Fortinet named Gartner Leader in hybrid mesh firewall

Fortinet has been named a Leader in Gartner's 2026 Magic Quadrant for Hybrid Mesh Firewall and ranked highest for Ability to Execute for a second consecutive year.

The recognition adds to Fortinet's presence across Gartner Magic Quadrant reports in networking and security, where it now appears in 11 categories. Gartner's hybrid mesh firewall market covers products that extend firewall policy and enforcement across mixed on-premise and cloud environments.

Fortinet's hybrid mesh firewall offering spans enterprise perimeter, branch, data centre, carrier and managed security use cases. The products are sold across physical, virtual, cloud-native and as-a-service deployment models.

A central part of the offering is FortiOS, which serves as a common operating system across Fortinet's firewall products. The approach is intended to let customers apply policies and management tools across different environments without using separate product stacks for each location.

Broad footprint

Fortinet argued that hybrid infrastructure is pushing buyers to look beyond a conventional network firewall. Customers increasingly want products that combine networking and security functions while giving them a choice over where inspection and enforcement take place for performance, compliance and sovereignty reasons.

Fortinet is positioning its firewall range to support cloud-delivered security through FortiSASE, customer-controlled deployments through FortiSASE Outpost, and on-site enforcement through FortiGate appliances. It describes that mix of local and cloud enforcement as part of a broader secure access service edge strategy.

The company also tied the ranking to its longer-running effort to combine routing, secure SD-WAN and next-generation firewall functions within one software base. That reflects a broader trend in the security market, where suppliers are trying to reduce the number of tools network and security teams must manage across branch offices, campuses, data centres and public cloud environments.

Anthony James, Executive Vice President of Marketing at Fortinet, linked the ranking to customer demand for products that can span those settings.

"Enterprise firewall expertise is earned through the trust and confidence customers place in a solution to protect their most critical environments. We believe our recognition as a Leader and highest position for Ability to Execute reflect Fortinet's proven ability to deliver security and networking at scale. At the same time, we continue to expand what customers should expect from a firewall solution through innovation in AI-driven operations, post-quantum cryptography [PQC], multi-cloud orchestration, and cyber-physical visibility," said James.

Product focus

Alongside the ranking, Fortinet highlighted several priorities in its firewall portfolio, including AI-based automation for routine administration and investigation, support for post-quantum cryptography, and orchestration tools for multi-cloud estates.

It also pointed to increased visibility into internet-connected devices and cyber-physical systems, including passive and active device discovery, classification of connected assets by manufacturer and firmware, and file monitoring intended to spot unauthorised changes to security infrastructure.

Those features show how firewall vendors are expanding beyond traffic filtering and perimeter defence. In enterprise environments, the firewall is increasingly used as a policy control point across branch networks, cloud workloads, operational technology and remote access.

Fortinet said customers are using its products in branches, campuses, data centres, cloud deployments, operational technology settings, carrier networks and managed security environments. That breadth matters in the hybrid mesh firewall segment, where buyers often want one supplier to cover a wide range of infrastructure rather than deploying separate systems for each domain.

Its architecture is also designed to meet differing national and operational requirements, including data sovereignty and regulatory needs. That has become a more prominent issue for multinational businesses and public sector organisations, particularly when deciding whether inspection should happen in the cloud or remain under local control.

Fortinet serves more than half a million customers worldwide and has built one of the industry's broadest product portfolios around network security, endpoint protection, cloud security and related services. The Gartner ranking gives the company another external reference point as competition intensifies among firewall suppliers seeking to tie together networking, cloud management and security policy in a single platform.

Its hybrid mesh firewall products are supported by centralised management and common FortiGuard AI-Powered Security Services across deployment types.