03/19/2026
Suzette Ritchey, Matt Ross, and Jacob Smith, attended the Fortinet Accelerate 26 Conference from March 8th-12th. The first two days were packed with 16 hours of preconference workshops designed as certification training courses.
The following days were full of sessions demonstrating everything from best practices with existing Fortinet products to sneak previews of upcoming feature updates and entirely new products. Between those sessions the expo floor had booths with representatives from the teams that develop and support many of the individual products Fortinet offers where you could discuss anything from theoretical use cases for a product you may not have, to feature requests for products we use every day.
During the three days of general conference there were also onsite certification exams available (one per attendee included with admission), these are proctored online exams you typically would have to go to a Pearson Vue testing center for. We also received an additional test voucher for use after the conference.
Matt Ross attended the preconference workshop for Security Operations Architect (NSE 7), then on Wednesday he took and passed the NSE 7 Sec Ops Architect exam, which means he is now halfway to being a Fortinet Certified Solution Specialist - Security Operations.
During the conference they also attended sessions highlighting upcoming innovations for products we utilize such as FortiClient, FortiEDR, FortiMail Workspace, FortiSIEM, FortiSOAR, and FortiAI; and also extended conversations with the developers and product managers supporting FortiDeceptor and FortiSOCaaS on the expo floor, as well as distributors and partners that we hope to be able to work with to provide Fortinet offerings to our customers at the best prices we can get.
