Line-of-business (LOB) employees are the people who work inside a business function, such as finance, operations, procurement, or supply chain. They understand the real workflow in detail: the normal steps, the exceptions, the approvals, and the control points that keep the process correct.
In cyber security, LOB knowledge matters because attackers often abuse business process gaps rather than technical flaws alone. A phishing email that mimics an invoice approval, a fraudulent payment request, or a permission change that bypasses a review step can succeed when defenders do not understand the underlying business logic. LOB staff help security teams spot what “normal” looks like, define safe controls, and review AI or automation outputs for errors, drift, and fraud. Their input is also essential for auditability, because a control that cannot be explained by the people who run the process is hard to defend or verify.