Aston Martin Aramco has partnered with cybersecurity firm Zscaler to implement Zero Trust security across the Formula 1 team’s operations, protecting the vast streams of data that flow between its Silverstone headquarters, race circuits worldwide and its network of partners and suppliers.
The partnership positions Zscaler as a cybersecurity partner for the team at a time when F1 squads face escalating digital threats. Teams operate in highly visible, data-driven environments where critical information moves constantly across global networks, and protecting that data without impeding the rapid pace of car development is a growing challenge.
Zscaler’s approach replaces traditional firewall-based security — described by the company as a “castle-and-moat” model — with a system that inspects every piece of data moving in, out and around an organization. The company, founded by CEO Jay Chaudhry in 2007, processes more than 500 billion data transactions daily, a figure Zscaler says is over 20 times the number of daily Google searches.
“We operate a Zero Trust environment, manage every single piece of data that goes in, out and around the team — and by managing it, we better understand where the risks are, which puts us in a better posture to predict the risks, spot where adversaries are coming in, and lock everything down,” said Sunil Frida, Zscaler’s Chief Marketing Officer, in a feature published by Aston Martin. “We do this instead of building a moat and hoping the bad guys can’t figure out how to cross it.”
Frida, who previously held leadership positions at Amazon Web Services and CrowdStrike, highlighted the growing threat posed by artificial intelligence. Zscaler’s ThreatLabz research team found that data flowing into external AI applications surged by 93 percent over the past year, amounting to roughly 18 petabytes, with 77 percent of enterprise employees pasting company information into generative AI tools — many using personal accounts.
“AI feels like our moment,” Frida said. “It’s what Zscaler was built for, in terms of securing traffic. We provide AI guardrails, we can lock down a business and ensure the data flowing in and out is doing so in a safe way.”
The threat landscape has shifted dramatically with the rise of agentic AI, according to Frida, who warned that traditional firewall technology was never designed to defend against machine-speed attacks. “A bad actor, with bad agents, can very quickly send an enterprise into a downward spiral,” he said. “Firewall technology was never built for agents. To go back to the earlier analogy, the firewall is the moat, but the agents are in the water. They’re just going to seep right through the castle walls.”
The deal underscores a broader trend across Formula 1, where teams increasingly treat cybersecurity as a competitive necessity rather than a back-office function. Aston Martin Aramco’s partnership with Zscaler adds another layer of technological infrastructure to a team that continues to build out its operations ahead of the 2026 regulation changes.