Key Takeaways:
- Separation of Duties (SOD) in cybersecurity divides critical tasks among multiple people to prevent insider threats, reduce errors, and maintain data integrity.
- When paired with Zero Trust controls like role-based access control (RBAC), multi-factor authentication (MFA), and immutable backups, SOD strengthens operational resilience and compliance with NIST CSF, ISO 27001, and PCI‑DSS.
- Implementation strategies include RBAC, segregating environments, two‑person integrity rules, and SIEM/SOAR monitoring.
- Future trends in SOD include AI‑assisted approvals, identity‑first security, and just‑in‑time privileged access to minimize attack surfaces.
Separation of Duties (SOD) in cybersecurity, also known as Segregation of Duties, is a form of risk management that is often used in cybersecurity to mitigate insider threats and reduce the risk of errors or accidents when it comes to mission-critical data. By having more than one person responsible for key duties, organizations can prevent conflicts of interest and better maintain data integrity and availability.
What is SOD in Cybersecurity?
SOD is the term used to describe the practice of breaking down a task that would normally be controlled by one person so that there’s two (or more) people involved with the job. This ensures no one person is fully in control, thereby reducing the risk of malicious or accidental activity that could cause damage to an organization. Typically, SOD is used for critical tasks and information, where regulatory compliance or safety are most important.
Why is SOD Important in Cybersecurity?
By having more than one person responsible for a task, you can be confident that that task is being performed correctly and in accordance with your organizational guidelines. SOD has several potential benefits, including:
1. Mitigating Insider Threats
Using the “Four eyes principle” prevents a malicious insider from exploiting their privileges for personal gain. For example, if an employee who is issuing refunds must have those refunds approved by a second employee, this reduces the risk of the first employee fraudulently issuing refunds for personal gain. IT administrators requiring four-eyes approval for deletion of data is an example of risk mitigation.
2. Error and Accident Prevention
Another benefit of having a second pair of eyes is that it reduces the risk of errors or accidental data loss. For example, say a systems administrator is making changes to the configuration of a server. Having a second team member look over the changes reduces the risk of a mistake such as failing to change the default password on some software making it through to production.
3. Regulatory Compliance
In some industries, having two-person integrity or SOD as a safety precaution is important for regulatory compliance. Giving one person the ability to change records or control certain actions within a financial or healthcare organization could put the organization at risk of breaching regulatory guidelines.
4. Enhancing Data Integrity and Availability
Following the four eyes principle also helps maintain the integrity of your organization’s data by ensuring any data entered by employees is truthful and accurate. It reduces the risk of mistakes making it into your records and helps prevent fraud.
The NIST Cybersecurity Framework sets out guidelines and best practices to help organizations maintain high-security standards, avoiding the threats discussed here and avoiding exploits, phishing, and opportunistic attacks.
Related Concepts
SOD is one of several precautions organizations can take to protect their systems and data; it can be used alongside other best practices, including the following.
Principle of Least Privilege
The principle of least privilege involves giving employees access to only the tools, systems, and information they need. For example, an employee who is handling customer service may need the authority to update purchases and even issue refunds or vouchers for customers. However, they should not have administrative access to the database, and they should not be able to see employee records.
Limiting each employee’s access to just the things they need to perform their job helps mitigate insider threats and ensures the damage an attacker can do is limited if an account is compromised.
Types of Roles
The accounts used within your systems can be divided into a few key categories:
User roles: Users may be limited to accessing only their own profiles and accounts, and can only perform limited actions such as raising tickets, placing orders, or commenting on a discussion forum.
Administrative roles: Administrative accounts should be secured carefully and only used when absolutely necessary due to the high level of privileges they have.
Privileged roles: Moderators, database administrators and others who have access to back-end functionality are considered to have privileged roles. It’s better to use a privileged account that suits a specified job role than to have an administrative account in use for day-to-day tasks to reduce the risk of the administrative/super-user account being breached.
Implementation Strategies
If you’re considering adopting SOD in your organization, consider the following as part of your strategy.
RBAC
Role-based access control is an effective way of implementing the principle of least privilege. Consider what each job role in your company does and the access they need to be able to do their job correctly. Create roles, such as “team leader,” “customer service representative,” and “webmaster,” and give permissions to each role. If someone changes their job role within the company, assigning them a different role will revoke the permissions they no longer need and give them access to the tools required for their new job. Software and platforms should have a granular separation of features and capabilities to map to roles. The more granular, the more specific controls can be assigned to users.
Segregation of Environments
Another thing to take into account is working environments. It can be helpful for developers to have administrative privileges for the environments they’re working on and even to be able to make changes to testing machines. However, giving developers administrative access to production environments is a major security risk.
Keep your environments separated and have a clear, systematic pathway of testing and require quality assurance before any changes made by developers are allowed to be used on a production environment. Have multiple people review code changes for reliability, security, and usability before pushing the changes to the live environment.
Separation of production domains is key to reduce risk, and having SOD with restricted access to different production environments limits cyberattacks and propagation of cyberattacks.
Two-Person Integrity
Requiring dual authorization before allowing someone to change certain records, update API keys, or upload a new software build helps reduce the risk of mistakes and stops a rogue employee from making malicious changes.
Document your two-person integrity requirements, including thresholds for what makes a task fall under the two-man rule. Make sure both parties involved record their involvement in the process, so it can be proven that the appropriate checks and balances were followed.
Security Information and Event Management Software (SIEM)
These precautions reduce the risk of user errors and prevent malicious actors within the organization from being able to do significant damage. However, there are other threats to be aware of. SIEM software makes it easy for security professionals to track important operational events and potential security breaches. This software consolidates events from multiple sources and generate alert due to unusual activities, giving you the opportunity to review them and take action if required.
Separation of Duties as Part of a Zero Trust Strategy
Separation of duties is a powerful safeguard on its own, but it becomes even more effective when embedded in a Zero Trust strategy. Zero Trust operates on the principle of “never trust, always verify”, and requires continuous validation of every action, user, and system interaction.
Within a Zero Trust framework of security controls, SOD ensures that no single individual can carry out critical operations without oversight. Actions like creating backups, approving restores, or accessing production systems are segmented into separate roles and verified at every step.
By combining SOD with Zero Trust controls such as RBAC, MFA, immutable backups, and micro‑segmentation, organizations can:
- Reduce the risk of insider threats and accidental changes
- Maintain compliance with security frameworks like NIST CSF, ISO 27001, and PCI‑DSS
- Strengthen operational resilience against ransomware and data breaches
You can learn how to build and apply Zero Trust principles to your backup and recovery strategy by downloading our free whitepaper: A Pragmatic Approach to Implementing Zero Trust.
Challenges and Considerations
Implementing SOD isn’t always easy. Some challenges you might encounter include:
- Tools not being designed to require sign-off from more than one person
- Difficulty implementing sensible/easy-to-use single sign-on solutions
- Difficulty ensuring users have access to the right parts of the system
- Lack of specialized resources
- Size of the digital infrastructure and dependency on third party vendors
Performing regular audits on employees to ensure they have the right access for their position and updating user roles as required can go a long way toward improving your organization’s security.
Real-World Examples
Financial Industry
Separation of duties is commonly used in the financial sector, where bank employees are required to have a manager sign off on transactions over a certain value or if they are making certain changes to a user’s account. Separation of duties can be performed in a number of different ways to give flexibility and control to different departments while reducing the risk of fraud.
Healthcare Sector
Health care organizations are increasingly using SOD to reduce the risk of patient data being misused and to ensure compliance with HIPAA. One challenge health care organizations face is finding the balance between maintaining strict RBAC and ensuring all healthcare professionals have access to the information they need to ensure good patient care.
eCommerce Platforms
Fraud is a major issue for eCommerce platforms, and separation of duties can be used to ensure individual staff members have access to only the tools they need. For example, customer service teams may be given the right to see and manage orders but not to set pricing or change product listings on the platform.
SaaS Environments
Data protection can be challenging in cloud environments where there are many users with access to the same server. Using access control lists, encrypted storage, and a strict backup schedule is essential for reducing the risk of data loss or breaches.
Separation of Duties: Best Practices
Clear Role Definitions
Document every team member’s role and assign permissions strictly based on those responsibilities.
Avoid granting administrative privileges to users who don’t require them and break down ambiguous roles into smaller categories with granular access rights.
Regular Auditing and Monitoring
Continuously audit user access and system activity.
Use monitoring and intrusion detection tools to flag anomalies in logs, identify protocol violations, and provide early warnings of potential breaches.
Regular reviews strengthen security posture and validate controls.
Education and Training
Provide regular, role‑specific security training that explains both how and why best practices matter.
Tailor sessions to each role’s risks, use realistic scenarios, and keep safeguards non‑disruptive.
Refresh training after policy changes or new threats to maintain awareness.
Future Trends
Cybersecurity controls are evolving, and separation of duties will continue to adapt to meet new threats. For example, organizations are increasingly integrating AI‑assisted approvals into workflow automation and using machine learning to flag risky restore requests or unusual backup changes in real time.
Other emerging enhancements include:
- Identity‑first security: Prioritizing identity verification over traditional network perimeter checks to ensure each request is tied to a trusted identity.
- Just‑in‑time access: Granting privileged rights only for the exact time needed, then automatically revoking them to reduce exposure.
These trends strengthen SOD by combining human oversight with intelligent automation, which helps ensure that critical operations are verified, compliant, and secure.
SOD is a proven way to minimize insider threats, reduce errors, and strengthen compliance with frameworks like NIST CSF, ISO 27001, and PCI‑DSS.
By combining SOD with immutable backups, MFA, RBAC, and modern trends like AI‑assisted approvals, organizations can build a resilient, compliant, and future‑ready security posture.
Strong security starts with clear separation of duties.
Learn how Veeam’s Zero Trust architecture and role-based controls help protect your data from insider threats:
Resources
- Zero Trust Security: Learn how Zero Trust principles strengthen security across backup, recovery, and data protection workflows.
- A Pragmatic Approach to Implementing Zero Trust: Step‑by‑step guide to embedding Zero Trust into your IT and security strategy.
- Data Protection Trends Report: Insights on evolving data protection strategies, including automation and identity‑driven security.
FAQs
What’s the difference between SOD and the Principle of Least Privilege?
The Principle of Least Privilege limits each user’s access to only what they need for their role. SOD splits critical tasks among multiple users so no single person can complete them alone, which reduces risk from mistakes or malicious actions.
Do small teams need SOD?
Yes. Even in small teams, lightweight SOD methods, such as dual approvals for high‑risk tasks and just‑in‑time admin access, can help prevent errors, insider threats, and unauthorized changes.
Which changes must require dual control?
Dual control should cover production configuration changes, encryption key rotation, backup deletion or retention changes, and large‑scale restores. It refers to any action that could impact security, compliance, or business continuity.
How does SOD help with ransomware?
SOD combined with four-eyes controls prevents a single actor from executing a cyberattack, including encrypting backups or restoring malicious payloads. When paired with immutable storage and access controls, it blocks ransomware from preventing recovery options.
How do I prove SOD to auditors?
Provide documented role maps, approval logs, SIEM alerts, and recovery test results. These demonstrate that tasks are split, approvals are enforced, and controls work as intended.
