Filippo Monticelli: Fortinet is Architecting Egypt’s Cybersecurity Future and Integrated AI is No Longer Optional
As Egypt accelerates its journey toward becoming a regional digital powerhouse, the boundary between technology and national security has all but vanished. Leading this charge is Fortinet, a global titan that has spent the last two decades serving as a cornerstone of the country’s technological resilience.
In this exclusive interview, Filippo Monticelli, Senior Vice President of Sales for EMEA South at Fortinet, joins us ahead of Fortinet Security Day 2026 in Cairo. With Fortinet now securing over 50% of the world’s firewalls, Monticelli provides a high-level masterclass on the shifting landscape of cyber defense.
From the launch of the groundbreaking, quantum-safe FortiOS 8.0 to the company’s strategic role in bridging the regional skills gap through partnerships with MCIT and the Information Technology Institute (ITI), this conversation explores how Fortinet is navigating a world where AI is both the greatest tool and the most complex threat.
Discover how Fortinet is transforming Egypt into a regional cybersecurity hub and what every CEO needs to know about balancing rapid innovation with the inevitable risks of an AI-driven era.
You are visiting Egypt soon as part of your participation at Fortinet Security Day 2026. Tell us more about Fortinet Investment in Egypt and what are the key factors driving the company’s growth in Egypt and the wider EMEA South region?
Egyptian businesses are continuing their digital transformation journeys apace while viewing cybersecurity increasingly as a key factor in ensuring trust business resilience. This Security Day, we are celebrating Fortinet’s 20-year presence in Egypt and its development as a trusted partner to help the country scale its cybersecurity maturity and regional leadership.
Egypt’s cybersecurity market is growing rapidly due to digital transformation initiatives like Digital Egypt, rising cyber threats and stricter regulation. The local team works to strengthen Egypt’s position as a regional hub for cybersecurity by offering integrated, AI-driven security frameworks and investing in talent and collaborating with public, private and academic institutions to help bridge the cybersecurity skills gap.
How do you evaluate Fortinet’s current position in the global cybersecurity market?
Fortinet is now the world’s number one secure networking vendor, securing over 50% of all firewalls worldwide. We are also leading the way with secure networking by delivering the industry’s first fully integrated, high-performance security and networking solution. Our security solutions have become integral to protecting the world’s most critical infrastructure.
Another key differentiator of ours is that we are focused on driving product innovation and fostering collaboration between the private and public sectors. Since threats have increased by a step function, this commitment enables us to better support our customers and partners in combating global cybercrime.
Fortinet also leads by example in sustainability, currently being the only cybersecurity provider with ISO 14025-certified Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) across three major firewall product families, setting a new benchmark for the industry.
How do you assess the maturity of the Middle East cybersecurity market, particularly with the “Giga-projects” in Saudi Arabia and the accelerated digital transformation in Egypt and the UAE?
Some parts of the Middle East have advanced rapidly in their stances on cybersecurity and resilience, with their regulatory regimes becoming role models for other countries in the region. In its Global Cybersecurity Index 2024, the International Telecommunication Union ranked Egypt, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE and Saudi Arabia top for cybersecurity and critical infrastructure regulations. Across the Middle East and Africa, resilience is increasingly seen as an imperative for any business that plays a critical role in the region’s economy. Something that has become particularly important with the outbreak of war in many parts of the region at the end of February that is putting immense pressure on critical infrastructure.
With the launch of FortiOS 8.0, what are the qualitative enhancements this system provides to counter complex, AI-driven cyber threats?
FortiOS is Fortinet’s natively AI-powered and quantum-safe operating system, serving as the foundational engine of the Fortinet Security Fabric platform. By converging networking and security into a single high-performance functional framework, FortiOS eliminates the gaps created by fragmented point products and simplifies management at scale. This unified architecture harnesses the power of AI to drive consistent security policies, seamless user experiences, and real-time visibility across all environments, including on-premises, multi-cloud, hybrid, and converged IT/OT environments.
As organizations accelerate digital transformation initiatives, including generative AI (GenAI) adoption, hybrid work, and cloud-first strategies, security teams face growing pressure to scale protection without increasing complexity. FortiOS 8.0 addresses these challenges by advancing secure networking through a unified operating system that provides deeper visibility, stronger control, and future-ready security across the network edge, cloud, and data center. It introduces advancements across three core areas of innovation, AI-driven security, next-generation SASE, and quantum-safe protection, helping organizations securely support modern connectivity models while preparing for what comes next.
How does Fortinet ensure that the integration of Artificial Intelligence into its products is conducted in a responsible and secure manner?
As AI becomes more embedded in critical functions, Fortinet believes that innovation must be balanced with responsible governance to ensure trustworthy and sustainable use of the technology, even beyond what may be compliance obligations. These principles, alongside a continued focus on secure-by-design principles guide not only the lifecycle of our AI-based products, but also the use of third- party AI systems by Fortinet employees.
Reports indicate a significant “skills gap” in the cybersecurity sector; how is Fortinet contributing to the training and qualification of human capital in the region?
Cybersecurity remains one of the most consequential business risks facing every organization. Our skills gap research shows that the gap between the skills that organizations need and the talent available remains stubbornly wide, contributing directly to rising breach rates, rising financial losses, and pervasive operational stress.
To help address this challenge, the Fortinet Education Outreach Program, part of the Fortinet Training Institute, focuses on expanding access to cybersecurity education by working directly with local partners. We collaborate with trusted organizations, including the MCIT with its different initiatives like Digital Egypt Builders Initiative (DEBI), the Information Technology institute, National Telecommunication Institute, Arab Academy for Science and Technology and Coventry in addition to other reputable institutions. The programme delivers practical training and industry-recognized certifications to learners who might otherwise be excluded.
From your leadership perspective, what is your vision for the future of cybersecurity over the next five years, and what role do you expect Fortinet to play in that future?
Digital infrastructure is no longer a supporting layer. It has become a critical foundation for economic stability and growth.
As AI agents, automated decision systems, and interconnected cloud environments expand, they introduce both efficiency and exposure. The same systems that enable scale also expand the attack surface, requiring organizations to ensure these environments remain secure, transparent, and resilient. In this context, cybersecurity underpins how systems operate across environments and determines whether they can scale safely. Organizations must balance sovereignty with interoperability, scale AI without introducing uncontrolled risk, and adapt workforce models without disruption. And governments must support innovation while addressing security requirements.
Fortinet’s long-standing commitment to innovation, convergence, and consolidation, coupled with its strong commitment to public-private collaboration to tackle global cybercrime, makes it a trusted partner to tackle the cybersecurity challenges of today and tomorrow.
What advice would you give to CEOs in 2026 to balance the scales between digital innovation and the increasing risks of data breaches?
According to this year’s World Economic Forum Global Cybersecurity Outlook, 94% of leaders say AI will be the most significant driver of change in cybersecurity in 2026. AI increases speed, scale, and dependency, which unfortunately means that when failures occur, they propagate faster and farther. So, in 2026, organizations will need to assume that disruption will involve AI-enabled components, whether through compromised models, poisoned data, manipulated agents, or automated misuse. This means that resilience planning must explicitly account for AI-driven scale, speed, and opacity. The question is no longer whether AI will be used, but whether it is being deployed in a way that is secure, transparent, and aligned with business risk tolerance. Resilience will favor leaders who prepare for AI-driven disruption, test their assumptions, and ensure their organizations can continue operating when automated systems fail.
