Fortinet’s Simonelli puts AI security at heart of APAC growth strategy

For Luca Simonelli, Senior VP, APAC at Fortinet, one of the strengths for the cybersecurity vendor is the continuous growth, vision and stability it has.

When Luca Simonelli accepted the role as Senior Vice President, Asia Pacific (APAC) at Fortinet just a few months ago, he already had a vision of how to drive Fortinet’s growth in the region.

“One of the reasons why I wanted to be back and I joined is really the commitment and the direction that the company is taking around AI,” he said in an interview with CRN Asia.

Simonelli shared that there is no doubt there AI is pretty much the focus of organizations across the region. But what’s interesting with all the adoption of the AI is also the security concerns and risks that come with the technology.

While most organizations are aware of this, many are still unsure of how they can better fortify their defenses to not just use AI securely but also deal with the increasing AI-powered threats and also cases of agents accessing information that it shouldn’t.

“From the cybersecurity perspective, it becomes even more important to have the proper framework and the proper tools to address the issues on AI, especially in ensuring that the agents behave within the guidelines,” Simonelli said when asked about the increasing concerns around rogue and autonomous AI agents.

He shared that Fortinet has been on this topic for years with the FortiAIGate solution that acts as a gateway to the network. FortiAIGate is Fortinet's enterprise-grade AI security and governance gateway designed to protect large language models (LLMs), Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, and agentic AI workflows at runtime

“Specifically on AI, we have over 570 AI-related patents between pending and issued. No other cybersecurity vendors can get even closer. FortiAIGate is about securing AI, which is securing the models, LLMs, protecting AI applications, data, agents and such, It also prevents sensitive information from being exposed outside because people are using public services and sharing documents,” he explained.

Simonellie added that also equally important is the need to prevent prompt injection, which are manipulative prompts. He said that this is another form of frontier attack that organizations have to be very mindful about.

The role of partners

Acknowledging that there is a lot of education that has to happen, he shared that Fortinet will not be able to scale without the help of the channel.

“We rely heavily on our channel ecosystem to close these skills gaps and create awareness and guide the customer throughout the journey of securing their AI environments,” he said.

At the same time, Simonelli also pointed out that the channel is a very competitive environment and always wants protection or to make sure that there's no overlapping certain accounts.

“So that's a concern that I hear quite often. But we have very strict rules. We're very loyal and respectful to the channel. We have a proper registration process. We also elevate their level of service, to be more consultative, and shift more from selling boxes to selling services and outcomes. This is a theme that has been ongoing for decades. It's not something new, but it's still there,” he added.

Looking at the SMB and the mid-market, Simonelle shared that as these segments of customers lack the skills to operate at scale, MSSPs are helping them secure their business. He added that Fortinet remains focused on upskilling MSSPs to support them in fulfilling the knowledge demand.

According to Simonelli, one of the strengths for Fortinet is the continuous growth, vision and stability the vendor has.

“Our platformization approach is connected with our DNA of growing organically. Other vendors took a different path, like acquiring multiple technologies, multiple companies, and trying to integrate and stitch everything together. What we offer is pretty much homegrown. And that comes with the advantage of more tight and cohesive integration, which is resulting in a platform approach where the same context is being shared across multiple engines,” he explained.

As this translates into operational simplicity for the customers, Simonelli believes it becomes easier for customers and partners to adopt, deploy, adopt, and run the tool. He added that the cost of operating the service with a platform approach is also lower.

“There is more room for the margin. So, I think that story resonates really well. And its certainly part of our success,” he concluded.