#373 AI Security Needs Behavioral Control, Not Just Pattern Matching

**Dr. Darren Pulsipher** (0:00)
Welcome to Embracing Digital Transformation. Before we dive in, I wanted to personally thank you for listening. Many of the ideas we discuss on this show inspired my new book, AI Augmented Teams. If you're looking for practical ways to combine human expertise and AI to achieve better outcomes, I think you'll find it valuable. Learn more at padar.ai.books. That is paidar.ai.
Now let's get started with the show.

**Yaqoob Rahim** (0:31)
And from that perspective... We are forgetting the behavioral. Control.
Like, my own communication right now, Darren, with Gartner and so on, we are actually pushing the word. A-B-C, AIBC. Let's start with the AI Behavioral Control.

**Dr. Darren Pulsipher** (0:51)
Why this matters to you. AI is already moving into everyday work, but most organizations are still trying to govern it with controls built for older systems. That gap creates exposure in regulated workflows, shadow usage, and agent-driven actions that move faster than policy. If your teams are adopting co-pilots, assistants, or automated agents, the question is no longer whether AI will be used. It is whether you can see it, guide it, and keep sensitive data from leaking while still getting the productivity gains. Let's get into the conversation.
Welcome to Embracing Digital Transformation. This is Dr. Darren. On this episode, AI security needs behavioral control, not just pattern matching, with Yaqoob Rahimov.
Yaqoob, welcome to the show.

**Yaqoob Rahim** (1:46)
Hi, thank you very much for having me as part of your show. I'm super excited to be here today.

**Dr. Darren Pulsipher** (1:53)
This is going to be a really good topic today. I'm very excited about it because we've all heard of mythos, we've all heard of AI taking over the cybersecurity world. You're going to help debug some of that and maybe validate some of that stuff today. But before we get started, everyone that comes on my show, is a superhero and every superhero has a background story.
So Yaqoob, what's your background story?

**Yaqoob Rahim** (2:24)
I've never heard of that one before.

**Dr. Darren Pulsipher** (2:25)
You've never heard? You got to listen to my show.

**Yaqoob Rahim** (2:31)
I mean, nobody really called me a superhero before, but I appreciate it.
I actually have a nickname. My name is Yaqoob Rahim and I'll tell you what my nickname is. It's called Mr. Paranoid.

**Dr. Darren Pulsipher** (2:45)
Mr. Paranoid. Oh, there you go.
There's your superpower. That's a good superpower. For a cybersecurity guy, that's a really good superpower.

**Yaqoob Rahim** (2:55)
So I'm paranoid so that you don't have to be in general. That's the way it works. But yeah, I'm Yaqoob Rahim. I'm the founder of Polygraph AI, leading basically working with an amazing team here, and amazing enterprise and government teams all over the nation, and certain couple of other countries as well, helping them protect their AI operations and bring security to their environment that they never really had full control of. That's kind of like a brag where I come from prior to Polygraph. I have lived in multiple countries.
A fun fact about me, I actually got stuck in the US in 2020 I came to speak at South by Southwest. And 29th of February I landed here expecting that I'm going to be here for six, seven days and never really left afterwards.

**Dr. Darren Pulsipher** (3:45)
Oh, you're a COVID refugee? Really?

**Yaqoob Rahim** (3:48)
You could kind of say so. Yeah. I actually pretty much became a refugee because we had everything in Germany that where I was living and we came here and we became homeless.
Homeless because the Airbnb were shut down, the hotels were shut down and everything else. And I literally had to ask for a friend to share a spare bedroom that he had with my family and myself. Like, I'm super grateful for everyone that were there for me when I needed it. But you know, the Lord works always in mysterious way, they say.

**Dr. Darren Pulsipher** (4:24)
Yeah.

**Yaqoob Rahim** (4:24)
So while I was stuck here, my company got acquired in Europe. And I actually decided to stay here. So I regret that why didn't I come to this beautiful country before?

**Dr. Darren Pulsipher** (4:37)
What an incredible story. COVID locked you here, right?
And you stayed. Well, welcome. And you know, it's awesome to have you here. So all right, so I can understand why you'd be paranoid. I mean, but how does that play into cybersecurity?

**Yaqoob Rahim** (4:57)
So the main thing is about me is that, you know, I was born in Azerbaijan right before Soviet Union collapsed. And then I saw as a kid growing up, the ripple effects of the big brother in there.