Cognizant and CrowdStrike Expand Strategic Partnership to Strengthen Enterprise Security in the AI Era

Cognizant Corporation (headquartered in New Jersey, USA; CEO: Ravi Kumar S, hereinafter “Cognizant”) today announced the expansion of its strategic partnership with CrowdStrike. This collaboration will enable enterprises to securely adopt and operate AI across the entire AI lifecycle—from AI agents and models to the foundational infrastructure that supports them. Building on the partnership initiated in 2025, Cognizant will integrate the CrowdStrike Falcon® platform into its managed cybersecurity services, which are powered by the company’s AI Factory and Cognizant Neuro® Cybersecurity platforms.

This expanded partnership comes at a pivotal moment for enterprise AI. Organizations are no longer debating whether to adopt autonomous AI agents—they are actively integrating them into business operations, IT systems, and even core business processes. Deployment environments have also expanded from public and private clouds to edge environments. These shifts have significantly broadened the enterprise attack surface in ways that traditional security tools cannot adequately address. Attackers are leveraging AI to enhance their attacks and exploiting unauthorized 'shadow AI' to manipulate models through prompt injection and target new entry points created by agent-based architectures. Security has now become a critical factor determining whether enterprises can confidently scale AI or face stalled adoption.

Surya Gummadi, President of the Americas at Cognizant, stated: "The AI Builder approach is designed to shift enterprise AI implementation from trial-and-error to value creation. To scale this effectively, AI must be secure by design. An AI agent without proper security safeguards may not enhance productivity but instead become a new vector for risk. By integrating the CrowdStrike Falcon platform with our AI Factory and Neuro Cybersecurity platforms, our clients can build, operate, and protect autonomous AI across AI agents, models, and the underlying infrastructure. These capabilities are essential for deploying AI into real enterprise workflows while meeting the trust and governance requirements of boards, regulators, and customers."

Cognizant’s AI Builder approach aims to apply AI to critical business functions and embed advanced AI agents into enterprise workflows. To scale this effectively, ensuring AI security, governance, and trustworthiness is essential. This partnership focuses on three key areas to achieve this:

AI-Native Managed Security Operations: Cognizant will integrate the CrowdStrike Falcon® platform—including Charlotte AI™, Agentic Security Workforce, and Falcon® Next-Gen SIEM—into its managed cybersecurity services. These will be operated holistically through the Cognizant Neuro® Cybersecurity platform. As a result, always-on AI agents that assist with alert triage, threat intelligence, vulnerability prioritization, and data onboarding will be embedded into Cognizant’s security operations, operating within guardrails defined by Cognizant’s security architects.

Security and Governance Across the AI Factory: Within the Cognizant AI Factory, CrowdStrike Falcon® capabilities will support a governance layer designed to ensure AI agents and applications operate in compliance with defined security and compliance requirements. Falcon® AI Detection and Response (AIDR) helps protect the prompt and AI agent interaction layer. Additionally, AI model scanning and shadow AI detection capabilities enable clients to visualize all models, tools, and AI agents in use across their environments. These features are delivered in collaboration with clients and operate within their defined governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) frameworks.

Security Layer for Private and Sovereign AI: For regulated industries such as financial services, healthcare, and government, Cognizant’s Private AI Factory aims to deliver on-premises AI infrastructure supporting sovereign AI deployed within clients’ data centers. The CrowdStrike Falcon® platform will serve as a security layer protecting these environments, providing integrated protection for the compute environments, containers, and data pipelines that support private models.

These initiatives are built on Cognizant’s recognition by CrowdStrike as the '2026 Americas Velocity Partner of the Year.' This award acknowledges Cognizant’s tangible business outcomes, deployment successes, and rapid go-to-market execution of joint solutions with CrowdStrike.

"Enterprises of the future will be powered by AI agents. The challenge is no longer building AI agents, but how to operate them securely," said Daniel Bernard, Chief Business Officer at CrowdStrike. "CrowdStrike and Cognizant are enabling enterprises to confidently transition from AI experimentation to enterprise-scale deployment by ensuring every AI agent, model, and workload is protected by the Falcon platform. This allows organizations to accelerate innovation, securely deploy AI, and reduce security risks in the AI era."

Cognizant and CrowdStrike are committed to helping enterprises confidently adopt and deploy autonomous AI in environments where all AI agents, models, and their interactions are protected from the design phase, properly managed, and resilient.

About Cognizant

Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) is an AI Builder and technology services provider that empowers organizations to transform digitally. With a focus on innovation and operational excellence, Cognizant helps clients modernize technology, reimagine processes, and transform experiences across the enterprise.