Segregation of Duties (SoD)
Also known as: Separation of Duties · SoD
Definition
Segregation of Duties (SoD) is the practice of dividing critical tasks across multiple people or roles so that no single person can complete a sensitive transaction without involvement of another.
Classic SoD examples: the person who creates a vendor in the ERP cannot also approve payments to that vendor; the person who issues a credential cannot also review the audit log of credential issuance. SoD is fundamentally about fraud prevention and is heavily audited in financial-services + healthcare contexts.
Modern IGA platforms (SailPoint, Saviynt, Omada) enforce SoD via rule engines that fire at request time (preventing the assignment) or detect post-grant violations (flagging accumulated risk). Real-world programs maintain a few hundred SoD rules covering the highest-risk transaction combinations.