Prevent toxic access combinations with Separation of Duties in Okta Identity Governance

The risk of conflicting access

Imagine a finance employee who can both create and approve vendor payments. Without proper safeguards, this conflicting access, often called a toxic access combination, can lead to compliance violations, security breaches, and financial misconduct. Organizations need a way to enforce access controls proactively, but traditional governance tools often flag issues too late or require complex, IT-heavy configurations.

To address this challenge, Okta Identity Governance now includes built-in Separation of Duties (SoD) policies, helping to ensure that high-risk access combinations are prevented before they become security threats.

What is Separation of Duties?

Separation of Duties (SoD) is a security and compliance control that helps ensure no individual can accumulate conflicting access rights. This principle is critical for protecting against insider threats, fraud, and regulatory violations, especially in finance, healthcare, and government industries.

Many organizations struggle to enforce SoD due to manual processes, spreadsheets, or legacy Identity governance and administration (IGA) solutions that take too long to implement and maintain. Okta simplifies SoD enforcement by integrating it directly into its Identity and governance workflows.

Introducing SoD in Okta Identity Governance

With the launch of SoD policies in Okta Identity Governance, organizations can:

• Easily define and enforce SoD policies with an intuitive, admin-friendly interface.
• Prevent conflicts at the point of assignment by integrating SoD policies with access requests.
• Continuously monitor for violations to help ensure ongoing compliance.
• Trigger event-driven responses using Okta Workflows and Lifecycle Management for automated remediation.
• Help ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.

How it works

1. Define conflicts with SOD rules	2. Prevent SOD conflicts with Access Request	3. Detect and remediate existing conflicts with Access certifications
Define which entitlement combinations should be kept separate for individual users.	Block access requests when SOD conflicts occur or allow with specific approval sequences.	Review and remediate access to conflicting entitlements.

How Okta’s approach to SoD is different

Unlike standalone IGA solutions, Okta provides a unified Identity and governance approach that makes SoD enforcement more effective:

• Faster time-to-value: Unlike complex legacy systems that require deep expertise and manual tuning, Okta’s SoD is designed for ease of use and rapid deployment. With a few clicks, admins can enable and enforce SoD in days or weeks, not months or years.
• Modern, intuitive UI and decentralized policy management: Simplifies policy creation, enabling business teams — who best understand toxic access combinations — to define and enforce SoD policies without IT and compliance bottlenecks, eliminating the need for deep IAM expertise.
• Real-time enforcement at the Identity provider level: Because Okta directly provisions and de-provisions access, it helps enforce SoD at the source of access. If an admin attempts to assign conflicting access, Okta immediately blocks or reverses the action before it reaches apps, unlike traditional governance tools that react with delay.
• Broad application support: Enforce SoD across on-prem, cloud, and SaaS apps — bypassing the limitations of single-vendor ecosystems. Okta provides vendor-neutral governance for SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, and custom apps, ensuring seamless enforcement across diverse environments.

Why this matters for your business

• For security teams: Prevent insider threats and unauthorized access by enforcing least privilege.

• For compliance and audit teams: Ensure regulatory compliance with automated enforcement instead of time-consuming manual reviews.

• For IT and IAM teams: Reduce governance complexity by offloading SoD management to business units.

Get started with SoD in Okta Identity Governance

Already an Okta Identity Governance customer? SoD is available today—check out our product documentation to set up your first policy.

New to Okta Identity Governance? Connect with one of our specialists to see how Okta Identity Governance can help you prevent security risks and simplify governance.