Rochester, N.Y.-based Token, a biometric identity assurance company founded in 2014 and backed by Grand Oaks Capital, announced the appointment of Monique Shivanandan to its board of directors on Wednesday.
Shivanandan, who previously served as group chief information security officer at HSBC and established the bank’s AI execution and governance framework, brings more than three decades of experience in technology and cybersecurity leadership. Her prior roles include senior positions at Chubb, Aviva, Capital One, and BT, alongside current board positions at Iridium Communications and chairmanship of cybersecurity firm Sepio Systems. She holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from Lehigh University.
Token’s board appointment coincides with the company’s expansion of AI Agent Gateways, a system designed to enforce human oversight on autonomous AI agents. The technology intercepts an agent’s tool call before execution, classifying actions as allow, gate, or deny. Low-risk calls proceed automatically, while high-consequence actions—such as those involving financial transactions or access changes—require fingerprint approval via a TokenCore device.
Chief Executive Officer Kevin Surace highlighted the growing enterprise demand for supervised AI agent deployment. “Every enterprise is asking the same question right now: how do we let agents act without letting them act unsupervised,” Surace said. “When an action moves money or changes access, the right human has to be physically present and approve it with a fingerprint.”
Shivanandan emphasized the necessity of human verification in high-stakes AI interactions. “You cannot answer that with another model’s opinion,” she said. “Token for AI Agent Gateways puts a specific, verified human in the transaction path at the moment the consequence occurs, and it leaves an audit trail identifying that person.”
