Requirements traceability is the practice of tracking each requirement from its source through design, implementation, testing, and delivery. In practical terms, it answers three questions: where did this requirement come from, where was it used, and how do we know it was satisfied? That makes it a core control in software and security work, because it prevents scope drift and keeps business intent connected to technical changes.
In cyber security, traceability matters because missing links can hide risk. A control requirement with no trace to a design decision may never be built, and a test case with no trace to a requirement may miss the real threat. Defenders use traceability matrices, ticket systems, and approval records to spot orphaned changes, verify that security requirements were tested, and support audits. In AI-assisted business analysis, traceability is also a way to validate model output against source notes and reject polished but unsupported requirements.