Control Assessment form

Release version: Xanadu

Updated August 1, 2024

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Summary of Control Assessment form

The Control Assessment form within the Advanced Risk application enables ServiceNow customers to evaluate how effectively controls mitigate risks. This form supports both high-level control environment assessments and detailed assessments of individual controls, providing flexibility based on your organization's risk evaluation needs.

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Key Features

Risk assessment methodology and state: Automatically set based on the selected risk assessment methodology (RAM) and its status.
Assessment contribution: Automatically defaults to "Qualitative contribution," defining the type of factor contribution considered.
Calculate based on: Choose between assessing the overall control environment or performing assessments on individual controls. The individual control assessment option requires the Policy and Compliance Management plugin.
Control identification: Select how controls are identified in the risk assessment—via control library, ad-hoc creation, or both—available when assessing individual controls.
Factor for overall effectiveness: Select manual, automated, or group factors to assess controls; available only when assessing individual controls.
Qualitative scoring logic: Multiple predefined formulas (Sum, Minimum, Maximum, Average, Product, Weighted average) to calculate scores, including a customizable script option for advanced users with developer roles.
Qualitative script variables and user-defined script: Provide the ability to create custom scoring calculations to tailor control effectiveness scoring precisely to organizational requirements.
Section Labels: Option to rename section titles and score labels in the assessment interface for better alignment with organizational terminology. Note that these changes affect only the interface and not reports, dashboards, or heatmaps.

Practical Application

ServiceNow customers can leverage this form to systematically assess controls either broadly or at an individual level, adapting scoring approaches to their risk management frameworks. The ability to customize scoring logic and terminology enhances alignment with internal processes and reporting standards, thereby improving clarity and decision-making in risk mitigation efforts.

Use the Control Assessment form in the Advanced Risk application to assess the effectiveness of controls in mitigating risks.

See the following table for a description of the field values.

Table 1. Control Assessment form
Field	Description
Risk assessment methodology	Name of the risk assessment methodology used for control assessment. This field is automatically set based on your RAM.
State	State of the RAM. This field is automatically set to Draft.
Assessment contribution	Type of factor contribution. This field is automatically set to Qualitative contribution.
Calculate based on	Option to assess the types of control. Choices are the following: Control environment assessment: Select this option if you don’t want to assess individual controls, but instead want to assess the overall effectiveness of the control environment. Individual assessment of controls: Select this option if you want to perform assessment for individual controls. For example, you can select the risk of employees accepting bribes and then assess each existing control to mitigate the risk of bribery. This option is available only when the Policy and Compliance Management (com.sn_compliance) plugin is activated.
Control identification	Option to decide how to identify the controls in the risk assessment instance. The choices are the following: None From Library: Use this option when you want to identify controls from the library on the risk assessment instance. Ad-hoc: Use this option when you want to identify new controls on the risk assessment instance. From Library and Ad-hoc: Use this option when you want to identify controls from the library as well as identify new controls. This field appears only when the Calculate based on field has the value Individual assessment of controls.
Factor for overall effectiveness	Manual, automated, or group factors to assess controls. This field appears only when the option Individual assessment of controls is selected from the Calculate based on field. Only qualitative factors or factors with the option to transform the qualitative score will be displayed in this field.
Qualitative scoring logic	Formula for calculating the scoring logic. Choices are the following: Sum: Sum of the factor responses. Minimum: Minimum value of the factor responses. Maximum: Maximum value of the factor responses. Average: Average value of the factor responses. Product: Value derived by multiplying the factor responses. Weighted average: Average value of the weighting of factors. This value is then classified as low, medium, or high. When this option is selected, the control weight is fetched from the control form. Script: User-defined formula to calculate the score. This option is available only to users with the sn_grc.developer role.
Qualitative script variables	Format of the script and the variables used in the script. This field is available only when Script is selected from the Qualitative scoring logic field.
Qualitative script	User-defined script to compute the scoring logic. This field enables you to have more control over the score computation.
Section Labels
This section appears only when Configure section terminology is selected in the RAM form. Note: Section label renaming applies only to the advanced risk assessment interface while leaving the terminology used in reports, dashboards, heatmaps, and other areas unchanged.
Title	Option to rename the section title of the assessment type. For example, if you rename Control assessment as Preventive assessment, the new title will be displayed in all sections where the Control assessment was previously referred.
Score label	Option to rename the qualitative score label in the Scoring section of the assessment form. For example, if you rename Control risk as Preventive risk, the new score label will be displayed in the scoring section where Control risk was previously referred.