The re-branding of Trend Micro to TrendAI reflects where enterprises are headed and where security must follow. Sharda Tickoo, Country Manager – India & SAARC, TrendAI exclusively informs to Rajneesh De, Group Editor, CXO Media & APAC Media that this enterprise business unit of Trend Micro offers purpose-built AI security capabilities to protect AI systems, models, and agents.
What are the TrendAI portfolio of solutions and services available in India?
TrendAI, the enterprise business unit of Trend Micro, carries forward the same trusted leadership in cybersecurity, expertise, people, and customer-first commitment our customers know and rely on. Our flagship platform, TrendAI Vision One, brings together endpoint security, cloud security, network security, email security, identity security, data security, and security operations under one unified platform.
We also offer purpose-built AI security capabilities to protect AI systems, models, and agents. Backed by world-class threat intelligence and experts globally, TrendAI serves enterprises across sectors such as BFSI, manufacturing, IT, and government, empowering them to manage cyber risk proactively and scale AI fearlessly.
What were the key reasons for rebranding the enterprise business as TrendAI?
The rebrand to TrendAI reflects where enterprises are headed and where security must follow. AI has gone past being just a cool to have feature to becoming the next compute layer for the enterprise. As organizations redesign operations around AI, autonomous systems, and data-driven decision-making, security must evolve beyond protecting infrastructure to governing how AI systems act, connect, and make decisions.
TrendAI captures this evolution clearly. It signals our conviction that security must be as intelligent and adaptive as the technology it protects. The name also reflects our journey – from a portfolio of industry-leading products to a unified, enterprise AI cybersecurity platform. The mission stays the same. We are committed to helping organizations reduce risk, move faster, and operate securely.
What will be TrendAI’s unique differentiators compared to other enterprise cybersecurity competitors?
TrendAI stands apart in four key ways.
- First, we deliver security designed for the AI age. We take a proactive approach to identify, prioritize, and address risks in real time, helping you stay ahead of threats. We protect your people, systems, and data from AI-driven risks so you can adopt AI with confidence.
- Second, our depth of threat intelligence is unmatched. We have 450 dedicated researchers, the world’s largest bug bounty program through Zero Day Initiative, and protection from hundreds of millions of threats daily.
- Third, TrendAI Vision One offers a truly unified platform. It gives you clear visibility, threat detection, risk prioritization, and exposure management across your entire environment without added complexity.
- Fourth is our customer first approach. We work closely with our customers to build the right approach based on their needs, supporting them at every stage of their AI and technology journey, whether they are securing one area or their entire ecosystem.
For Indian enterprises scaling AI, this combination of depth, intelligence, and platform breadth is what sets TrendAI apart.
What will be the key pillars of TrendAI’s GTM strategy for India?
India is a critical market for TrendAI, and our go-to-market strategy is built on four pillars.
- First, platform-led growth. TrendAI Vision One is the unified answer to India’s growing cyber risk challenge, particularly as enterprises accelerate AI adoption.
- Second, partner-driven reach. We deepen our engagement with channel partners, MSSPs, and system integrators who help us scale across industries and geographies.
- Third, intelligence-led relevance. We leverage our India-specific research, including our recent AI and cybersecurity adoption study of 200 Indian decision-makers, to have meaningful conversations with CISOs about real risks and practical solutions
- Fourth, focus on customer success. TrendAI combines strong security with relentless customer support. We work with customers at every stage of their AI and technology journey, whether they need to protect one area or secure and manage their entire environment.
We have built strong customer relationships across India’s most security-sensitive verticals like banking and financial services, government, and critical infrastructure and we are deeply committed to strengthening that footprint. Ultimately, our goal is to be seen as a long-term security partner that helps these organisations embrace the AI era fearlessly.
How will you define the structure of TrendAI’s channel ecosystem in India?
Our channel ecosystem in India is truly the backbone of our business with 100% of our business in India happening through channel partners.
Over the past two years, our growth has been driven by strong deal-registration-led engagement from partners. We have invested in enablement through programmes like Partner Ninja and Trend Campus, helping partners move beyond product knowledge to genuine AI security advisory capability.
The expectations from partners have evolved significantly. Customers today want partners who can review security architectures, run red-team simulations, and support incident response. We are building a channel that is ready for that shift. That is the ecosystem India needs, and that is what TrendAI is committed to building.
What are the key challenges for CISOs today regarding AI and cloud security, and how can TrendAI mitigate these challenges?
CISOs in India are navigating a difficult storm. AI adoption is moving faster than security teams can keep pace. Our recent research shows that in India 81% of IT decision-makers say AI is advancing more quickly than they can secure it. Governance gaps, fragmented ownership of AI risk, and limited visibility into autonomous systems compound the problem.
On the cloud side, traditional security tools simply were not built for GPU-driven, containerized AI workloads. They cannot detect model poisoning, adversarial inputs, or supply chain compromises in AI frameworks.
TrendAI Vision One addresses this directly. It offers unified visibility, AI-specific threat detection, and cyber risk exposure management in one platform. We help CISOs move from reactive postures to proactive, intelligence-led security operations.
How is hybrid security becoming mainstream in Indian enterprises and how does TrendAI align with this concept?
Indian enterprises are operating across a complex mix of on-premises systems, public cloud, private cloud, and SaaS environments and that hybrid security is now the norm. This is especially true for regulated sectors like BFSI and government, where data residency and compliance requirements persist alongside cloud ambitions.
TrendAI is purpose-built for this. It offers flexible deployment options, be it SaaS or customer-hosted, ensuring organizations can enforce consistent security policies regardless of where their workloads run. Our platform connects visibility across cloud, endpoint, network, and AI infrastructure, giving security teams a unified view across their entire hybrid environment without adding operational complexity.
What are TrendAI’s key investment focus areas in India?
India is a high-priority market for TrendAI, and our investment reflects that. We are focused on three core areas.
- First, deepening our platform capabilities relevant to India’s AI adoption wave, including AI security, cloud security, and agentic AI protection.
- Second, building our local talent and research presence to ensure our threat intelligence reflects the Indian threat landscape.
- Third, enabling our partner ecosystem to have more sophisticated, consultative conversations with CISOs, moving beyond product sales to strategic risk advisory.
We are also investing in thought leadership, backed by India-specific research like our recent AI governance study, to help organizations understand and act on the risks that come with rapid AI deployment.
