Airtel's new cyber security solution: Airtel Secure

While cyber security is considered a critical requirement, India ranks fifth globally when it comes to incidents of cyberattacks and fraud. Besides being the world’s second-largest internet market, the Indian cybersecurity market is expected to cross $13 billion by 2025.

India has seen a 37 per cent increase in cyberattacks in the first quarter (Q1) of 2020 since the surge of Coronavirus, as compared to the fourth quarter (Q4) of last year, according to The Kaspersky Security Network (KSN) report.

In light of the changing cybersecurity landscape, Bharti Airtel announced that it is investing over Rs 100 crore to set up a ‘Security Intelligence Centre’ in NCR (National Capital Region).

Considered as one of the top telecom service providers in the country, it has also launched Airtel Secure, which is a full suite of cyber security solutions for business customers.

“Airtel Secure has been built to serve this need. It combines Airtel’s robust network security with cutting-edge solutions delivered through global partnerships so as to deliver end-to-end managed security services,” Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO (India and South Asia), Bharti Airtel said. “With the incredible trust we enjoy from our customers, we believe Airtel Secure will provide our customers peace of mind, enable faster response times to potential threats and help protect their data so as to reduce business risk.”

This solution brings cutting-edge services to customers through partnerships with global leaders.

At a time when the government started formulating cyber security laws and approaching third-party consultants in order to discuss next steps, the telco also announced it will be jointly bringing to the market a varied range of innovative security solutions that secure networks, endpoints, applications and the Cloud along with Cisco.

“Airtel will be able to help customers streamline operations with integrated threat and security management through Cisco’s security portfolio,” Chuck Robbins, President and CEO, Cisco said. “Delivered as managed security services (MSS), these offerings will benefit Airtel’s enterprise as well as small business customers, allowing customers to reduce their technology-capex investment and maximize efficiency.”

Security Intelligence Centre, which is a part of Airtel Secure, will offer its tracking services to businesses of all sizes – from large enterprises to small and medium businesses – on a 24hr basis, according to the telco’s website.

Amid the pandemic, companies have experienced an increasing number of malicious activities in parallel with businesses shifting to cloud and digital platforms to serve customers better. The origins of these mostly remain unknown and they wreak havoc on operations.