How Zscaler and Airtel Are Leading India's Cyber Resilience

In this moment of widespread geopolitical uncertainty, where conflicts are often followed or preceded by state-sponsored or hacktivist cyber activity, developing robust cyber defences is paramount for national security the world over.

India, with its economy of 1.4 billion people and its rapidly growing tech infrastructure, is now taking a much needed step towards national cyber resilience, with the newly launched AI & Cyber Threat Research Center.

Zscaler, a world leading cloud security firm, and Bharti Airtel, one of India's largest telcos, have come together to launch an initiative that aims to protect India's telecoms, banking and energy sectors from cybercrime.

“India is building digital systems at an unmatched population scale," says Jay Chaudhry, CEO, Chairman, and Founder, Zscaler.

"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.

“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.”

AI & Cyber Threat Research Center India

India's national attack surface is growing at pace. The country's digital infrastructure is built not at enterprise scale, but at population scale.

As both the world's most populous country and the world's fastest growing economy, this rapid rollout of technology exposes India to all kinds of threats.

What's more, the threat landscape is dramatically evolving around the world. Bad actors have sophisticated, AI-powered tools to probe their targets' cyber weaknesses and attack as vulnerabilities arise.

Zscaler’s research team titled ThreatLabz says that it has spotted 1.2 million intrusion attempts originating from 20,000 sources, targeting 58 Indian digital entities, with millions more incoming each month. 

Notable nation-state cyber espionage campaigns targeting Indian entities that flare up particularly during border conflicts are another major threat. 

Indian industries also face an onslaught of zero-day exploits.

An answer to this cyber reality is a promise to build cyber defence that stands up to scrutiny in the age of advanced steps – and the AI & Cyber Threat Research Center will help make that architectural shift in security models to protect digital systems. 

This centre, designed “In India, For India,” in addition to strengthening the nation's cyber safety, will help build a pipeline of cyber talent to support the goal of a “Viksit Bharat” – a developed India, for a secure and digitally self-reliant future.

“At Airtel, our commitment has been to safeguard our customers and the nation’s digital fabric,” says Gopal Vittal, Executive Vice-Chairman, Bharti Airtel.

“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.

“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.”

Strategic pillars

The research centre will open doors to collaboration between the nation’s private sector, public sector, academia and the government to build cyber conscious infrastructure with secure-by-design foundations.

Zscaler and Airtel plan to develop a faster cyber research-to-response loop in India.

To this end, Zscaler will deploy a specialised threat research team that leverages Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange – which processes upwards of 500 bn daily transactions, with the aim of extracting threat intelligence to secure India's public and private sectors.

Airtel, with its nationwide mobile networks, will provide deep visibility into IoT and mobile traffic, which when combined with Zscaler solutions will help to quickly identify suspicious activity.

This collaboration, the companies say is just a beginning and more public and private sectors organisations will be invited to join in the future to roll out the red carpet for cyber resilience across the nation.