How to Include a SoD Policy in Your Business

By putting SoD into practice, you can assign different people to various responsibilities. Payroll is started by one employee, while bank statement reconciliation is done by another. By serving as a system of checks and balances, this division of labor lowers the danger of financial misbehavior and improves the accuracy of financial procedures.

Why Is An SoD Policy Necessary?

This SoD policy essentially centers on the core tenet that no one user or employee should have complete authority over or sole responsibility for any given IT activity. By designating various employees to handle distinct components of a task (such as authorization, recording, and asset custody should be conducted by different employees), this SoD control, also known as internal control, further helps assure unbiased decision-making.

Here’s a real-world example to help you understand: evaluating employee access to apps, data, and systems shouldn’t fall under the purview of the IT team, which is in charge of granting, changing, and rescinding access. Rather, the task of overseeing the access review needs to fall to a different team. This division makes sure that during the review process, there is no space for biased judgments or data tampering.

There are two main reasons why a separation of roles strategy is crucial. It first aids in preventing unwanted access to private information. It is harder for a hostile actor to access your systems and steal your data when you restrict who can access what information.

Second, financial fraud and other crimes can be prevented with the aid of a SoD policy. The division of important work among several employees makes it far more difficult for someone to embezzle or conduct fraud.

5 Steps in the SoD Procedure

The Controlio employee monitoring software is one of the key Implementing systems that track your IT staff, simplifying the division of labor within your company.

Specify Procedures and Policies

Install an efficient identity governance solution to assist your IT staff in enforcing policies uniformly across various applications and implementing roles segregation.

Construct an Integrated Dashboard

Your IT staff requires a single dashboard that shows access and authentication activity for all business apps in order to efficiently manage different responsibilities. This makes it possible to monitor user behavior even in situations when users have access to several apps.

Set Restrictions to Manage Privileged Access

Put into practice the idea of giving users heightened, temporary access under certain role-related criteria or time constraints. When it’s no longer needed or could cause a problem with SoD, remove this access.

Establish Workflows for Structured Access Requests

Access should always be authorized in accordance with established procedures rather than at random. By streamlining these processes, identity governance solutions guarantee that only authorized users have access to SaaS applications, data, and systems that are in line with their roles and responsibilities. Advanced IGA solutions also assist your IT staff in documenting the entire process so that, in the event of an audit, your team can demonstrate that all standards are fulfilled and no SoD policy has been broken.

Put Role-Based Access Provisioning into Practice

It is generally not advisable to give individual users immediate access. Assign people to roles instead, then automate access provisioning according to those roles. This automation aids in avoiding access provisioning delays, which may have a detrimental effect on output. 

How To Draft A Policy for SoD?

While creating an SoD policy, there isn’t a single, universally applicable method, there are several broad guidelines you can adhere to:

Determine which internal procedures and data are essential to your business first. This will assist you in deciding which information should be accessible to various positions. You may begin to create policies that restrict access to particular people as soon as you have a solid grasp of the crucial data and processes within your organization.

Achieving a balance between security and efficiency is crucial. You don’t want to make it so hard for workers to complete their tasks that they lose patience and start seeking ways to go around the rules. Make sure the documentation for your SoD policy is clear and concise. Employees will find it simpler to follow the new regulations as a result.