Domain separation and Security Incident Response
Summarize
Summarized using AI
This content was generated using new OpenAI-powered functionality. Results are provided on an as is basis and are not guaranteed to be accurate or complete.
Summary of Domain separation and Security Incident Response
Domain separation in the Security Incident Response (SIR) application allows ServiceNow customers, especially service providers (SPs), to logically segregate data, processes, and administrative tasks into distinct domains. This separation ensures that customer data remains isolated, enhancing security and operational efficiency while enabling standardized SOC and SIR procedures across multiple tenants within a single instance.
Show less
The feature supports granular control over data visibility and user access, allowing different domains to maintain their own configurations, integrations, workflows, and security incident management processes without exposure to other domains.
Key Features
- Support Levels and Version History: Domain separation support evolved from no support in early releases to standard support by the Orlando and Paris releases. Key improvements include multi-domain integration capabilities and domain-aware application properties.
- Data and Process Isolation: Security incidents, observables, integrations, workflows, and automation results are all confined within their respective domains, preventing cross-domain data exposure except from parent to child domains.
- Integration Management: Starting from the Madrid release, third-party integrations can be configured on a per-domain basis, enabling domain-specific automation and threat response activities.
- Domain-Aware Capabilities: Response automation capabilities such as Threat Lookup, Sighting Search, Block Request, Isolate Host, and others operate within domain boundaries, supporting distinct implementations per domain.
- Configuration Self-Containment: Each domain can independently configure user roles, email parsers, incident workflows, escalations, SLAs, post-incident reviews, and playbooks, enabling tailored incident response management for each tenant.
- Tenant Domain Autonomy: Tenant administrators can manage their own email parsing rules, integrations, incident categories, knowledge base articles, runbooks, and incident lifecycle actions within their domain.
How Domain Separation Works in Security Incident Response
The SIR application manages the entire lifecycle of security incidents with domain-separation awareness across key processes:
- Ingestion of alerts and events into domain-specific security incidents.
- Artifact enrichment and investigation confined to the domain context.
- Automated orchestration and eradication tasks executed within domain boundaries.
- Performance analytics and reporting scoped to domain-specific incident data.
Configuration and Administration
Setting up domain separation requires no additional steps beyond enabling domain separation on the instance. All SIR tables become domain-aware automatically. Administrators are responsible for assigning roles, configuring integrations, and defining incident response workflows and policies per domain. Configuration tasks include:
- User and group role assignments.
- Integration plugin installations and domain-specific configurations.
- Email parsing rules and inbound actions tailored per domain.
- Incident escalation paths, SLAs, and risk scoring calculators specific to each domain.
- Playbook and runbook document creation for effective incident response orchestration.
Benefits for ServiceNow Customers
- Data Security and Isolation: Customers can confidently manage their security incidents without risk of data leakage between tenants.
- Operational Efficiency: Service providers can standardize core SOC and SIR processes while allowing domain-specific customization and autonomy.
- Flexible Integration: Domain-specific integrations empower tailored automation and threat response suited to each tenant’s environment.
- Comprehensive Incident Management: The lifecycle of security incidents—from ingestion to post-incident review—is fully managed within the domain context, ensuring compliance and traceability.
Domain separation is supported in Security Incident Response. Domain separation enables you to separate data, processes, and administrative tasks into logical groupings called domains. You can control several aspects of this separation, including which users can see and access data.
Support level: Standard
- Includes all aspects of Basic level support.
- Application properties are domain-aware as needed.
- Business logic: The service provider (SP) creates or modifies processes per customer. The use cases reflect proper use of the application by multiple SP customers in a single instance.
- The instance owner must configure the minimum viable product (MVP) business logic and data parameters per tenant as expected for the specific application.
Sample use case: An admin must be able to make comments required when a record closes for one tenant, but not for another.
For more information on support levels, see Application support for domain separation.
Domain separation in SIR overview
In the Security Incident Response application, domain separation enables service providers (SPs) to standardize SOC (Security Operations Center) and Security Incident Response (SIR) procedures across the customer base they serve with lowered operational costs and a higher quality of service. Separate customer workspaces for workflows, dashboards, reports, and so forth, ensures that customer data is separated and never exposed to other clients.
| Release | Support level | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Geneva, Helsinki | No support | Initiation of data-level domain separation |
| Istanbul | Data only | |
| Jakarta | Level 2 (Data, Requestor, Fulfiller) | New features: 3rd-party Integrations support with Level 2 domain separation under a single instance of integration, including Threat Intelligence integrations |
| Kingston | Level 2 (Data, Requestor, Fulfiller) | New features: Sighting Search integration for SIR is enabled with multiple instances, but all instances still live under a single domain. Example: If there are two instances of a Splunk integration configured (SplunkCLOUD and SplunkCORP), both are still leveraged for incident response activities in a single domain, where the implementation was originally configured. |
| London | Level 2 (Data, Requestor, Fulfiller) | New features: All integrations reside across multiple domains |
| Madrid | Level 2 (Data, Requestor, Fulfiller) | All integrations can now reside across multiple domains. In the above example, SplunkCloud can be domain1 and SplunkCORP domain2. |
| New York | Level 2 (Data, Requestor, Fulfiller) | All integrations reside across multiple domains. |
| Orlando | Standard | All integrations reside across multiple domains. |
| Paris | Standard | All integrations reside across multiple domains. |
Domain separation for the Security Incident Response application covers the following product functionality:
- Security alerts are directed to the appropriate domain of the user whose ID/ credential/ scope generates the incident and is registered as a Security Incident.
- Alerts generate “observables,”which represent stateful properties or measurable events: Security workflows in the domain of the security incident are used to orchestrate the response.
- Integrations are configured in the domain of the security incident for response automation.
- Capabilities are configured in the domain of the security incident for response
automation. These capabilities (as of the Kingston release) include:
- Threat Lookup
- Enrich Observable
- Enrich Configuration item
- Get Running Process
- Get Network Statistics
- Block Request
- Isolate Host
- Sighting Search
- Email Search and Delete
- Publish to Watchlist
- Results from Response Automation (such as Threat Lookup or Sighting Search) are stored in the domain of the security incident.
- Other security incidents are cross-referenced in the same domain of the security incident based on a shared set of observables.
- Other users are cross-referenced in the domain of the security incident.
- Configuration Items are cross-referenced in the same domain as the security incident.
- Manual response tasks are added to the domain of the security incident.
- Knowledge base articles and run books are referenced in the domain of the security incident.
- Security Incident Response metrics pertinent to incidents in the domain are displayed on dashboards as well as in reporting.
Note:
In the preceding cases, the overarching principles of visibility in separated domains
in the NOW Platform apply. As always, an incident in the parent domain can reference
artifacts in the child domain, but not the other way around.
How domain separation works in Security Incident Response
The Security Incident Response application manages the life cycle of a security incident end to end. The following use cases are domain-separation aware:
- Ingestion of events and alerts to create security incidents for
the analyst in the customer SOC or the MSP to respond:
- Email parsers (platform based, user-reported phishing, custom)
- De-duplication events/alerts prior to incident creation
- Auto extraction of observables
- Applications in third-party SIEM store
- Enrichment of artifacts involved in the incidents (IP, URLs,
domains, file hashes):
- Asset enrichment (CMDB)
- Users (Platform)
- Automation: Observable enrichment (Ex: WhoIs)
- Investigate the incidents with the help of the artifacts and
their reputation or association with known threats
- Orchestrate: Playbooks and knowledge base articles
- Automation: Threat Lookup (Ex: VirusTotal), Sighting Search (Ex: Splunk), Get Running Processes (Ex: Carbon Black)
- Eradicate the threat-related artifacts involved in the incident
based on the investigation performed
- Orchestrate: Playbooks and knowledge base articles
- Automation: Email search and delete (Ex: Microsoft Exchange), Block IP (Ex: Palo Alto Firewall)
- Measure the efficiency or Incident response operations
- Performance Analytics Dashboards: Productivity and incident trends
- Reconstruction of incident investigation steps from work notes
- Post-incident review
Domain separation setup
Setting up domain separation for Security Incident Response doesn’t require any additional steps. All Security Incident Response tables acquire the Domain column after the instance is domain separated.
Domain-separated data
Data can be domain-separated, which means:
- Security incidents in one domain can’t be viewed from other domains.
- Observables extracted from the security incident are placed in the same domain and can’t be viewed from other domains.
- Up to the Kingston release, configured third-party integrations exist in the global domain and are accessible to all other domains in the instance.
- In the Madrid release, third-party integrations can be configured and activated on a per-domain basis. This means that the integration activated and configured in one domain cannot be leveraged in another domain.
- Automations that run on the observables using third-party integrations (for Threat Investigation, Containment, or Eradication), place their results in the domain of the security incident and the results can’t be viewed from another domain.
- Orchestration workflows created in one domain aren’t visible in another domain.
- Capabilities (as delineated in the preceding capabilities function list) that are invoked stay generic across domains with domain-specific implementation of the capability being called. For example, a Sighting Search on an IP can invoke a Splunk implementation in one domain and a QRadar implementation in another.
Configuration
All aspects of product configuration are self-contained in a domain-separated environment.
Setup can be tailored for individual domains.
Note:
Business logic and the processes in #2-5
below can be administered within the tenant domain.
The following tasks must be configured:
- System Administration
- Assign roles to users and groups of users: User roles installed with Security Incident Response
- Install one or more third-party integration plugins to work with Security Incident Response: Security Incident Response integrations
- Security Incident Response Administration
- Add or review roles: Components installed with Security Incident Response
- Configure groups and users: Create a security incident group
- Set up incident escalations: Escalate a security incident
- Set up security incident risk score calculators: Understanding security incident calculators
- Set up service level agreements: Create a Security Incident Response SLA
- Set up security incident process definitions: Understanding Security Incident Response process definition
- Set up post-incident review processes: Manage post incident activities
- Security incident email settings
- Set the email parsing inbox: Security Operations email parsing
- Set up email parsers for alert ingestion: Create email parsers in Security Operations
- Set up email matching rules for user-reported phishing: Create rules to validate user-reported phishing attacks
- Set up email inbound actions: Inbound email actions
- Security incident playbook settings
- Review and set up runbook documents: Create a Security Incident Response runbook
- Set up security incident workflows: Security Operations common functionality
- Capability configurations
- Block request: Security Operations Integration- Block Request capability
- Email search and delete: Security Operations Integration- Email Search and Delete capability
- Enrich configuration item: Security Operations Integration- Enrich CI capability
- Enrich observable: Security Operations Integration- Enrich Observable capability
- Get network statistics: Security Operations Integration- Get Network Statistics capability
- Get running processes: Security Operations Integration- Get Running Processes capability
- Isolate host: Security Operations Integration- Isolate Host capability
- Publish to Watchlist: Security Operations Integration- Publish to Watchlist capability
- Sighting search: Security Operations Integration- Sightings Search capability
- Threat lookup: Security Operations Integration - Threat Lookup capability
How tenant domains manage their own application data
- Tenant domain owners create their own email parsing rules for ingesting security incidents.
- Tenant domain owners can configure specific integrations exclusively for use within the domain.
- Tenant domain owners can create their own incident response workflows.
- Tenant domain owners can create their own incident categories, incident response knowledge base articles, and runbooks to be associated with incident response workflows.
- Tenant domain users create and close their own security incidents.
Business logic and processes that can be domain separated by instance owner
- Security Incident Response users and groups
- Security Incident Response integrations (starting with the Madrid release)
- Email parsing rules for incident creation
- Business rules to consolidate multiple events or alerts into a security incident
- Workflows for incident response orchestration
- Security incident risk score calculators
- Security incident escalation path
- Security incident SLAs
- Security incident process definitions
- Security incident post-incident review processes