monday.com's Ryan Nigro: least privilege lets AI teams move faster

monday.com relaunched as an AI work platform with native agents, and its security trust and enablement team lead, Ryan Nigro, used the company's Elevate event to explain why permission management is central to making those agents safe. He spoke with theCUBE's Rebecca Knight in an exclusive broadcast.

Nigro's argument rests on least privilege, a concept cybersecurity teams first applied to human users. Because AI largely does what employees already do, haywire permissions for people become a problem for agents too, he explained. Everyday personnel moves create some of the biggest gaps: an employee who shifts from finance to legal can end up holding both departments' access at companies without strict permission management. He cited an IBM Corp. study estimating that 80% to 90% of breaches stem from human error tied to over-permissioning.

The fix Nigro describes is to roll out AI piece by piece, granting each tool the minimum access it needs and expanding as results prove out. As work platforms build agents into everyday tools, that piecemeal approach is presented as the way to keep AI agent safety from becoming a brake on momentum.