Airtel-Zscaler's cyber research hub to focus on critical infra

New Delhi: Bharti Airtel and Zscaler on Thursday said their newly-launched AI and cyber threat research centre will focus specifically on protecting India's critical infrastructure, expanding beyond traditional enterprise cybersecurity services.

Jay Chaudhry, CEO of Zscaler, said while the company already has research teams in Chandigarh, Bengaluru, Pune and Hyderabad supporting global operations, the new centre will dedicate resources to identifying threats targeting sectors such as banking, telecom, power and other essential services.

"So far we have been helping enterprises," Chaudhry said, adding that the initiative will now focus "especially on critical infrastructure because that matters a lot."

He said the team will monitor open web and dark web activity to detect attempts aimed at infrastructure systems. Chaudhry cited phishing campaigns using fake documents, enterprise-targeted job lures and 1.2 million brute-force attempts trying to break into Indian digital entities.

The centre will deploy decoy or honeypot technologies used by enterprise customers to detect malicious activity early and generate warning signals for sensitive networks.

Sunil Mittal, chairman of Bharti Airtel, described the initiative as building a collaborative "fabric" by onboarding banks, enterprises and govt agencies responsible for security. "More and more people join in, the better and more predictive these patterns become." Mittal told TOI that Airtel will deploy part of its internal talent pool for the effort.

On transparency, Chaudhry said the objective is not to make public announcements about detected threats but to work with appropriate govt agencies to take action.