What is Segregation of Duties?
Understanding Segregation of Duties (SoD)
Segregation of Duties (SoD) is a foundational control in governance and compliance. It ensures that no individual has conflicting responsibilities or privileges that could allow them to commit fraud, conceal errors, or bypass oversight.
Within Identity Governance and Administration (IGA), SoD policies ensure that conflicting roles or entitlements are never assigned to the same person, closing one of the most common risk gaps in enterprise environments.
SoD prevents “all-powerful” access by separating critical duties across different roles — protecting both your organization and your users.
Why SoD Matters in Identity Governance
In large organizations, it’s common for employees to accumulate access rights as they change roles or take on new projects. Without governance checks, these privileges can overlap — creating SoD violations that go unnoticed.
Examples of SoD Conflicts
- A user who can both create a vendor and approve a payment could commit or conceal fraud.
- A developer with production access and deployment approval can bypass QA or change management.
- A system administrator who can grant access and certify access can override controls.
SoD policies reduce these risks by enforcing checks and balances in access management.
They are essential for:
- Compliance with SOX, GDPR, HIPAA, and ISO 27001.
- Fraud prevention and accountability.
- Operational integrity across financial, IT, and HR systems.
- Audit readiness through documented enforcement and remediation.
SoD sits at the intersection of security, compliance, and governance — ensuring trust in every access decision.
How SoD Works in an IAM Context
1. Define SoD Policies
Organizations first identify which combinations of roles, entitlements, or actions should never coexist.
| Policy Type | Example Conflict | Description |
| Financial Control | Create Vendor vs. Approve Payment | Prevents financial fraud. |
| Operational Control | Deploy Code vs. Approve Change Request | Enforces DevOps separation of duties. |
| Administrative Control | Grant Access vs. Certify Access | Prevents unauthorized privilege escalation. |
These rules form the foundation of both preventive and detective controls.
2. Detect SoD Violations
Detection in OpenIAM is not a one-time activity — it’s a continuous, policy-driven process.
As users gain, change, or lose access across systems, OpenIAM’s governance engine constantly evaluates those entitlements against defined SoD policies.
When conflicts are found, the system automatically flags the violation and can trigger a range of actions based on severity or policy rules:
- Immediate alerting to role owners, application owners, or managers.
- Automatic remediation workflows (e.g., revoke one role, initiate review).
- Risk-based escalation for approval or documented exception.
- Audit logging for traceability and reporting.
This approach ensures that SoD violations are caught the moment they occur — not just when a review campaign happens — dramatically reducing risk exposure between certification cycles.
In OpenIAM, SoD detection is continuous, contextual, and auditable — delivering true “always-on” governance.
3. Preventive Controls
Preventive SoD controls are enforced during access request and approval workflows, not during automated birthright provisioning.
When a user requests access through the catalog, OpenIAM evaluates all existing entitlements against SoD policies.
If a conflict is identified, OpenIAM will:
- Block the request, or
- Route it for risk-based approval and justification.
This ensures that:
- Birthright access (pre-approved baseline privileges) is always provisioned smoothly.
- Non-standard or elevated access is validated for SoD compliance before being granted.
Preventive SoD ensures that conflicts are caught at the moment of request — keeping standard access automated while maintaining strong control over exceptions.
4. Detective Controls
Detective SoD controls identify conflicts that may arise over time as users change roles, teams, or applications.
In OpenIAM, detective enforcement happens continuously — not just during scheduled reviews.
Continuous Monitoring
OpenIAM constantly evaluates all users, roles, and entitlements against active SoD policies.
If a violation is detected (for example, after a role import or system synchronization), the platform can:
- Automatically flag the violation,
- Notify the appropriate owner or manager,
- Trigger an automated remediation or approval workflow, and
- Document every action for audit evidence.
Access Review Integration
At scheduled intervals, OpenIAM’s access certification campaigns provide a second line of defense.
Managers review any remaining SoD exceptions, confirm business justifications, or revoke access as needed.
Continuous SoD monitoring ensures that violations are addressed immediately — while certifications provide formal verification for audit and compliance purposes.
Implementing SoD with OpenIAM
OpenIAM embeds SoD directly into its Identity Governance workflows.
This integration allows organizations to both prevent new conflicts and detect existing ones automatically across all connected systems.
With OpenIAM, you can:
- Define SoD policies centrally across applications, roles, and entitlements.
- Evaluate access requests in real time against SoD rules.
- Continuously monitor for new conflicts introduced through system changes.
- Automate remediation via risk-based workflows and delegated approvals.
- Certify SoD compliance through campaign-driven access reviews.
- Generate audit-ready reports detailing SoD policy effectiveness and resolution history.
OpenIAM transforms SoD from a static control into a dynamic, continuously monitored policy framework that reduces risk without slowing down operations.
Example: Continuous SoD Enforcement
A finance employee changes roles within the company.
Their new responsibilities include approving payments, while their existing role still grants vendor creation access.
During the next synchronization cycle, OpenIAM detects this new conflict:
- The continuous monitoring engine evaluates all user entitlements.
- It detects a violation between Vendor Creation and Payment Approval.
- The system triggers an SoD remediation workflow.
- The manager receives a notification to review and resolve the conflict immediately.
No waiting for the next certification campaign — the issue is caught and addressed in real time.
SoD, Role Models, and Certifications
SoD policies are most effective when built on a structured access model.
They work hand-in-hand with:
-
Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Simplifies enforcement by defining consistent job functions.
- Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC): Adds context like department or region.
- Access Certification: Provides periodic validation and audit assurance.
- Identity Governance (IGA): The overall framework that orchestrates SoD detection, remediation, and reporting.
Together, these elements create a closed governance loop — from prevention to detection to continuous compliance.
Benefits of Automating SoD Controls
- Continuous Risk Reduction: Detect and resolve conflicts as they occur.
- Compliance Readiness: Always audit-ready with up-to-date evidence.
- Operational Efficiency: Reduce manual reviews and exception approvals.
- Centralized Policy Management: Manage all SoD rules and violations in one place.
- Governance Integration: Link SoD enforcement with provisioning, requests, and certifications.
Automated SoD enforcement ensures that security, compliance, and productivity can coexist — without compromise.
Frequently Asked Questions
1) What’s the difference between SoD and Least Privilege?
Least Privilege limits how much access a user has; SoD ensures no one person can perform all critical steps in a sensitive process.
2) What happens when an SoD conflict is detected?
OpenIAM flags or blocks the assignment, notifies the owner, and launches a remediation workflow to resolve the conflict immediately.
3) Can SoD apply to service or machine identities?
Yes. Machine accounts can violate SoD policies — for example, automation scripts that both create and approve records. OpenIAM monitors and enforces SoD for non-human identities as well.
4) Is SoD only relevant for finance?
No. SoD applies to IT, HR, and operational systems — anywhere conflicting privileges could lead to risk or non-compliance.
Related Concepts
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