Fortinet named Challenger in 2025 Gartner Security Service Edge

Fortinet has been named a Challenger in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Security Service Edge (SSE).

This follows Fortinet's recent recognition as a Leader with the highest ability to execute in the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for SD-WAN for the fourth year in a row, with the company viewing these accolades as validation of its approach to delivering a unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) platform.

The Gartner Magic Quadrant for Security Service Edge evaluates vendors based on their ability to execute and their completeness of vision within the rapidly evolving SSE market. Fortinet's placement in the Challengers quadrant is attributed to the vendor's growth and execution strategy for SSE solutions, including the FortiSASE platform, which the company highlights as a key differentiator.

Nirav Shah, Senior Vice President, Products and Solutions at Fortinet, said, "We continue to demonstrate strong momentum, innovation, and growth in the SSE market. We believe Fortinet's placement in the Challengers quadrant is a testament to our growing adoption, positive customer feedback, aggressive roadmap execution with monthly releases, and ever-expanding market share. Our focus is on delivering real outcomes through flexible deployment models, seamless integration with existing infrastructure, and consistent AI-powered security wherever users connect."

According to Fortinet, the FortiSASE platform is distinguished by its unified architecture, being built on a single operating system (FortiOS), a unified management console, endpoint agent, and centralised data lake. This design aims to ensure consistent security policy enforcement and streamlined operations across environments, from on-premises systems to the cloud.

FortiSASE's integration of Secure SD-WAN with cloud-delivered Security Service Edge and digital experience monitoring under one platform is intended to provide organisations with comprehensive visibility and control. This structure is designed to help reduce operational complexity and minimise potential security gaps.

The platform supports a wide range of connectivity options to address diverse organisational needs, including support for bring-your-own-device (BYOD), contractors, agent-based and agentless devices, as well as third-party SD-WAN solutions. Fortinet is also investing in its own global cloud infrastructure to enhance scalability, performance, and control for its SASE services.

For organisations in regulated sectors such as finance and healthcare, Fortinet's Sovereign SASE offering is promoted as a solution providing flexibility and data control. FortiSASE can also be integrated with Fortinet's WLAN/LAN portfolio to secure remote and resource-constrained locations, removing the need for additional appliances or agents.

Another aspect of FortiSASE is its use of FortiGuard AI-Powered Security Services, which offers capabilities such as secure web gateway, universal zero-trust network access, cloud access security broker, firewall-as-a-service, and remote browser isolation – all consolidated within a unified management console. Security teams can also enforce zero-trust policies and monitor data flows to generative AI applications, assisting with enterprise-wide AI governance and visibility.

Customer feedback was also highlighted in the report. Recent testimonials from users, collected as part of the 2025 Gartner Peer Insights Voice of the Customer for Security Service Edge, include praise for FortiSASE. One customer commented, "Elevating user experience with FortiSASE: perfect features and functionality. We use SIA (secured internet access) and SPA (secured private access) functionality of FortiSASE and the overall experience is exceptionally great."

Another review shared, "Reliable SSE with ZTNA solution with breadth of design options. Secure and reliable internet access for all hybrid users. Secure users regardless of their access location. Our overall experience with the solution is great and users are happy from the day we deployed this endpoint on their machines."

A third peer noted, "Best of the breed cloud delivered security solution to secure hybrid workforce. This solution allows us to accommodate growing user count without compromising performance. The solution provides robust security features, which include web filtering to provide protection against web-based threats. The Solution provides secure access to users irrespective of their location, Users are allowed to access the internet or servers post compliance checks. Our overall experience is highly positive."

Fortinet was recognised in a total of 11 Gartner Magic Quadrant reports in 2025, including for Single-Vendor SASE, SD-WAN, Data Centre Switching, and others, as well as being named an Honourable Mention in several areas such as Data Centre Switching, Access Management, and Privileged Access Management.