Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) is a U.S. law that requires public companies to maintain strong internal controls over financial reporting. It pushes organizations to document processes, restrict privileged access, preserve evidence, and prove that key transactions are accurate and reviewable.
In cyber security, SOX matters because finance systems are frequent targets for fraud, account takeover, and unauthorized changes to business logic. Weak controls around approvals, journal entries, access rights, or log retention can let an attacker alter records without quick detection. SOX-driven defenses usually include segregation of duties, change management, audit trails, periodic access reviews, and reconciliation checks. These controls do not stop every attack, but they make tampering harder, create traceable evidence, and help investigators prove what happened after a security event.