Cybersecurity will be more important in future conflicts than military might: Jay Chaudhry, CEO of Zscaler

Cybersecurity is becoming more critical as technology advances, and future conflicts may rely more on cyber strength than traditional military force, said Jay Chaudhry, founder, chairman and CEO of cloud security firm Zscaler.

Speaking at the AI Impact Summit in Delhi, Chaudhry said cyber capabilities — especially those powered by artificial intelligence — will play a much bigger role in future wars.

“Future wars will be won and lost many times without firing a single shot,” he said, explaining that crippling a country’s banking or power systems through cyberattacks could create massive disruption and chaos.

Chaudhry noted that while AI brings huge opportunities, it also introduces significant risks. He stressed that AI-driven cyber threats must be countered using AI-based defence systems.

He explained that every organisation has an “attack surface” in the cyber world, which includes public IP addresses, firewalls, virtual private networks (VPNs), and application portals. These are potential entry points for hackers.

He also warned that as more applications are built using AI agents that automatically generate code, new security flaws are likely to emerge. In the short term, agent-based coding could lead to a sharp rise in security vulnerabilities.

According to Chaudhry, adopting a “zero trust” approach is the most effective cybersecurity strategy. Zero trust means not automatically trusting any user or system, even if they are inside the network.

He added that India is increasingly focusing on building sovereign AI products and domain-specific models tailored to local needs. In cybersecurity, he said, models should be trained specifically on cyber data and global cyber laws. This focused approach reduces costs and makes AI systems more efficient and effective in addressing security challenges.