a-Service and rising geopolitical tensions are increasing both the volume and sophistication of attacks, especially those targeting OT. These trends underscore the importance of a proactive security strategy that integrates real-time threat intelligence, centralised security operations and continuous monitoring.

As AI becomes a more powerful tool for both defenders and attackers and Quantum Computing threatens to break traditional encryption, how is Fortinet preparing its customers and its own products for these nextgeneration challenges?

Fortinet was founded on the principle of converging networking and security through a single operating system. This unique approach enables Fortinet to deploy cutting-edge updates, such as AI-powered and quantum-safe innovations, across its unified operating system, helping customers future-proof their security postures.

Just to give one example, customers using our FortiGate next-generation firewall( NGFW) and Fortinet Secure SD-WAN, already have the benefit of built-in quantum-safe features designed to defend against emerging threats.

While modernisation is underway, compensating controls and virtual patching remain crucial to protecting these legacy systems.

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