In a world where a convincing email can be a carefully crafted trap and artificial intelligence can make cyberattacks increasingly difficult to detect, staying safe online requires more than strong passwords and firewalls. As AI tools become part of everyday work, the risks are also evolving, with sensitive information travelling across platforms and autonomous agents gaining access to organisational data. This Cybersecurity Awareness Month, the conversation around digital safety is shifting from simply identifying threats to understanding the intent behind them. With Hyderabad emerging as a key destination for technology and engineering, Proofpoint is strengthening its AI security capabilities through a new centre in the city. In an exclusive interaction with CE, Bikramdeep Singh, Vice President, India & SAARC at Proofpoint, discusses the changing threat landscape, the importance of protecting human and AI identities, and how Hyderabad will contribute to the company’s global security strategy.
What are the biggest cybersecurity threats individuals and organisations should be paying attention to today?
People remain the largest vulnerability in cybersecurity. AI has amplified that risk, making it essential to look at people, data and AI together. In our 2026 Voice of the CISO report, 93% of Indian CISOs identified human risk as their organisation’s biggest vulnerability, up from 67% last year. In India, 79% believe people are likely to use AI in ways that expose sensitive data. The risk no longer stops at the inbox. People are sharing sensitive information with AI tools, while AI agents are beginning to act on that data. Protecting any one of these elements in isolation leaves gaps. Organisations need to protect people, defend data and govern AI as one connected system.
How is Proofpoint adapting its security solutions to address AI-powered attacks and increasingly sophisticated social engineering tactics?
Attackers are using AI, so defenders have to use it too. At Proofpoint, we use AI to understand intent, combining threat intelligence, large language models and contextual information to determine what a message, person or AI agent is trying to do. Our Nexus Intent-Based Detection Model applies this reasoning before a message is delivered and extends protection across inboxes, collaboration tools and browsers.
AI agents make this even more important. An agent may be authorised to access data and still misuse it. We therefore look beyond what an agent can access to understand what it does with that data and why. We call this Access with Intent. Protecting AI agents with the same rigour as people will help organisations adopt AI with greater confidence.
How should individuals and employees rethink their approach to online safety?
Traditional awareness remains important. People who can recognise suspicious requests and report them are among an organisation’s strongest defences. However, training must evolve. Generic annual modules cannot keep pace with AI-generated attacks. Awareness programmes need to identify who is most at risk based on their role, behaviour and the threats they face, then deliver targeted lessons and timely coaching. Organisations can also turn actual phishing attempts detected in their environments into safe simulations, allowing employees to learn from threats they are likely to encounter. For individuals, the key is to focus on intent. AI can make a message look convincing, but it cannot change what the sender is asking you to do. Question unusual requests, treat urgency as a warning sign and verify information through a second channel before acting.
What prompted Proofpoint to expand into Hyderabad, and what will the new centre focus on?
India brings together three significant shifts: rapid AI adoption, a more sophisticated threat landscape and a new era of data protection under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDPA). Our India business has tripled over the past 12 months, while our research shows that 94% of Indian organisations have already moved AI assistants beyond the pilot stage. The AI Security Engineering Centre of Excellence in Hyderabad is part of Proofpoint’s global research and development organisation. Its work will advance our AI security roadmap, including capabilities from our Acuvity acquisition, spanning AI governance, runtime protection and security for AI applications, copilots and autonomous agents. The centre will help organisations gain visibility into AI activity, control how agents use data and protect the information they access. We plan to hire more than 200 engineers over the next 12 to 24 months. This investment builds on our Pune Centre of Excellence, which has more than 550 team members, and our expansion to support customers and partners across India.
How will Hyderabad contribute to developing AI-driven security capabilities and addressing emerging threats?
AI will increasingly shape cybersecurity on both sides. Attackers will use it to scale and sharpen their attacks, while defenders will need it to detect threats and respond faster. Hyderabad will be an important part of developing these capabilities, including AI that understands intent, identifies emerging threats and helps security teams investigate incidents more efficiently. Securing AI itself is equally critical. As assistants and agents begin acting on people’s behalf, they can access information across multiple systems. Organisations must understand what data these agents can reach and how they use it. Our 2026 AI and Human Risk Landscape report found that 63% of Indian organisations had experienced a suspicious or confirmed AI-related incident, while 26% were not fully confident their controls could detect a compromised AI. Hyderabad’s engineers will work on closing these gaps by developing tools that provide visibility into AI activity, control data access and detect misuse early. These capabilities will strengthen protection for customers in India and globally.
Hyderabad has emerged as a major technology hub. How does its talent ecosystem support Proofpoint’s ambitions in AI security?
Hyderabad combines deep expertise in cloud computing, software development and AI engineering with strong university talent pipelines. AI security requires precisely this combination. The centre will develop specialised expertise in machine learning and applied AI, AI governance, runtime protection, data security and securing autonomous agents. These disciplines are becoming central to cybersecurity, and Hyderabad offers the ecosystem to build these capabilities at scale while connecting them directly to our global product roadmap.
What are the most common security gaps organisations need to address, and how can Proofpoint help?
Cybersecurity in India has traditionally been driven by compliance, with organisations building programmes to pass audits and responding when something goes wrong. With AI accelerating attacks and changing how people work, this approach is no longer sufficient. Compliance is the baseline, and reactive security is too slow. Resources are another challenge. Our 2026 Voice of the CISO report found that 92% of Indian CISOs expect to manage AI-related risks without a proportional increase in resources or expertise. Meanwhile, 71% of Indian organisations say managing multiple security tools is very or extremely difficult. Organisations are increasingly recognising the need for unified platforms, with 62% believing these are more effective than individual solutions and 57% actively pursuing consolidation. Proofpoint focuses on protecting people and AI agents while maintaining visibility into the data they handle. By connecting who is acting with what they are trying to do and which information is involved, we help organisations identify sensitive data, prevent its loss across email, cloud and AI environments, and detect risky behaviour early.
What emerging cyber threats should Indian businesses prepare for, particularly with data protection requirements becoming more stringent?
The threats Indian businesses face ultimately lead back to their data. AI is making attacks more convincing while creating new ways for sensitive information to be exposed or accessed inappropriately. Ransomware is a significant concern because it increasingly involves data theft as well as encryption. Our 2026 AI-Era Ransomware Report found that more than two-thirds of affected organisations globally had experienced data theft. The DPDPA further underscores the importance of knowing where sensitive information resides, who or what can access it, and how it is protected. Organisations need integrated approaches to data security posture management, data loss prevention and insider threat management. These help them discover and classify sensitive information, prevent unauthorised data transfers and identify risky behaviour across digital environments. Proofpoint has also operated a local data centre supporting Indian customers since the third quarter of 2025, helping address data sovereignty requirements.
What role will the Hyderabad centre play in Proofpoint’s long-term innovation and global security efforts?
The future of cybersecurity lies in the agentic workspace, where people and AI agents work alongside one another. AI is evolving from a tool people use into a system that can retrieve information, make decisions and perform tasks across an organisation. This creates risks both outside and inside the enterprise. AI can make external attacks faster and harder to distinguish from legitimate activity, while AI agents can introduce new insider risks through their access to organisational data and systems. Security must treat AI agents as identities in their own right, managing their access, monitoring their behaviour and ensuring accountability. The central question is no longer simply whether an agent can access information, but why it is accessing it and whether that action is appropriate in the given context. Hyderabad’s AI Security Engineering Centre will be central to this vision. As part of our global R&D organisation, it will advance AI governance, runtime protection and security for AI applications, copilots and agents. It represents a long-term investment in building the capabilities needed to protect customers in India and around the world as they adopt AI with confidence.
