# What is Separation of Duties?

> Separation of duties splits critical tasks and powers across multiple people or roles so that no single individual can complete a sensitive or fraudulent action alone.

- Canonical URL: https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/separation-of-duties/
- Publisher: Yellow Cube
- Language: en
- Contact: hello@yellowcube.eu

## Content

Classic examples separate requesting, approving, and executing payments; developing, reviewing, and deploying code; or creating accounts, granting rights, and auditing their use. In identity and access management it appears as role design, approval workflows, and constraints that prevent one principal from accumulating conflicting powers.

### Key points

- **Genuinely conflicting actions:** Map the steps of sensitive processes and split them where one actor could defraud, harm, or silently alter the result.
- **Technical enforcement:** Encode constraints in roles, approvals, and systems — a policy document alone does not stop a privileged account.
- **Important limitation:** Separation of duties reduces single-actor risk, not collusion, coercion, or compromised approval chains. It also adds friction and cost, so apply it to the actions where the risk justifies it.

### Related terms

[Least privilege](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/least-privilege/>) · [Role-based access control (RBAC)](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/role-based-access-control/>) · [Access control](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/access-control/>) · [Privileged access management (PAM)](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/privileged-access-management/>) · [Compensating control](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/compensating-control/>)

### Sources

[NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5, Security and Privacy Controls](https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/800/53/r5/upd1/final) · [NIST SP 800-192, Verification and Test Methods for Access Control Policies/Models](https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/800/192/final)

## Attribution and scope

This Markdown representation is generated from the same approved content records as the canonical HTML page. Cite the canonical URL above when referencing this material. Product and service descriptions are informational; confirm project-specific requirements with Yellow Cube.