Zscaler, Together With Bharti Airtel, Announce Launch of AI & Cyber Threat Research Center

KOCHI:
Zscaler, Inc., the leader in cloud security, in partnership with Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”), one of India’s largest telecommunication service providers, today announced the launch of the AI & Cyber Threat Research Center – India. This multi-stakeholder digital initiative is dedicated to advancing national cyber resilience, protecting sectors, industries and assets that are essential to India’s economic and national security, such as telecommunications, banking, and energy, as well as digital users, and accelerating trusted AI adoption across India’s rapidly expanding digital ecosystem.

India has long been a key hub for Zscaler’s technology innovation and cyber research, with a significant share of Zscaler’s research talent based in the country. The research center will serve as an expansion of Zscaler’s operations into a national platform for collaboration between the private sector, public sector, academia and the government. The center is designed “In India, For India,” with the goal of strengthening the nation’s cyber defenses and building a future-ready talent pipeline to support India’s progress toward Viksit Bharat and a peaceful, secure, and digitally self-reliant future.

India is in the midst of a generational digital transformation, building systems not at enterprise scale, but at population scale across critical sectors – dramatically expanding the national attack surface. At the same time, the threat landscape is evolving at machine speed, with nation state and financially-motivated attackers increasingly leveraging AI to probe, target, and weaponize vulnerabilities in minutes. Zscaler’s research arm, ThreatLabz India, has observed millions of infiltration attempts each month, including notable campaigns such as:
● Nation-state cyber espionage activity using the theme of regional geopolitical tensions, which attempted to target multiple Indian entities;
● A surge in attempts to infiltrate India’s private and public sectors, with 1.2 million intrusion attempts originating from 20,000 sources targeting 58 Indian digital entities; and
● An increase in zero-day exploit attempts aimed at multiple industries in India.

As threats grow in sophistication, traditional perimeter-based security models are no longer adequate, and disruptions to essential services can threaten national economic stability – making secure-by-design foundations and a modern architectural shift imperative to protect national digital systems in an increasingly borderless, AI-enabled environment.

The objectives of the AI & Cyber Threat Research Center – India are anchored in four strategic pillars:
Protect: Deliver real-time, actionable intelligence to strengthen India’s national cyber resilience and digital-first businesses.
Remediate: Partner directly with government agencies to neutralize and prevent cyber-attacks.
Facilitate: Drive the adoption of modern security frameworks, specifically focusing on AI-driven defenses and Zero Trust architecture.
Build: Strengthen the cybersecurity talent pipeline through specialized AI and Zero Trust certifications to bridge the national skills gap.

As founding members, Zscaler and Airtel will combine the former’s global intelligence with the latter’s local operational reach to create a stronger, faster research-to-response loop for India. Zscaler will deploy a specialized threat research team focused on India. This team will leverage the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange™ platform, which processes over 500 billion daily transactions, to extract threat intelligence to secure India’s public and private sectors. Airtel will contribute deep visibility into IoT and mobile traffic, collaborating with Zscaler to monitor networks and develop new solutions, enabling faster identification of suspicious activity and more effective coordination with ecosystem stakeholders. Looking ahead, additional members from India’s critical public and private sectors will be invited to join the center to expand collaboration and strengthen cyber resilience across India.

“At Airtel, our commitment has been to safeguard our customers and the nation’s digital fabric. This partnership with Zscaler marks a significant extension of this commitment that will combine the power of our AI capabilities and deep scale for cybersecurity research to protect the country’s expanding digital ecosystem,” said Gopal Vittal, Executive Vice-Chairman, Bharti Airtel. “We will focus on addressing challenges unique to our market to build a safer, more resilient digital India where every citizen and enterprise can connect and thrive with confidence. Our research-backed preventive mechanism will also encourage peaceful and secure engagements on digital platforms.”

“India is building digital systems at an unmatched population scale. You cannot secure this level of ambition with legacy firewalls and VPNs that were never designed for a hyper-connected world. It demands a modern Zero Trust architecture that is secure-by-design,” said Jay Chaudhry, CEO, Chairman, and Founder, Zscaler. “With the AI & Cyber Threat Research Center – India, we will bring the full power of the world’s largest security cloud to protect the nation’s public and private sectors. By combining actionable intelligence from over 500 billion daily transactions with local expertise, we aren’t just building readiness; we are empowering a new generation of defenders to stay ahead of the adversary.”