# Concentric AI's Semantic Intelligence for Data Security > Concentric AI's AI-driven data security platform identifies sensitive information across cloud, on-premises, and SaaS environments. - Title: Concentric AI's Semantic Intelligence for Data Security - Summary: Concentric AI's AI-driven data security platform identifies sensitive information across cloud, on-premises, and SaaS environments. Concentric AI uses AI to… - Keywords: concentric ai, semantic intelligence, data security governance, ai security, dlp, shadow ai, insider risk, data classification, ai governance, unstructured data, startups, business - Source: Pulse 2.0 — https://pulse2.com/concentric-ai-profile-madhu-shashanka-interview - Author: Amit Chowdhry - Published: 2026-10-13T13:51:50+00:00 - Read time: 1 min - Topics: concentric ai, semantic intelligence, data security governance, ai security, dlp, shadow ai, insider risk, data classification, ai governance, unstructured data, startups, business ## Concentric AI's Mission Concentric AI develops data security governance technology that helps organizations discover, understand, govern, and protect sensitive data across cloud, on-premises, and SaaS environments. ## Madhu Shashanka's Background Shashanka distills his background into two words: luck and intelligence, focusing on ai and neuroscience. > I can distill my entire background into two words: luck and intelligence. And when I say intelligence, I’m not talking about my own! ## How Concentric AI Started Shashanka co-founded Concentric AI after leaving charles schwab to address unstructured data protection gaps. > I knew concentric ai co-founder & ceo karthik krishnan from a prior cybersecurity startup where he headed products, and i led machine learning. ## Semantic Intelligence Technology Semantic Intelligence enables organizations to discover and understand sensitive data across cloud, on-premises, and saas repositories. > Semantic intelligence is the foundation of concentric ai’s data security governance platform. ## AI vs Traditional Data Security Unlike traditional pattern matching, Concentric AI uses ai to understand data content and context for accurate sensitive information identification. > Unlike traditional approaches that rely primarily on regex, trainable classifiers, or other pattern-matching techniques, our proprietary ai and language models understand both the content and context of data ## Semantic DLP Capabilities Semantic DLP identifies shadow ai use and tracks sensitive data shared through ai prompts with inline categorization. > Security teams can establish granular guardrails for sensitive data shared through ai prompts with inline categorization and policies that can warn block or redact sensitive information before it leaves the organization. ## Customer Success Stories Public health agencies reduced compliance time by 75% using Concentric AI to identify unprotected health data. > A regional public health agency processing thousands of covid tests each day was running six servers to support a competitor’s data classification tool, yet they still lacked visibility into inappropriate access to protected health information ## Insider Risk Reduction Technology companies reduced insider risk investigations from 30-60 days to hours using Concentric AI. > A 10,000-person electronic systems design company had previously experienced trade-secret loss involving departing employees. Investigating potential insider activity across siem and endpoint logs required the equivalent of 10 person-months of effort. ## AI Governance for Asset Management Asset management firms gained visibility into ai tool usage without blanket bans on ai applications. > A 400-person investment management firm had banned ai tools company-wide after a peer organization experienced a confidential-data leak involving a public chatbot. ## Insurance Data Protection Insurance companies identified social security numbers in handwritten scanned documents using Concentric AI. > Concentric ai identified u.s. social security numbers in handwritten scanned documents, a task that traditional pattern-matching, text-extraction, and ocr technologies could not reliably handle. ## Competitive Differentiation Concentric AI differentiates through customer outcomes rather than technical features. > Several of them have come to us having been disappointed with other products, whether it’s from legacy players such as varonis, platform vendors such as microsoft, or any number of existing vendors in adjacent markets with “me too” offerings who treat data and ai security as bolt-on additions. ## Future Goals Concentric AI aims to be the go-to solution for data and ai security governance across all data types and environments. > We want to be the tool and solution of choice for data and ai security governance, across whatever type of data, structured, unstructured, and anything in between; across however it is being used, at rest, in motion, or in use; and being processed by any human or machine entities ## Coherence Book Shashanka's upcoming book on organizational implications of agentic ai releases November 17th. > I’d like to share a personal project i’m excited about, my forthcoming book titled “coherence: the competitive advantage ai can’t buy.” It is about the organizational implications of agentic ai, aimed at business leaders. ## Key takeaway Concentric AI uses AI to detect sensitive data in unstructured formats, reducing insider risk and improving compliance without manual intervention.