New Delhi, Aug 28 (IANS): To serve the growing cyber security needs of businesses in India, Bharti Airtel and cyber security provider Symantec have inked a strategic alliance to protect customers from increasing online threats.

Under the terms of the agreement, Airtel will be the exclusive cyber security services partner for Symantec in India, and will distribute Symantec's enterprise security software, said Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO (India and South Asia), Bharti Airtel here on Monday.

"Building a secure business is important. Cyber security is becoming a mission critical thing. The need to protect from potential cyber threats is becoming the new normal," Vittal said while addressing a media roundtable.

"The partnership will give customers stronger protection and prevention, greater visibility and better control of critical assets, users and data. Airtel Business serves over 2,000 large enterprise accounts, plus more than 250,000 corporate and tech startups with its integrated telecom solutions," Vittal added.

He said the opportunity for cyber security is very large as the nature of threats is becoming sophisticated.

"The threat environment is more dangerous and complex than ever. The partnership between Airtel and Symantec presents massive value to businesses in India," said Symantec's CEO Greg Clark.

"Airtel is one of the most forward-thinking telcos and Symantec's Integrated Cyber Defence Platform focuses on empowering businesses to protect their on-premise as well as fast growing cloud environment through every stage of an attack lifecycle by combining the broadest and deepest set of threat intelligence in the industry," he added.

Symantec employs around 4,000 people in India.

Having proper cyber security has become all the more important after recent ransomware attacks like WannaCry and Petya.