Bharti Airtel and Zscaler have officially launched the AI & Cyber Threat Research Center – India on February 20, 2026. This multi-stakeholder initiative aims to advance national cyber resilience, protect critical sectors like banking and energy, and accelerate trusted AI adoption. The center will focus on four pillars: Protect, Remediate, Facilitate, and Build, leveraging Zscaler’s global intelligence and Airtel’s local operational reach to combat evolving, sophisticated threats.
Strategic Partnership for National Cyber Resilience
Bharti Airtel, a leading telecommunications provider, and Zscaler, Inc., a leader in cloud security, formally announced the launch of the AI & Cyber Threat Research Center – India on February 20, 2026. This joint digital initiative is dedicated to strengthening national cyber resilience and ensuring the secure adoption of Artificial Intelligence across India’s rapidly expanding digital ecosystem.
The new center is designed to be a “In India, For India” platform, fostering collaboration between the private sector, public sector, academia, and government. Its primary goal is to build a future-ready talent pipeline supporting India’s progress toward a digitally self-reliant future.
Addressing Escalating Threat Landscape
The announcement highlights that India is experiencing digital transformation at a population scale, which dramatically expands the national attack surface. ThreatLabz India, Zscaler’s research arm, has observed millions of infiltration attempts monthly. Key threat observations include:
- Nation-state cyber espionage targeting Indian entities.
- A surge in infiltration attempts, with 1.2 million intrusions originating from 20,000 sources targeting 58 Indian digital entities.
- An increase in zero-day exploit attempts across multiple industries.
Traditional perimeter-based security is deemed inadequate against these sophisticated, AI-leveraged threats, necessitating a modern, secure-by-design architectural shift.
Four Strategic Pillars of the Research Center
The objectives of the center are anchored in four strategic pillars, designed to create a stronger, faster research-to-response loop:
- Protect: Deliver real-time, actionable intelligence to strengthen national cyber resilience and digital-first businesses.
- Remediate: Partner with government agencies to neutralize and prevent cyber-attacks.
- Facilitate: Drive the adoption of modern security frameworks, 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.
Complementary Contributions
As founding members, Zscaler and Airtel will combine Zscaler’s global intelligence with Airtel’s local operational reach. Zscaler will deploy a specialized threat research team leveraging the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange™ platform, which processes over 500 billion daily transactions.
Airtel will contribute deep visibility into IoT and mobile traffic to monitor networks and develop new solutions. Gopal Vittal, Executive Vice-Chairman, Bharti Airtel, stated the partnership will combine their AI capabilities and scale for research to protect the expanding digital ecosystem. Jay Chaudhry, CEO, Chairman, and Founder, Zscaler, emphasized the need for a modern Zero Trust architecture to secure systems built at population scale.
The center intends to invite additional select entities from India’s critical public and private sectors to expand collaboration going forward.
Source: BSE
