Can Fortinet's SASE & SecOps Surge Reinforce Its Competitive Edge?

Fortinet FTNT is reshaping its business around two of the fastest-growing pillars in cybersecurity — Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) and Security Operations (SecOps) — to reinforce its leadership in integrated network security.

In late 2025, FTNT advanced its unified SASE platform and AI-driven SecOps capabilities, reinforcing its leadership in integrated cybersecurity. Recognized as a Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for SASE Platforms, the company saw rising momentum from multi-product enterprise deals, driven by its single-operating-system efficiency.

Strengthening its SecOps strategy, Fortinet expanded its partnership with Armis to enhance asset visibility and AI-led threat detection, underscoring its focus on automation, scalability and long-term growth in intelligent security solutions.

Management projects sustained momentum, driven by rising enterprise adoption of FortiSASE and advanced SecOps capabilities. These recurring, service-oriented offerings are expected to enhance revenue visibility, expand margins and reduce cyclicality tied to traditional hardware sales.

Fortinet’s unified FortiOS architecture, which seamlessly integrates all core SASE elements — firewall, SD-WAN, ZTNA, secure web gateway, CASB  and DLP — is a key differentiator, simplifying deployment while improving operational efficiency for global customers.

FTNT reinforced its bullish outlook with a $100-million increase in its full-year 2025 billing guidance, citing strong demand for its FortiSASE and SecOps offerings. Investments in AI, cloud capacity and automation are designed to strengthen scalability and operational efficiency. The company anticipates total billings of $7.44 billion, suggesting a 14% year-over-year rise, confirming that SASE and SecOps remain critical long-term revenue drivers.

In the second quarter of 2025, SASE and SecOps billings jumped 21% and 31% year over year, respectively, indicating accelerating momentum.

Fortinet’s Top Competitors in Cybersecurity

Palo Alto Networks PANW stands as Fortinet’s fiercest rival, leveraging advanced next-generation firewalls, AI-driven platforms and zero-trust architectures. PANW’s Single-Pass Parallel Processing (SP3) engine delivers superior performance and visibility across users, content and applications.

With strong traction in the Americas and enterprise dominance through its Prisma and Cortex suites, PANW outpaces Fortinet in scalability and innovation, though its premium pricing and complexity may limit appeal among cost-conscious organizations.

Cisco Systems CSCO competes with Fortinet by integrating security seamlessly across its vast networking ecosystem. CSCO’s Secure Firewall, Umbrella and Talos intelligence deliver enterprise-grade protection with strong scalability and analytics, enhanced by the acquisition of Splunk. While Fortinet excels in performance efficiency, CSCO leverages its network dominance and unified infrastructure to offer holistic, cloud-connected defence. CSCO’s scale and integration depth give it a competitive advantage, though it remains less specialized in niche security domains.

FTNT’s Share Price Performance, Valuation & Estimates

Fortinet shares have declined 8.6% year to date, underperforming the Zacks Security industry’s 21% rally and the broader Computer and Technology sector’s 22.7% growth.

FTNT’s YTD Price Performance

From a valuation standpoint, FTNT appears overvalued, trading at a forward 12-month price-to-sales ratio of 8.98, higher than the sector's average of 6.94. The company carries a Value Score of D.

FTNT’s Valuation

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Fortinet’s earnings is pegged at $2.52 per share for 2025 and $2.78 per share for 2026, rising by a penny for 2025 over the past 30 days, while that for 2026 has been unchanged. These projections imply year-over-year earnings growth of 6.33% for 2025 and 10.18% for 2026.

Fortinet currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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