Behind ZS’s AI-powered security excellence: A conversation with Atman Trivedi

At ZS, delivering measurable AI value and deploying AI responsibly go hand in hand. As we help clients transform the decisions that drive their businesses forward, teams across ZS work behind the scenes to ensure the technology is secure, trustworthy and built for scale.

A cybersecurity career built on purpose

Few people understand that responsibility better than Atman Trivedi. Over the past several years, he has helped shape and scale ZS’s security operations capabilities while building a career defined by continuous learning, innovation and leadership. He joined in 2021 as an individual contributor and grew to a director-level position, helping lead a function that expanded from a team of about four people to over 20. Today, as director of information security, he oversees security operations and incident response, helping protect ZS’s infrastructure, client data and firm data around the clock.

Atman Trivedi, Director of Information Security, Pune

His path into cybersecurity started with a desire to do something different from traditional software development. After studying engineering, Atman began his career as a firewall support engineer, where he naturally gravitated toward security. What kept him in the field was a deeper connection to its purpose.

“In information security, there is a fundamental principle that human life and safety come first,” he says. “Before we think about protecting technology, data or systems, we have to consider the impact on people.” For Atman, that principle is part of what makes cybersecurity meaningful. The work may be deeply technical, but at its core, it’s about protecting human life and safety, preserving trust and securing the systems and services that organizations and society increasingly depend on.

Scaling security operations with AI and human oversight

That sense of purpose became especially important as ZS’s security operations team began exploring how AI could support cloud detection and response. The team monitors ZS’s environment 24/7, working to stay ahead of threat actors who may attempt to exploit vulnerabilities or gain access to systems.

But as cloud environments grow more complex, security teams face a familiar challenge: volume. Analysts may receive hundreds of alerts each day, many of which require time, context and expertise to investigate. Atman describes it as “finding a needle in a haystack,” where the real work is not just reviewing alerts, but identifying the events that truly matter.

From AI pilot to security operations impact

That challenge led the team to explore Wiz Blue Agent, an AI-powered cloud threat investigator. ZS’s security operations team saw an opportunity to leverage Wiz Blue Agent to help scale cloud detection and response but chose a deliberate approach: validate first, automate second.

For Atman, that distinction mattered. The goal was never to replace analysts. It was to augment them.

Cybersecurity decisions carry real consequences; to mitigate risk, the team validated the tool’s accuracy and precision before operationalizing it across ZS. Atman notes that an AI system could incorrectly dismiss a true cyberattack, or it could mistakenly treat normal activity as malicious and disrupt systems that are working properly.

They spent three months rigorously validating Wiz Blue Agent, with powerful results:

• 95% accuracy
• 80%-90% faster investigations
• 4x greater analyst threat triage throughput

These metrics are meaningful, but the bigger story is what they made possible for our people. By shifting some routine investigative tasks to AI, ZS’s analysts can spend more time on advanced work that requires human expertise, including threat hunting and detection engineering.

The work also helped make cloud security knowledge more accessible across the team. As AI made findings easier to understand, more analysts were able to engage with cloud-related detections. That democratization of expertise is one of the human impacts of responsible AI adoption. It helps teams move faster, but it also helps people build confidence, learn new skills and participate in work that may have once felt highly specialized.

Building the future of AI-powered security at ZS

For cybersecurity professionals, Atman believes ZS offers something unique: the chance to see AI in action, not just read about it. Teams are working across the practical realities of adopting AI, securing AI and managing AI-enabled risks, all while operating in a live business environment.

That is what makes this story more than a technology milestone. It’s a story about people learning how to use AI with judgment, discipline and purpose. It’s about giving highly skilled analysts more room to focus on complex work and drive real business impact for our clients.

For Atman Trivedi, the impact is clear: responsible AI can help security teams scale, but only when people remain central to the process. “AI can augment our capabilities, but critical decisions still require human oversight,” he says. At ZS, that principle is helping cybersecurity teams protect what matters while building what comes next.