AI Expert Warns “Machine-Speed” Cyberthreats Demand Equally Rapid Defensive Responses

Polygraf AI CEO Yagub Rahimov explains how coordinated AI “swarms” could accelerate cyberattacks and why he believes security systems must evolve at the same speed as technology.

Artificial intelligence is transforming cyberattacks from individual hacker activities into coordinated operations involving hundreds of autonomous agents, creating a speed challenge that traditional human-led cybersecurity systems may struggle to keep pace with, according to AI cybersecurity expert Yagub Rahimov.

Rahimov, founder and CEO of Polygraf AI, told FOX Business that the emergence of so-called “AI swarms” doesn’t necessarily signal an imminent cyber doomsday, but emphasized that organizations require defenses capable of responding as swiftly as AI operates.

“You cannot secure machine-speed activity with human-speed monitoring,” Rahimov said. “Machine-speed risk requires machine-speed security, and that’s where we need [to] focus.”

So what exactly defines an AI swarm? Rahimov described the progression starting with a single bot and culminating in a swarm.

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A computer screen displays an image of artificial intelligence. (iStock / iStock)

A traditional bot performs a narrow task, Rahimov explained. A chatbot responds to prompts, while an AI agent can independently execute a task. A swarm, he noted, involves multiple AI agents communicating, dividing responsibilities, and coordinating toward a shared objective.

“Swarms are coordination of that digital worker… I would call it, in simple wording, a digital workforce,” he said. “They coordinate, they talk to each other and they act as a group to deliver a mission that they’re on.”

In recent months, major AI companies have reported incidents involving AI agents that bypassed controls or exceeded their designated testing environments.

OpenAI previously disclosed an incident where models undergoing an internal cybersecurity evaluation circumvented isolation controls meant to prevent internet access and infiltrated systems belonging to Hugging Face.

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Polygraf AI founder and CEO Yagub Rahimov told FOX Business that emerging “AI swarms” could enable groups of autonomous agents to coordinate and execute tasks at machine speed. (FOX Business / Fox News)

More recently, Google’s Gemini accessed protected systems belonging to three real companies during a cybersecurity test after internet access was unintentionally enabled.

These incidents gained widespread attention and heightened concerns about increasingly sophisticated AI systems.

Rahimov, however, cautioned against panic and challenged what he considered alarmist interpretations of these events.

“Most of these news things are not as dangerous as what the news is trying to demonstrate,” he said.

“Yes, it can be, you know, in wrong hands, it can be bad,” he continued. “But for that reason, we have the guardrails. We have the security measures and so on.”

Rahimov argued that as AI-related threats become more advanced, security tools are evolving in parallel.

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Artificial intelligence is increasing the speed at which potential cyber threats can identify vulnerabilities, analyze them and determine how to respond, according to Rahimov. (LEBERUS / iStock)

AI is changing the landscape by enabling systems to rapidly identify vulnerabilities, interpret their significance, and decide how to act—all without waiting for human analysts.

“The speed is changing, the ability to comprehend is changing,” he said.

“Instead of finding that failure and bringing it to [a] human and the human analyzing and taking an action… we are seeing [the] machine making sense of it too and, at a much faster scale, making a decision on what to do.”

One of the strongest defenses for organizations, Rahimov noted, lies in controlling what information an AI agent can access and, critically, what actions it is authorized to perform.

He added that expanded autonomy should only be granted once systems prove they can be trusted.

Despite the risks, Rahimov remains optimistic about the future of AI security.

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AI cybersecurity expert Yagub Rahimov described an AI swarm as multiple autonomous agents that communicate, divide up tasks and collaborate toward a common objective. (iStock / iStock)

“The future of AI security is controlling… what AI can see, what AI can share, what AI can do,” he said.

“Companies and people shouldn’t have to choose between adopting AI and controlling their security or data.”

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