Special Post: Fortinet Accelerate 2026
- Matt Sherif
- 2 hours ago
- 4 min read
Ah, Accelerate! One of my favorite conferences to attend, 3-4 days of new information being poured into our brains, product and service announcements, and of course, amazing members of the FortiCommunity to meet!
I had the priviledge of going this year, and it was a delight. We'll go over some of the highlights of Accelerate in this special post.
The Keynote
The Keynote sets the tone for the conference, it shows what is top of mind for this year's event. And this year - unsurprisingly - the hot topic is AI. Many leaders are offering ways to leverage AI for security, which has been a fairly consistent theme, one way that Fortinet stands apart is that they're also thinking about security FOR AI. Asking questions like:
How do I secure transacations and interactions between users and LLMs?
How do I secure transacations and interactions between LLMs and other LLMs?
How do I secure transactions and interactions between LLMs and MCPs?
All of which are very important questions we need to be asking within our organizations. One such way of offering security for AI, is FortiAIGate - we won't be getting into specifics here - to help secure your AI use cases.
The Ultimate Fabric Challenge
One of the events that is near and dear to my heart, the Ultimate Fabric Challenge is something I've won gold in twice - it should be three times, but that's another story for another time - in the internal Fortinet UFC. For obvious reasons, Fortinet staff are not allowed to compete in the External UFCs", hence the differentiation.
Kevin Guenay of Bechtle in won the gold over Jonathan Bailey and Jon Kraft from Business Communications, Inc. (BCI). Congratulations to all 3 of them for this incredible and difficult feat. Special thanks goes out to David Chan and the rest of the Fortinet UFC team!
As a spectator, I enjoyed the UFC setup this year, as it has been expanded, and the feedback from multiple contestans was that it was relatively stable compared to some older editions.
NSE8 / FCX Party
One thing I truly appreciate that Fortinet does is the NSE8 celebration, rewarding those who went "all.the.way" to the highest of Fortinet certifications with awesome experiences and gatherings. This year, we got to have one heck of an experience by driving super cars at Speed Vegas!
A huge thanks goes out to the Fortinet NSE team for organizing this, and to the Speed Vegas team for hosting us. Below is a video of my 5 laps:
The honor of the fastest lap belongs to Keven D, with 1:00.726 - putting my 1:06.628 to shame, Congrats Keven!
At the NSE8 Dinner I met Andrew Reynolds, Alan Baker and Andrew Vinton from Australia, I've known of Andrew because of the NSE8/FCX Study group posts on LinkedIn, and of Alan because he seems to like the SOC stuff in the UFC, so it was awesome to meet them in person.
The Tech Expo
One of my FAVORITE things about Accelerate is the Tech Expo, the events above offer a great opportunity to network, the Tech Expo offers this on a different level. I may be a Fortinet employee, this is an opportunity for me to learn the latest on our offerings, and to meet some of my favorite people within the company.
Many of these people have a hand in the success I have had with Fortinet. And I'd like to extend a thank you to them directly. One such person who's always available to bounce ideas off of is the FortiBot himself Pavel M.! After working at Fortinet for over 7 years I finally got to meet him, and it was great to do so.
I got to meet a few others as well, whom I respect and enjoy working with. Some who have worked with me to position solutions, others who have helped get me out of a mind, all of whom are top tier people I am honored to know.
I got to look at the Emergency Connectivity Kit that Fortinet and Parsec teamed up on. Distributd by TD Synnex, the ECK can include a FortiGateRugged 70G-5G-Dual, FortiAP 241K, and a Starlink mini!
In reflection, I am deeply honored to be a part of this FortiCommunity, Fortinet employees, partners, and customers alike. You are who make this conference my favorite conference of them all. So thank you - yes even you who is reading this and may not have met me - for being a part of the FortiCommunity. Until the next one.
-Madman Out
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