Separation of duties is a principle that prevents any one person (or entity) from being able to independently complete all the functions of a critical, sensitive, financial, or confidential, process or task. This principle is designed to prevent fraud, theft, and errors, as the idea behind it is that if any one person had complete authorization or access to such a process or task, they could manipulate the system and steal information or money.

Some people may claim that separation of duties is too bureaucratic because they feel that the concept is more like “red tape” or a principle of “inflexibility” which slows their work, as they need another person to compete tasks at work. Other people may feel it’s too bureaucratic because in their situation the principle of separation of duties makes it so they need a supervisor or manager to complete important tasks at their job such access a critical or confidential database, or issue a cashier’s check.

What these people need to understand is the concept of security and that while they may be honest and not ever have the intention of stealing information or money, there are in fact a lot of people who presented the opportunity will do such a thing and that is has happened a lot. They need to understand that separation of duties makes it more difficult for such people to steal information or money, and that separation of duties is not used to control them or slow down their work, but it’s a principle which keeps the integrity of the company and increases the security of the place they work at. Separation of duties is a security process which brings a lot more pros then cons, and these people need to stop looking at cons of it. Separation of duties actually helps employees in that while they may innocently make an error, that error will be caught by the other person, and thus prevent that person from getting in trouble