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As technology gets incorporated into every facet of the modern economy, it's becoming clearer that no company can escape the need for robust cybersecurity protection. Last year, 75% of companies were at risk of a cyberattack, according to Statista.

Thanks to its expanding lineup of firewall and security offerings, Fortinet (NASDAQ: FTNT) has become a leader in protecting these companies from such threats.

But Fortinet's path to that leadership position hasn't been straight and easy and its stock price is suffering lately on news that its billings fell and its revenue growth isn't matching expectations.​​ The news pushed its share price down 12.5% over the past three months.

Is Fortinet's recent stock sell-off an opportunity or a warning sign? Let's take a closer look.

Why some Fortinet investors panicked recently

Fortinet's share price has been volatile over the past year, but one of its largest slides came after the company released its fiscal 2024 first-quarter results (for the quarter ending on March 31) at the beginning of May.

The company's billings for the quarter were down 6.4% from the year-ago quarter to $1.41 billion, which barely missed analysts' consensus estimate of $1.43 billion.

While that was disappointing, it's not as worrying as some investors made it out to be. Fortinet's management pointed out the decline on the first-quarterearnings call saying the drop was expected because of a backlog of billings in the first quarter of last year.

"The billings headwind from last year's backlog drawdown is over $150 million in 2024 and gradually diminishes throughout the year with no headwind in the fourth quarter," the company said.

Management expects a billing decline of just 1% in Q2 2024 and, as noted above, no headwinds by the fourth quarter. With billings set to be back on track later this year, it seems that some investors likely overreacted to Fortinet's first quarter.

Why Fortinet is still on the right path

Not only was the reaction to Fortinet's billings decline a bit overblown, but it also overshadowed some good results from the first quarter.

Fortinet beat Wall Street's consensus estimates for both its top and bottom lines in the first quarter, reporting sales of $1.35 billion and adjusted earnings per share of $0.43, ahead of analysts' consensus estimates of $1.33 billion and $0.38 per share.

More importantly, Fortinet still has plenty of long-term opportunities in the cybersecurity space. For example, companies are increasingly interested in consolidating their security services, a strength for Fortinet as the company has expanded its offerings, including its Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) service.

Unified SASE accounted for 24% of billings in the first quarter, and Fortinet's management believes the early growth of the platform indicates it will be a differentiating product for the company.

Is Fortinet a buy now?

Fortinet is already a leader in the cybersecurity space, with more than 500,000 customers. And of those, management says large enterprises are the company's largest customer segment. That matters because large businesses often stick with their software providers for many years because of high switching costs.

With large customers locked into Fortinet's platform and the company expanding into new services with Unified SASE, there's a lot to like about Fortinet right now.

Combining Unified SASE with the company's other business segments -- Security Operations and Secure Networking -- Fortinet believes its total addressable market will increase from $150 billion this year to $208 billion by 2027.

Fortinet's stock is trading at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 39 right now, which isn't exactly cheap. But it's still less expensive than some of its competitors, including Palo Alto Networks, which has a forward P/E ratio of 53.

With the company's strong position in the cybersecurity space and its share price trading at a discount right now, buying Fortinet stock could be a smart move.

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Chris Neiger has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Fortinet and Palo Alto Networks. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.