In an era where artificial intelligence and cloud innovation are redefining business models, cybersecurity has moved from the backroom to the boardroom. For Anand Jethalia, Country Head of Cybersecurity at Microsoft India & South Asia, the future of digital trust lies in seeing security not as a defensive cost but as a strategic driver of resilience, confidence, and Innovation.
At the heart of this transformation is Microsoft’s Secure Future Initiative (SFI) — a blueprint for embedding secure-by-design principles, AI-first defense, and end-to-end Zero Trust into every layer of enterprise technology. Under Jethalia’s leadership, this approach is helping organizations simplify their fragmented security ecosystems, accelerate the adoption of responsible AI, and turn compliance into a catalyst for growth.
In this exclusive conversation with CISO Forum, Jethalia unpacks how Indian enterprises are navigating the convergence of AI, identity, and trust, how Microsoft is reshaping cyber resilience across industries, and why he believes security is the true enabler of Innovation in the digital economy.
Country Head, Cybersecurity
Microsoft India & South Asia
CISO Forum: What key strategic objectives are your clients focusing on today, and how do you ensure Microsoft’s cybersecurity solutions not only meet technical requirements but also support these broader business goals?
Anand Jethalia: Microsoft’s strategy is to position cybersecurity not as a cost center that merely meets technical requirements, but as a strategic business enabler that fosters the trust necessary for clients to adopt transformative technologies like AI and the cloud confidently.
At Microsoft, our cybersecurity strategy is anchored in the Secure Future Initiative (SFI), which embeds secure-by-design engineering, AI-first defense, and default protections across our platforms—ensuring that security is not just a technical requirement but a strategic enabler of trust.
In client conversations, three imperatives consistently emerge: the need to securely navigate the AI and agentic era, simplify and unify the Security Operations Center (SOC), and implement true end-to-end, identity-centric Zero Trust.
Clients are deploying generative AI tools like Microsoft 365 Copilot to reimagine productivity, but they want assurance that Innovation doesn’t compromise security. Microsoft’s approach ensures AI agents are governed, private, and secure by design—turning Copilot into a trusted copilot for transformation.
At the same time, SOC teams are under pressure to accomplish more with fewer resources. Our integrated platform—Sentinel, Defender XDR, and Security Copilot—helps reduce tool sprawl, operational overhead, and response time. Our unified data lake ingests signals from over 350 connectors, providing clients with comprehensive visibility without the burden of stitching siloed data.
As hybrid work and multi-cloud environments become permanent, organizations are moving beyond perimeter-based security to verify every user, device, and application explicitly. Microsoft Entra enables this shift, simplifying Zero Trust adoption across all platforms.
From unified security operations and agentic defense to proactive risk reduction and secure identity access, our solutions are designed to meet these strategic objectives head-on—helping clients build resilience, reduce complexity, and unlock Innovation with confidence.
CISO Forum: With rapid digital transformation, what are the most pressing cyber risks you see organizations facing today?
Anand Jethalia: As digital transformation accelerates, CISOs are navigating a threat landscape that is more fragmented, sophisticated, and fast-moving than ever.
Identity has become the new perimeter, with attackers exploiting credentials and tokens to move laterally across environments. Software supply chains are increasingly vulnerable, as trust in third-party code and APIs becomes critical. State-level adversaries and ransomware groups are becoming increasingly stealthy, while tool sprawl continues to fragment visibility and response capabilities. Exposure management is now essential, requiring defenders to map and reduce their attack surface proactively. As AI adoption increases, threats such as prompt injection, model poisoning, and data leakage are no longer theoretical. These risks demand a security architecture that’s engineered for resilience, governed by design, and ready to adapt at machine speed.
Microsoft’s Secure Future Initiative addresses these challenges head-on by embedding identity and secrets protection into our engineering lifecycle, positioning Sentinel as a unified security data lake to reduce fragmentation, and treating AI as both a battleground and a defense accelerator. Our approach is designed not just for technical soundness, but for business resilience, regulatory trust, and continuous adaptation.
CISO Forum: How do you balance Innovation in cloud and AI technologies with security and compliance requirements?
Anand Jethalia: At Microsoft, we believe Innovation without trust is just risk. We consider that Innovation and security are not opposing forces—they are co-drivers of confidence and resilience. Our Secure Future Initiative (SFI) embeds security into every layer of our engineering and operational lifecycle, ensuring that every AI or cloud capability we launch is secure by design, compliant by default, and governed through responsible Innovation.
A leading private-sector bank, for instance, utilized Sentinel’s unified log analytics and Defender’s endpoint telemetry to meet the 24-hour incident-reporting guideline, demonstrating how secure-by-design Innovation accelerates compliance.
We believe AI innovation must advance hand-in-hand with responsible governance, and that’s exactly what we enable through our Responsible AI Standard. When combined with Microsoft Purview and Entra, it ensures consistent data classification, retention, and access controls across all platforms.
Our integrated security platform—Defender XDR, Sentinel SIEM, Purview, Entra ID, and Security Copilot—helps CISOs consolidate fragmented tools, reduce detection times, and meet compliance across sectors. With Security Copilot, Indian SOC teams are transforming Level 1 triage into automated, AI-assisted investigations—freeing analysts to focus on proactive threat hunting.
In today’s India, where digital acceleration is redefining every industry, we see security as the steering wheel of Innovation—not the brake.
CISO Forum: What role does a Country Manager play in fostering a culture of cybersecurity across enterprise clients?
Anand Jethalia: At Microsoft, we view cybersecurity not just as a technological imperative, but as a national priority that underpins trust, fuels Innovation, and safeguards digital progress. My role is to help translate this vision into action by shaping the enterprise mindset around cyber resilience and responsible AI.
I work closely with CXOs to elevate cybersecurity from a cost center to a boardroom capability, anchoring conversations in operational continuity, reputation, and regulatory assurance. We co-create sector-specific resilience playbooks that map Microsoft solutions—Defender, Sentinel, Entra, and Purview—to industry mandates, helping CISOs operationalize compliance while improving detection and response maturity.
As India accelerates cloud and AI adoption, we support clients in embedding Zero Trust and Responsible AI principles into transformation programs. Building a security-first culture also means investing in people, and we actively amplify initiatives like CyberShikshaa and Future Ready Skills in partnership with MeitY and NASSCOM.
We also work closely with industry and government bodies—strengthening collaboration through shared threat intelligence, digital forensics, and policy guidance on AI safety. I see my role as contributing to making cybersecurity a shared national mission—helping every enterprise in India innovate fearlessly, protect data responsibly, and build digital trust that fuels economic growth.
CISO Forum: How do you measure the impact of cybersecurity initiatives on business outcomes?
Anand Jethalia: At Microsoft, we fundamentally view cybersecurity not as an IT cost, but as a driver of business value and trust. Measuring impact means shifting the conversation from technical metrics to outcomes that matter to the board—risk reduction, operational resilience, and innovation enablement.
Our approach focuses on how well security is built in and enforced, using indicators like ransomware protection scores, exposure reduction, and critical asset coverage to quantify risk mitigation. Metrics such as the percentage of accounts with enforced Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) directly reflect progress against identity-based threats, while operational measures like time-to-contain and analyst productivity gains—especially with Security Copilot—demonstrate how AI is transforming response speed and efficiency.
As organizations advance their Zero Trust maturity, these metrics help CISOs show how security investments are enabling secure collaboration, regulatory assurance, and long-term resilience. Ultimately, the most meaningful measure is trust—because when security empowers confident adoption of new technologies, it becomes a catalyst for growth.
CISO Forum: Can you share an example of a strategic cybersecurity solution that significantly improved client resilience?
Anand Jethalia: At Microsoft, we define resilience not just by how organizations respond to threats, but by how confidently they adapt and scale in the face of change. One example is our global rollout of Security Copilot Guided Response within Defender XDR, which uses large-scale AI to assist SOC analysts in investigation, triage, and remediation—reducing alert fatigue, improving consistency, and enabling lean teams to scale defense.
Closer to home, LTIMindtree, an Indian IT services company, adopted Microsoft’s integrated security suite to secure a rapidly expanding hybrid workforce. With these integrations, LTIMindtree has established a unified command center for investigations, threat intelligence, and incident response. The solution has enabled the organization to build a next-generation Security Operations Center with enhanced agility and operational efficiency.
These examples demonstrate how Microsoft’s cybersecurity solutions are enabling organizations to transition from reactive defense to proactive resilience, with AI, identity, and data protection working in concert to secure what matters most.
