When Google inaugurated its maiden Safety Engineering Centre (GSEC) in Hyderabad, its fourth globally, it did not open yet another GSEC. The new GSEC, located at the IT hub of Madhapur, stands out from the other three global GSECs due to its unique and holistic approach to digital safety, particularly its amalgamation of various specialised areas and its focus on leveraging AI.
The facility will operationalise advanced AI and large language models (LLMs) to power real-time scam alerts on Android via Gemini Nano, strengthen Google Play Protect, and enhance fraud detection across Google Pay, Search, and Gmail. It will also tackle AI-driven deception through adversarial testing, AI-assisted red teaming, and tools like SynthID to watermark AI-generated content.
“It is not just another centre. It is an amalgamation of specialisations. While the Munich GSEC (Germany) is a global hub for privacy and security engineering, the one in Dublin serves a hub for ‘content responsibility. The third centre at Malaga (Spain) is focused on cybersecurity, aiming to strengthen open security principles,” Heather Adkins, Vice-President of Engineering, Google Security, has said.
“The Hyderabad centre has all the specialised areas — privacy, security, content responsibility, and advanced security such as AI convergence,” she said.
The centre was formally inaugurated by Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy here on Wednesday.
GSEC India addresses India’s rapidly evolving threat landscape—where APAC accounts for half of all global APT activity, and India faces projected cybercrime losses of up to ₹20,000 crore by 2025—through a comprehensive, proactive approach combining AI-powered threat detection, ecosystem collaboration, and forward-looking policy measures.
GSEC India works with the ecosystem and shares intelligence via platforms like the Global Signals Exchange (GSE). It supports education and user awareness initiatives tailored to India’s scale and linguistic diversity and advances research in areas like Post-Quantum Cryptography through partnerships such as its work with IIT-Madras.
The Hyderabad GSEC will be central in “building responsible AI” ethically and safely for everyone. This will include rigorously testing AI models for safety, developing robust content policies, and creating transparency tools for users.
However, Google officials have evaded a question on the number of engineers the new facility would house. “We have just started the journey. We will build from here,” an executive said.