Google has launched its first Google Safety Engineering Centre (GSEC) in the Asia-Pacific region in Hyderabad to aid India’s digital safety infrastructure, making it only the fourth such centre globally.
The facility was inaugurated on Wednesday by Telangana CM Revanth Reddy, alongside state IT minister D Sridhar Babu and other top government officials.
The launch follows Google’s ‘Safety Charter’ for India’s AI-led transformation, which was unveiled at the Safer with Google Summit in Delhi on June 17. The GSEC will focus on three core areas: protecting users from online fraud, strengthening enterprise and government cybersecurity and building responsible AI solutions. It is also set to serve as a regional hub for APAC to combat digital threats.
Using AI and LLMs, the centre aims to deploy real-time scam alerts via Gemini Nano on Android, improve fraud detection across services like Pay, Search and Gmail, and boost defences like Google Play Protect. It will also tackle AI misuse through adversarial testing, red teaming and watermarking tools like SynthID.
Calling it a proud moment for Telangana, Reddy praised Google’s ethical philosophy and said, “This centre will create jobs, foster skills and boost India’s cyber defence. Telangana is poised to become a trillion-dollar economy by 2035.”
With over a billion internet users, India’s digital growth comes with rising vulnerability. According to Heather Adkins, founding member of the Google Security Team, Google Pay alone prevented ₹13,000 crore worth of financial fraud in 2023. Yet, the threat looms large, with estimated cybercrime losses in India projected to hit ₹20,000 crore in 2025.
The government is also on high alert. The Digital Threat Report 2024 noted a 175% rise in phishing attacks on banking and financial services, while over half of business email compromise cases now involve AI-generated deepfakes. The CERT-In cybersecurity agency has responded with national cyber drills and a cyber crisis management plan, having tackled over 14 lakh incidents in 2022 alone.
Wilson White, Google’s VP for public policy, highlighted that Asia-Pacific is now the epicentre of digital scams, accounting for two-thirds of global fraud losses—$688 billion in 2023. “AI can help detect 20 times more scam pages and eliminate millions of fake listings,” he said.
