If your Fortinet license has expired, your firewall won’t suddenly power off—but your protection will. Here’s what keeps working, what stops, how FortiGuard backdating works, and a simple plan to renew quickly and safely.
Your Fortinet appliance depends on active entitlements for three pillars of safety and uptime:
Without these, your firewall becomes static—traffic still flows, but defenses don’t evolve with new threats.
Fortinet often backdates renewals to maintain continuous coverage:
Always confirm start/end dates on your quote so you know exactly what you’re paying for.
Prefer to have an expert handle it end-to-end? Renew with DataCenter360
If your Fortinet license expired, your firewall still routes traffic, but you’ve lost FortiGuard updates, firmware access, and TAC/RMA support. Renew ASAP—Fortinet often backdates short lapses, while longer gaps may be limited. Have your serial ready, get a partner quote, register the contract, and verify activation.
Routing, existing firewall policies, and most VPNs usually continue. You lose FortiGuard updates, firmware access, and Fortinet TAC/RMA support.
No. It keeps forwarding traffic and enforcing configured rules, but protection degrades without new signatures and patches.
Signature-based protections: Antivirus, IPS, Web Filtering, Application Control. Add-ons depending on subscriptions stop updating as well.
No. You need active FortiCare to download firmware and security patches.
No. FortiCare (support entitlement) must be active for TAC assistance and RMA.
Short lapses typically backdate to the original expiry. Longer lapses may be limited (often to six months). Multi-year renewals can be more flexible—confirm on your quote.
Find the serial, get a partner quote, purchase the right bundle/term, register the contract in the support portal, and verify activation.
Usually near-instant after registration and sync. Trigger a manual update if needed.
UTP is a common baseline. Enterprise/360 add advanced services and analytics. Your partner can align bundles to your environment and compliance needs.
No. Entitlements update in the background; forwarding continues.
FortiCare = support/RMA/firmware entitlement. FortiGuard = security services and threat intelligence updates.
Yes, but expect reduced backdating and higher effective cost for the gap. Multi-year terms may improve value and start-date flexibility.
Typically yes, but renew quickly to maintain defense-in-depth and patched software.
Check the appliance label, FortiCloud Asset Management, or the device GUI/CLI.
Yes. You can switch bundles at renewal to match updated security and support needs.
Forwarding continues, but all nodes should have active entitlements for consistent updates and support.
Need help choosing the right path? Talk to DataCenter360 about renewing