Application Vulnerability Response remediation tasks and task rules overview
Summarize
Summary of Application Vulnerability Response remediation tasks and task rules overview
This feature in ServiceNow's Application Vulnerability Response (AVR) module helps analysts and remediation specialists efficiently organize and manage application vulnerable items (AVIs) by grouping them into remediation tasks (AVULs). Remediation tasks streamline bulk analysis, track remediation progress, and improve the overall vulnerability management process.
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Key Features
- Automated Remediation Task Creation: Remediation task rules automatically group and assign AVIs based on configurable filter conditions such as vulnerability, configuration item (CI), or product model. This automation reduces manual effort and ensures consistent grouping aligned with organizational risk priorities.
- Task Rule Configuration: Multiple grouping conditions can be defined (up to six) to tailor how AVIs are clustered. Default rules are provided, but customers can create custom rules for different severity levels or risk profiles.
- Deferral Tracking: The system tracks how many times AVIs and remediation tasks are deferred, updating counts daily and displaying items with multiple deferrals for better prioritization.
- State Rollup and Rolldown: Changes in remediation task states roll down to associated AVIs immediately. Conversely, if all AVIs share a consistent state (Deferred or Closed-fixed), the remediation task state rolls up to reflect this after a scheduled job runs.
- Manual Task and AVI Management: Users can manually create remediation tasks and add AVIs as needed, providing flexibility beyond automated grouping.
- Reapplying Rules: When remediation task rules are modified, the “Reapply” function recalculates and updates existing open remediation tasks accordingly, ensuring task organization stays aligned with current policies.
- Auto-Close Rules: Customers can define rules to automatically close older AVIs based on specific filter criteria, helping maintain a clean and current vulnerability inventory.
Practical Considerations for ServiceNow Customers
- Configure remediation task rules thoughtfully to avoid duplicate tasks and performance impacts by limiting overlapping conditions.
- Use assignment rules to control which groups are responsible for remediation tasks, ensuring clear ownership.
- Monitor deferral counts via dedicated modules to identify AVIs or tasks that may require escalated attention.
- Leverage state rollup and rolldown to keep remediation progress synchronized between tasks and individual AVIs.
- Regularly review and reapply remediation task rules after updates to maintain efficient task grouping and assignment.
Expected Outcomes
By utilizing remediation tasks and task rules in Application Vulnerability Response, customers can expect a more organized and automated vulnerability remediation process. This leads to improved visibility into remediation progress, better prioritization of vulnerabilities based on risk, and streamlined collaboration between analysts and remediation teams.
Configure remediation tasks (AVULs) to help analysts and remediation specialists organize application vulnerable items (AVI) and analyze them in bulk. The criteria by which remediation tasks are formed is configured so that AVIs are automatically assigned into remediation tasks. Using remediation tasks, you can monitor progress and drive the remediation process more efficiently.
Tracking deferral counts for application vulnerable items and remediation tasks
Track the number of times a vulnerable item, application vulnerable item, container vulnerable item, or remediation task is deferred. The set deferral counts scheduled job runs daily to post counts for the records that are deferred more than once in the Deferral count column. Records are displayed in the Multiple deferrals modules for VR, AVR, and CVR.
Understanding remediation task rules
Remediation task rules enable you to define how application vulnerable items are automatically grouped and assigned. A default rule Vulnerability is included in the base system that gathers AVIs based on their vulnerabilities. However, you can group by any other set of values in columns accessible from the AVI. These values could include configuration item (CI), vulnerability entry, and the like.
There are task rules for Application Vulnerability Response that are included with the Vulnerability Response application that is available when you activate it.
You can create multiple conditions with the condition builder. In the Group by section, after you set a field pair, another row appears. You can have up to six Group by selections. You can automate group assignment as well. See Assign application vulnerable items in Application Vulnerability Response automatically and Filtering within Vulnerability Response for more information.
For example, you can group your application vulnerable items by the configuration item, or by the product model. You can have one task rule for low severity vulnerabilities or low risk CIs. You can have another task rule for critical servers, and vulnerabilities that expose the company to more risk. See Create, edit, and delete Application Vulnerability Response remediation task rules for more information about the options that you have available to you.
A different set of rules can be used for application vulnerable items that expose the company to more risk. The remediation task name is appended to the remediation task rule Group by values to make the short description of the new record.
When a new application vulnerable item is created, imported, or reopened after being closed, the rules are evaluated against it. An AVI is only evaluated once, automatically, unless it's reopened after being closed or the rules are reapplied manually.
The following process is used for each new or reopened AVI:
- For each remediation task rule, the AVI is compared to the remediation task rule filter.
- For each rule where the remediation task rule condition matches, the rule pulls the data from the Group by selections on the AVI. It builds a group name and field. In this case, High Risk: QID-32342:Summary of QID-3242 (Name: vulnerability ID: vulnerability summary).The rule checks to see if there's a matching Open remediation task that is assigned to the same assignment group as the AVI.Note:The short description field is limited to 160 characters. Longer vulnerability summaries are truncated.
- If the task is found, the AVI is added to the existing task in the Open state.
- If no task in the Open state is found, the rule creates a High Risk: QID-32342 task, assigns it to the same assignment group as the AVI, and places the AVI in the remediation task.
More than one remediation task rule can be defined to group different kinds of vulnerabilities. Since each vulnerability is compared with the remediation task rule conditions before putting it in a remediation task, too many rules might impact performance. Set up your task rules so the conditions help you avoid creating duplicate remediation tasks.
By default, remediation task rules use the assignment group set by the Assignment Rules on the AVI when grouping the items and assigns the remediation task to match the AVIs.
As part of the default task rule, the assignment of these remediation tasks is controlled by the rules in the Assignment Rules module. For more information on assignment rules, see Vulnerability Response assignment rules overview.
When a task rule is deleted from the form or list view, you have the option to delete all Open tasks created by that rule. Tasks not in the Open state are excluded.
Reapplying remediation task rules
When you want to change a remediation task rule, use the Reapply button on the remediation task rule page to rerun the changed rule on all active Open remediation tasks created by that rule. It deletes and recreates remediation tasks based on the changed rule automatically.
Reapply only checks existing remediation tasks.
After you select Reapply, the following message is displayed: Reapplying this remediation task rule will delete and re-create the remediation tasks for this rule. Remediation tasks that are not in the Open state are not deleted.
Creating remediation tasks and adding AVIs manually
You create an application remediation task (AVUL) from another application remediation task record and add application vulnerable items (AVITs) manually. See Create an application remediation task manually in Application Vulnerability Response for more information.
Remediation task rules and AVI creation and update
If a CI or product model from a scan is associated with a known vulnerability, an AVI is created. After it's created, the AVI is evaluated against the conditions of remediation task rules for a match. If there is a match to an existing remediation task, the AVI is added. If a matching remediation task is not found, one is created for the AVI.
If any property that is captured in the remediation task filtering conditions is updated or changed on an AVI, the updated AVI is also evaluated against the remediation task rules for a match. If there’s a match to an existing remediation task, the AVI is added. If a matching remediation task isn't found, one is created for the AVI.
State rollup and rolldown
If you update a remediation task to Open, or from Open to Under Investigation, the new state rolls down to all associated AVIs. State roll down occurs immediately after you change the state.
State rollup from AVIs to the remediation task only occurs if all the AVIs on the task are in Deferred or Closed- fixed states. Rollup is done with the Rollup application vulnerable item values to vulnerability and group scheduled job, which runs every 15 minutes. The state is not rolled up until the job runs. For a state to roll up to occur from the AVIs to the remediation task, the all the AVIs must be in the same state.