Secure data
Summarize
Summary of Secure data
Data security is critical in building applications on the ServiceNow AI Platform. ServiceNow automatically sets access control for new or selected roles during table creation, ensuring only authorized users can read, create, write, or delete table data. Proper configuration of access control rules at both table and column levels is essential to protect data, UI pages, property pages, and other content.
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Key Features
- Access Control Lists (ACLs): Combine multiple access controls evaluated in a specific order to restrict access to tables and columns, ensuring only necessary users have permissions.
- Before-query Business Rules: Control read access by running rules before database queries; useful for hiding records without showing an access restriction message. However, they do not replace ACLs and still count against subscription limits.
- Subscription Model Impact: Since Orlando release, users are charged based on how many tables they can access, regardless of actual use. Proper ACL configuration can limit table access and reduce subscription costs.
- Performance Considerations: Minimize the use of GlideRecord queries in access control scripts to avoid performance degradation.
- Encryption Solutions: The platform provides encryption at application, database, and hardware levels to protect data comprehensively.
Best Practices
- Apply appropriate roles and access controls to all application components to ensure data security.
- Make auto-populated fields read-only to prevent unauthorized user modifications.
- Set up security configurations early in the application build process to avoid rework and ensure interfaces and business logic operate on secure data.
- Use ACLs primarily to restrict access and manage subscription table counts, reserving before-query Business Rules for specific read access scenarios.
Key Outcomes
By following these guidelines, ServiceNow customers can effectively secure their application data, optimize platform subscription costs by limiting table access, and maintain high performance. Early and correct security setup ensures reliable and compliant data access control across the ServiceNow AI Platform.
Data security is one of the most important and overlooked aspects of creating an application. ServiceNow automatically configures access control for a new or selected role during the table creation process. Only users with the role can access the table to read, create, write, and delete.
Use access control rules to configure table and column-level security in the ServiceNow AI Platform. To properly configure access to an application, developers should understand how access controls work and the order in which access controls are evaluated. Apply multiple access controls that together make an Access Control List (ACL).
Self-Paced Training: Securing Applications
Documentation: Access control list rules
- Protect tables, UI pages, property pages, and other content with the appropriate access controls and roles.
- Limit the use of GlideRecord queries in access control scripts. GlideRecord queries can affect performance.
Alternately, secure data on the ServiceNow AI Platform with before-query Business Rules. Before-query Business Rules run before the database query and are limited to controlling read access to a record. Only use before-query Business Rules when necessary. Some considerations when deciding to use Access Controls or before-query Business Rules:
- GlideRecord queries will bypass read access controls on a table and will be restricted by before-query Business Rules on a table.
- When access controls restrict read access to records in a list, ServiceNow shows a message saying that access has been restricted for the records. With before-query Business Rules, the number of records in the list total matches the number of records shown to the user. The user receives no indication that some records have been hidden from the list.