SKILLS, SECURITY, AND GOVERNANCE WILL SHAPE ENTERPRISE AI READINESS IN 2026

SHARATH NAYAK
Director, Viroka Technology Pvt. Ltd.

Viroka Technology is strategically positioned to deliver enterprise-scale AI by 2026 through a pragmatic and risk- aware adoption model. We see four primary challenges—skills availability, security, compliance, and infrastructure readiness. The immediate challenge is the skills gap, particularly in applied AI engineering and responsible AI deployment. To address this, we prioritise GenAI consumption, prompt engineering, model fine-tuning, and system integration rather than building large foundational models. Leveraging platforms such as IBM SkillsBuild and Microsoft Learn enables scalable, cost-effective AI expertise across roles, delivering faster time-to-value aligned with enterprise use cases.

Security and compliance are treated as first-order constraints. We follow strict security-by-design principles, ensuring sensitive data is never unnecessarily exposed. Secrets are stored in secure key vaults with least-privilege access, supported by continuous testing, runtime monitoring, and Zero Trust controls. Risks such as deepfakes, cyber fraud, and data privacy are mitigated through layered detection, AI-driven fraud analytics, DLP mechanisms, and privacy-by-design architectures with automated PII detection, masking, and lifecycle governance. Governance platforms provide centralised policy management, audit trails, and regulatory readiness.

Cloud-native and hybrid architectures are central to our AI roadmap. We follow a ‘train in the cloud, deploy on-premises’ model using elastic GPUs for training and containerised, Kubernetes-based inference for sensitive workloads. This ensures scalability, low latency, portability, and compliance. Aligned with Digital India and IndiaAI, we enable sovereign infrastructure, DPDP compliance, multilingual AI, and responsible adoption focused on trust, inclusion, and sustainable innovation.