ServiceNow Security Operations (SecOps)​

Comprehensive solution designed to enhance an organization’s ability to identify, prioritize, and respond to security threats effectively.

ServiceNow Security Operations (SecOps)

is a comprehensive solution designed to enhance an organization’s ability to identify, prioritize, and respond to security threats effectively. It integrates with existing security tools to automate threat intelligence, streamline workflows, and bridge the gap between IT and security teams.

Core Components of ServiceNow SecOps

Security Incident Response (SIR)

  • Incident Management: Centralize and automate the handling of security incidents.
  • Threat Enrichment: Integrate with threat intelligence feeds to enrich incidents with contextual data.
  • Workflow Automation: Automate response tasks and orchestrate remediation actions across teams.

Vulnerability Response (VR)

  • Vulnerability Prioritization: Assess vulnerabilities based on exploitability, asset criticality, and business impact.
  • Remediation Management: Automate the assignment and tracking of remediation tasks.
  • Integration with Scanners: Import vulnerability data from scanning tools like Qualys, Tenable, or Rapid7.

Threat Intelligence

  • Centralized Intelligence: Aggregate threat feeds into a unified view for quick analysis.
  • IOC (Indicator of Compromise) Matching: Automatically identify and respond to known threats.
  • Integration with SIEMs: Enhance SIEM alerts with actionable threat intelligence.

Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR)

  • Playbook Automation: Use predefined playbooks to automate repetitive response tasks.
  • Workflow Orchestration: Connect tools and teams to streamline the incident lifecycle.
  • Customizable Workflows: Build workflows tailored to specific security processes.

Workflow Automation

  • End-to-End Resolution: Automate processes like approvals, escalations, and handoffs to other departments.
  • Cross-Department Collaboration: Integrate with ITSM, ITOM, and other modules to resolve issues involving multiple teams.

Customer Data and Insights

  • 360-Degree View of Customers: Centralize customer data, including interaction history, products, and services.
  • Monitor KPIs like first-contact resolution, customer satisfaction (CSAT), and net promoter score (NPS).

Configuration Compliance

  • Continuous Monitoring: Check system configurations against regulatory or policy standards.
  • Automated Remediation: Automate corrective actions for non-compliant configurations.
  • Compliance Reporting: Generate reports to demonstrate adherence to standards like CIS or NIST.

Key Features of SecOps

Integration with Security Tools

  • Integrates with SIEM, endpoint protection, and vulnerability scanners.
  • Supports tools like Splunk, IBM QRadar, CrowdStrike, and Palo Alto.

Prioritization Engine

  • Ranks threats and vulnerabilities based on business impact, asset value, and exploit potential..

Real-Time Dashboards

  • Provides a unified view of threats, incidents, and vulnerabilities.
  • Tracks SLAs and response performance metrics.

AI-Driven Insights

  • Uses machine learning to detect anomalies and predict incident trends..

Collaboration Features

  • Facilitates cross-team collaboration between security, IT, and risk teams.
  • Tracks and documents the entire incident lifecycle for audit purposes.

Benefits of ServiceNow SecOps

Faster Incident Response

  • Reduces mean time to detection (MTTD) and mean time to resolution (MTTR) by automating response workflows.

Improved Risk Posture

  • Proactively mitigates risks by addressing vulnerabilities and misconfigurations before they are exploited..

Enhanced Visibility

  • Provides a single pane of glass for security incidents, vulnerabilities, and compliance data..

Cost Savings

  • Reduces manual effort and operational inefficiencies through automation and integration.

Stronger Collaboration

  • Breaks down silos between security and IT teams, enabling faster and more coordinated responses..

Use Cases

Security Incident Response

  • Challenge: Security teams are overwhelmed with incident alerts from multiple tools.
  • Solution: Consolidate alerts into ServiceNow, enrich them with threat intelligence, and automate the response process using playbooks.

Vulnerability Management

  • Challenge: Prioritizing and addressing thousands of vulnerabilities across assets is time-consuming.
  • Solution: Use ServiceNow VR to prioritize vulnerabilities based on asset criticality and automate remediation assignments.

Ransomware Attack

  • Challenge: A ransomware attack is encrypting critical business data, and manual response is too slow.
  • Solution: Trigger a predefined SOAR playbook to isolate affected systems, gather forensic data, and block threat actors’ IPs automatically.

Compliance Monitoring

  • Challenge: Systems frequently drift out of compliance with organizational policies.
  • Solution: Monitor configurations continuously and automate remediation for deviations.

Metrics for SecOps Success

MTTD (Mean Time to Detect):

Average time taken to detect a security incident.

MTTR (Mean Time to Respond):

Average time taken to resolve a security incident.

Vulnerability Remediation Rate:

Percentage of identified vulnerabilities remediated within a defined SLA.

False Positive Rate:

Percentage of alerts deemed false positives after review.

Compliance Adherence:

Percentage of systems compliant with security policies or frameworks.

Integration with Other ServiceNow Modules

ITSM (IT Service Management):

Link security incidents to IT issues, changes, or assets for seamless remediation.

ITOM (IT Operations Management):

Monitor infrastructure health and correlate operational issues with security events.

GRC (Governance, Risk, and Compliance):

Align security actions with organizational risk and compliance objectives.

CMDB (Configuration Management Database):

Identify affected assets and prioritize responses based on asset criticality.

Best Practices for Implementing SecOps

Consolidate Security Tools

Integrate all security tools with ServiceNow to centralize data and reduce alert fatigue.

Automate Playbooks

Develop and test automated playbooks for common incidents to improve response times.

Maintain an Accurate CMDB

Ensure the CMDB is up-to-date to prioritize security incidents and vulnerabilities effectively.

Foster Cross-Team Collaboration

Establish processes for seamless communication between security, IT, and risk management teams.

Continuously Evaluate Metrics

Monitor dashboards and key metrics to identify areas for improvement in the SecOps program.

Example Scenarios

Scenario 1: Phishing Attack Response

  • Challenge: Employees report phishing emails, and manual analysis is slow.
  • Solution: Use SOAR to automate email analysis, quarantine malicious emails, and block sender domains.

Scenario 2: Zero-Day Vulnerability

  • Challenge: A critical zero-day vulnerability is disclosed, requiring immediate remediation.
  • Solution: Use Vulnerability Response to identify affected assets, prioritize based on criticality, and assign tasks for remediation.

Scenario 3: Compliance Audit

  • Challenge: Proving compliance with security standards is labour-intensive.
  • Solution: Generate automated compliance reports and demonstrate continuous control monitoring using Configuration Compliance.

Customer Testimonials