Zscaler, Inc. and Bharti Airtel have launched the AI & Cyber Threat Research Center India, a multi-stakeholder initiative designed to bolster the country’s cyber resilience and support trusted AI adoption across its expanding digital ecosystem. The announcement was made through a joint press statement issued on 20 February 2026.
The new centre brings together cloud security expertise from Zscaler, a US-based cloud security leader, and localized telecommunications scale and network visibility from India’s telecom services provider, Bharti Airtel. The initiative is explicitly structured as a platform for collaboration between industry, government, and academic entities to address evolving cybersecurity threats and to accelerate resilient adoption of AI technologies across critical national infrastructure.
Purpose and Strategic Focus
According to the official briefing, the centre is developed against a backdrop of rapid digital transformation in India, where digital systems are being built at a population scale, expanding the national attack surface and inviting increasingly sophisticated threats.
The centre’s stated objectives are organized around four strategic pillars:
Protect: Deliver real-time, actionable threat intelligence to enhance national cyber resilience.
Remediate: Collaborate with government agencies to detect, neutralize, and prevent attacks.
Facilitate: Promote adoption of modern security paradigms such as Zero Trust architectures and AI-driven defences.
Build: Strengthen the domestic cybersecurity talent pipeline with targeted training and certifications.
Zscaler will deploy a threat research team focused on India and leveraging its global Zero Trust Exchange™ platform. Airtel’s role is to provide deep visibility into Internet of Things (IoT) and mobile traffic across its infrastructure and to aid joint research, monitoring, and development of detection mechanisms.
The launch comes at a time when the cybersecurity market globally is rapidly evolving. Enterprises and nation states alike are wrestling with an increase in AI-enabled attack vectors, from automated phishing to AI-generated malware, which the security industry refers to as dual-use risks of AI technologies. Research by industry and academia shows that AI both amplifies threat vectors and is increasingly embedded in defensive tools.
India’s own digital economy continues to expand, with mobile broadband penetration, IoT deployments, and digital services forming critical components of national infrastructure, which in turn increases incentives for both state-sponsored and financially motivated cyber adversaries. Establishing an entity focused on AI-driven threat research aligns with market demand for stronger, localized cybersecurity analysis and talent development.
