What is Segregation of Duties? SoD Matrix, Tools & Violations Explained

Segregation of Duties is a simple but powerful concept: don't let one person control an entire critical process. By splitting important tasks between multiple people, you create natural checkpoints that catch both honest mistakes and intentional fraud.

Think payroll. One person sets up the payroll run, another authorizes the payments. This way, nobody can secretly give themselves a raise or pay a fake employee.

The challenge? Implementing SoD properly without grinding your business to a halt. Get it wrong, and you either leave security gaps or create so much red tape that nothing gets done.

Why SoD Matters

• Regulatory Compliance: The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) requires public companies to have strong internal controls, and SoD is a big part of that. The SEC doesn't mess around with this stuff.
• Error Prevention: When multiple people touch a transaction, someone usually catches mistakes before they become problems.
• Fraud Prevention: It's much harder to commit fraud when you need an accomplice who might not be willing to play along.

Common SoD Challenges (And How to Solve Them)

The Visibility Problem
Most organizations don't actually know who has access to what. User permissions accumulate over years, people change roles, and nobody cleans up old access. You can't fix SoD conflicts you can't see.

The Complexity Problem
As businesses grow, tracking who can do what becomes a nightmare. You end up with spreadsheets nobody updates and rules nobody remembers. With thousands of users across multiple systems, manual tracking is impossible.

The Remediation Problem
Finding conflicts is one thing. Fixing them without breaking business processes is another. Remove the wrong access and suddenly month-end close grinds to a halt.

This is exactly why we built MTC Skopos - a lightweight segregation of duties tool that identifies SoD conflicts and SoD violations across your ERP systems and provides actionable remediation guidance, not just reports of problems.

Understanding SoD Conflicts

A SoD conflict happens when one person has access to perform multiple steps in a critical process that should be separated. For example:

• Creating vendor invoices AND approving payments
• Setting up new employees AND processing their first paycheck
• Changing customer credit limits AND processing their orders
• Posting journal entries AND approving bank reconciliations

These conflicts don't automatically mean fraud will happen, but they create the opportunity. The key is identifying these conflicts and deciding which ones are actual risks worth addressing.

From Conflicts to SoD Violations

Here's an important distinction: a conflict means someone could abuse their access. An SoD violation means they actually used both sides of the conflict.

Smart SoD management focuses resources on actual SoD violations first - these represent real risk, not just theoretical exposure. Identifying SoD violations requires tracking transaction usage patterns. MTC Skopos tracks transaction usage patterns so you can see not just who has risky access, but who's actually executing SoD violations in your systems.

The SoD Matrix Framework: Segregation of Duties Control Matrix

SoD implementation can prove highly complex. To maintain clear accounting roles, responsibilities, and risk management, compliance managers utilize the Segregation of Duties Control Matrix (also known as an SoD matrix). This matrix plots unique user roles on both the X and Y axes to identify and resolve conflicts systematically. The segregation of duties control matrix is the foundation for detecting potential SoD violations before they occur.

In modern organizations utilizing enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, SoD matrices can be managed automatically based on user roles and tasks defined within the ERP system. Segregation of duties tools like MTC Skopos automate the process of detecting SoD violations and managing your control matrix. MTC Skopos comes with comprehensive rulesets for SAP, and supports custom rules for any ERP system including Navision, Odoo, and proprietary platforms.

Strategies for Reducing SoD Conflicts

1. Preventive Controls: Stop Conflicts Before They Start

The best SoD conflict is one that never happens. Before assigning access to users, simulate the impact:

Simulate role assignments before applying them to catch conflicts early

MTC Skopos lets you test "what if" scenarios: What happens if I assign this role to this user? What new conflicts would it create? This prevents the accumulation of conflicts that makes remediation so painful later.

2. Detective Controls: Find What Already Exists

For existing access, you need comprehensive analysis across your entire user base. Not just who has conflicts, but:

• How severe is each conflict?
• Is the user actually using both sides of the conflict?
• What's the business impact of removing access?

Deep dive into any user's access, conflicts, and transaction history

3. Corrective Controls: Fix Problems Intelligently

Here's where most SoD tools fall short. They tell you there's a problem but leave you guessing how to fix it.

MTC Skopos includes an Advanced Remediation engine that analyzes your conflicts and generates specific, actionable recommendations:

• Which role assignments to remove (safely)
• Which roles need to be split
• Which users need alternative access paths
• What the business impact will be

The algorithm tries the least disruptive fix first - removing unused access before touching anything critical.

Specific remediation steps, not vague recommendations

Want to dive deeper into remediation? Read our article on Advanced Remediation: AI-Powered SAP Access Risk Resolution

SoD Impact on IT Security

SoD creates two primary impacts on IT security frameworks:

1. IT Security's SoD Implementation Responsibility
IT Security creates the user roles and permissions that enforce SoD across the organization. They need to ensure that conflicting roles can't be assigned to the same person.

2. IT Department's Own SoD Requirements
IT teams often have powerful access that could bypass normal controls. Classic conflicts include:

• The same person defining permissions and assigning them
• One person designing security systems and testing them
• Database administrators who can both modify data and delete audit logs

Segregation of Duties in Accounting

Several examples of accounting department SoD conflicts include:

• The individual preparing paychecks should not also be responsible for authorizing paychecks
• The person depositing or withdrawing cash should not be the same individual reconciling bank accounts
• The person raising purchase orders to suppliers should not be the same individual authorizing those purchase orders for payment

The foundation of accounting SoD involves maintaining multiple personnel within the accounting organization, with predefined roles that prevent SoD conflicts. Critical actions such as signing high-value checks or authorizing payrolls should ideally be conducted by senior executives with proper oversight.

Leveraging AI for SoD Analysis

Traditional SoD tools generate reports. Modern approaches use AI to actually help you understand and fix problems.

MTC Skopos integrates with AI assistants through the Model Context Protocol (MCP), allowing you to have natural conversations with your security data:

• "Which Finance risks affect the most users?"
• "Show me users with payment-related conflicts who've actually used both transactions"
• "What would happen if I remove this role from these 50 users?"
• "Explain our P2P risks in terms the CFO would understand"

The AI works with your actual data, not generic advice. It knows your specific conflicts, your users, your role structures.

Learn more: AI Meets SAP Security: How MCP Transforms MTC Skopos

Case Study: Global Manufacturer Achieves Complete SoD Control

A global crane manufacturer (12,000 users across 3 SAP systems) was struggling with SoD conflicts in their record-to-report and procure-to-pay processes. Manual tracking was a nightmare, and auditors kept finding issues.

The Challenge:

• No visibility into cross-system conflicts
• Thousands of users with accumulated access over 15+ years
• Audit findings every quarter
• IT team spending 40+ hours per month on manual access reviews

The Solution: MTC Skopos was downloaded and running the same day the license was purchased. No servers to configure, no lengthy implementation project.

Results after 8 weeks:

• Complete inventory of all SoD conflicts across all three systems
• High-risk conflicts reduced by 40%
• Continuous monitoring established
• Cross-system risks identified for the first time

Results after 4 months:

• All remaining high-risk conflicts either remediated or formally controlled
• Audit findings reduced to zero
• Monthly access review time reduced from 40 hours to 4 hours
• Simulation feature prevented 23 new conflicts from being introduced

"MTC Skopos transformed how we handle Segregation of Duties. We can now pinpoint exactly who has access to what, when they use it, and we can stay clean. The AI-powered remediation suggestions saved us months of analysis work."

— IT Security Manager

Getting Started with SoD

1. Identify Critical Processes
Start with your highest-risk areas: financial transactions, vendor management, payroll, and user access administration.

2. Map Current State
Document who currently does what. This is usually eye-opening - most organizations discover far more access than they expected.

3. Find the Conflicts
Look for users who can complete entire critical processes alone. Focus on high-risk combinations first.

4. Prioritize by Actual Risk
Not all conflicts are worth fixing immediately. Users who have never used conflicting transactions are lower priority than those executing both sides weekly.

5. Remediate Intelligently
Fix what you can without breaking business processes. Use simulation to test changes before applying them.

6. Monitor Continuously
SoD isn't a one-time project. New access gets assigned daily. Continuous monitoring catches problems before auditors do.

Conclusion

Getting SoD right is essential for managing risk and staying compliant. Yes, there's a balancing act between security and efficiency, but with the right tools, you don't have to choose.

The difference between struggling with SoD and mastering it comes down to:

• Visibility: Can you see all conflicts across all systems?
• Intelligence: Do you know which conflicts represent real risk?
• Actionability: Can you fix problems without breaking things?

MTC Skopos delivers all three - comprehensive analysis, usage-based prioritization, and AI-powered remediation guidance. Companies that take SoD seriously and use smart tools end up with better security, smoother audits, and operations that actually work.

Ready to experience the difference? [Learn more about MTC Skopos] or [contact our team] to schedule a demonstration.

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