Major Indian technology companies are expanding their cybersecurity strategies as the rapid deployment of artificial-intelligence applications and autonomous agents creates a new category of security risks for businesses.
Companies including Infosys, HCLTech, Cognizant, Mphasis and Persistent Systems are increasingly extending security controls beyond conventional employees, laptops and servers to AI applications, interfaces and autonomous agents.
The change reflects a fundamental shift in enterprise computing.
Traditional cybersecurity was largely designed around controlling what human users and conventional software could access.
AI agents complicate that model because they can increasingly perform actions themselves.
Zero Trust Expands to AI
One of the approaches gaining importance is Zero Trust.
The basic principle is straightforward: no user, device or application should automatically be trusted simply because it is already inside a corporate network.
Instead, access should be continuously verified.
AI agents are increasingly being brought inside that security model.
Companies are examining what information agents can access, which systems they can interact with and what actions they are authorised to perform.
That becomes particularly important when businesses connect generative AI to internal databases, financial systems or customer records.
Sensitive Data Creates Major Concern
Another risk involves employees entering confidential corporate information into external AI platforms.
Generative AI can dramatically improve productivity.
But employees may inadvertently expose sensitive data when asking public AI services to analyse documents, write code or summarise internal information.
Persistent Systems has introduced measures around AI data governance and threat testing, while other technology companies are strengthening monitoring and access controls.
The objective is not necessarily to prevent workers from using AI.
Instead, businesses are trying to establish boundaries around how it can be used safely.
Cybersecurity Becomes AI Growth Industry
The development has important commercial implications.
The more AI companies deploy, the larger the potential market becomes for cybersecurity providers capable of protecting those systems.
Security companies can sell products covering model monitoring, identity management, API protection, data-loss prevention and autonomous-agent oversight.
AI could therefore become both a cybersecurity threat and one of the industry’s biggest growth opportunities.
Businesses may save money through automation only to find themselves spending more on protecting the systems doing that automation.
New Security Perimeter
For technology executives, the central question is changing.
It is no longer simply: Who has access to our network?
Businesses must increasingly ask: Which AI agents have access, what can they see and what are they allowed to do without human approval?
That distinction will become more important as companies give AI systems greater autonomy.
India’s technology-services companies are among the first to confront the problem at large enterprise scale.
Their response could provide a blueprint for companies elsewhere as AI moves from an experimental productivity tool into infrastructure capable of independently interacting with critical business systems.
