The rapid rise of advanced artificial intelligence models capable of identifying software vulnerabilities at unprecedented speed is creating one of the biggest opportunities the cybersecurity industry has seen in years, according to Zscaler founder and chief executive Jay Chaudhry.

“There has never been a time in cyber where there’s more need for cybersecurity than we see today,” Chaudhry told ET in an interview.

The emergence of these models is fundamentally changing the cybersecurity landscape because vulnerabilities that once took researchers weeks or months to uncover can now be identified far more quickly, giving defenders and attackers access to the same powerful capabilities.


“What we’ve learned over the past few months is that these models can find vulnerabilities in software at a much faster speed, and some of the vulnerabilities have been hidden for 10 or 20 years,” Chaudhry said during the interview on the sidelines of Zscaler’s Zenith Live cybersecurity conference, adding: “That creates a new challenge. How do we fix those vulnerabilities before they get exploited?”

The San Jose, California-headquartered company has a market capitalisation of roughly $20 billion. Zscaler was among a group of 40 companies that received access to Anthropic’s advanced AI model, Mythos, under a controlled testing programme. The company used the model to scan its own software and identify vulnerabilities before they could be exploited.

“We’ve been running the model and comparing it against earlier versions as well as OpenAI’s latest models,” Chaudhry said. “The preview model is a few steps ahead, but it’s a matter of time before other models catch up.” The reporter was in Vienna at the invitation of Zscaler

(Tanya Pandey contributed to this story)