Just Give Me Admin Rights

“It would be so much easier if I just had admin.” It would. That is precisely the problem. Easy for you to install what you need is also easy for the macro in that spreadsheet, the script in that email, and whatever rides in on the next browser exploit. Privilege does not know whose hands it is in.

Least privilege is not distrust. It is blast-radius management. When something goes wrong — and on a long enough timeline, something always goes wrong — the damage is bounded by what the compromised account was allowed to touch. Standing admin everywhere turns a small incident into a company-wide one.

The good answer is rarely “no.” It is “not standing.” Scoped access, time-boxed elevation, a request that takes thirty seconds and leaves a record. You get the thing you need when you need it, and the org keeps the one property that matters: nobody, including me, walks around holding the keys to everything by default.