Separation of duties (SoD) is a cybersecurity and governance principle that requires dividing tasks and access privileges among multiple individuals to reduce the risk of error, abuse, or unauthorized activity. By ensuring that no single user has unchecked control over critical systems or processes, SoD strengthens accountability and helps prevent insider threats, fraud, or accidental misconfigurations.
Separation of duties is a fundamental control across many regulatory frameworks, including NERC CIP, IEC 62443, NIST 800-53, NIS2, and TSA SD02E. It helps protect against the misuse of privileges by ensuring that sensitive tasks, such as configuring systems, approving access, or deploying updates, require involvement from more than one authorized person.
This control is especially important in high-risk environments such as critical infrastructure, industrial control systems (ICS), and operational technology (OT), where privileged access can affect physical processes, safety, and regulatory status. Without SoD, a single compromised or malicious user could make undetected changes to access policies, system configurations, or data integrity
Regulations typically require organizations to define roles, enforce access boundaries, and implement auditing mechanisms to ensure that duties remain appropriately segregated over time, even as roles change or personnel shift.Xona enforces separation of duties through role-based access control (RBAC), time-based restrictions, and policy-driven access governance. Each user is assigned only the minimum necessary privileges to perform their function, and all access is logged and auditable. Administrative functions, multi-level access approvals, and session oversight can be distributed across different roles to ensure accountability.
Additionally, Xona's credential injection capability prevents users from seeing or reusing shared credentials, reducing the risk of privilege escalation. With session recording and real-time monitoring, organizations gain the transparency needed to prove enforcement of SoD during audits and respond effectively to incidents.
This structured approach helps meet compliance requirements for separation of duties while maintaining operational efficiency in secure remote access workflows.