ServiceNow key capabilities at work

Purpose-built for the AI era, ServiceNow's Security & Risk platform brings together identity intelligence with enterprise asset data to close exposures before they become a breach while leveraging AI agents to autonomously complete work. Key benefits include:

Control over identity sprawl:

ServiceNow pulls signals from hundreds of tools into a single operational model, transforming scattered security and risk efforts into one cohesive defense. Identity and access intelligence layers in permissions across human, machine, and AI identities at the authorization layer, not just users and groups, with everything framed with the proper business context. The system continuously detects overprivileged accounts, dormant permissions, toxic permission combinations, and access drift, closing gaps automatically at machine speed.

With ServiceNow, identity is no longer just about authentication, but also ownership, authorization, and accountability for autonomous decision making. “Security is going from a one-time credential check at the gate to continuous monitoring based on identity,” says David. “Unlike human employees who maintain relatively stable behavioral patterns, AI agents can be modified rapidly and subtly, making the old castle and moat model of identity obsolete.”

Bring order to ungoverned AI agents:

AI without governance is a liability, not an asset. Every agent, model, and workflow needs guardrails at the moment of action, not after the fact, with direct mapping to relevant business services across its entire lifecycle. ServiceNow ensures every system, cyber asset, and identity (human or AI) is compliant, policy aligned, and auditable. Continuous least privilege is enforced across all identity types, and built-in risk and compliance scoring keeps regulators, auditors, and the board confident in controls and risk strategy.

Unlike human employees who maintain relatively stable behavioral patterns, AI agents can be modified rapidly and subtly, making the old castle and moat model of identity obsolete.

Diana David,
Futures Director, ServiceNow

Replace fragmented efforts with autonomous workflows.

AI agents built directly into the ServiceNow platform use identity and asset intelligence to prioritize tasks that matter while also surfacing relevant business risks and recommending actions. ServiceNow’s AI agents autonomously remediate exposures, respond to incidents, and enforce governance without the need for manual handoffs. Human experts remain in the loop to provide additional judgment, resulting in faster, more informed decisions. “The future isn’t fewer tools, it’s intelligent orchestration and execution,” DiMuro says. “Platforms that can operationalize response through workflow, not just visibility, will be the ones that keep pace with an increasingly autonomous threat landscape.”

Reduce alert chaos.

ServiceNow manages cyber risk across the full attack surface. This creates a unified, end-to-end security exposure and operations stack that handles real-time asset discovery, threat intelligence, and risk prioritization with automated remediation and response workflows. AI agents proactively monitor identities and system activity for potential threats. When threats are detected, incidents are automatically enriched with context while response workflows are immediately triggered to contain risk. This way, analysts no longer make triage decisions in the dark.

Make governance and compliance a continuous process.

In today’s fast-paced environment, governance and compliance no longer follow routine schedules with regular reviews and risk assessments. The evolving regulatory landscape, coupled with rampant cloud and AI system changes, requires more than static snapshots, but rather ongoing, real-time monitoring of controls. ServiceNow aligns AI system activity with established policy, automatically detecting deviations and addressing issues well before regulatory violations occur.

Sallie Mae transforms identity operations with Veza from ServiceNow

Problem:

Education solutions company
Sallie Mae wanted to shift from
on-premises solutions to a full cloud infrastructure, including SaaS solutions. It needed to ensure data was fully protected while convincing regulators that governance standards were met.

Results:

Using Veza from ServiceNow Access Intelligence, Sallie Mae achieved
a 96% reduction in dormant non-human identities while streamlining regulatory compliance during the move to a cloud-based organization.

ServiceNow’s 4 critical architecture pillars

Sense: Most organizations don't have the full picture of the attack surface, including what exists, where it lives, and what it’s actually connected to. Yet everything that happens downstream depends on getting this right. ServiceNow delivers continuous, agentless discovery across every connected cyber asset — IT, OT, IoT, medical devices, physical infrastructure, and cloud. Every asset is classified by business criticality and mapped to the services and teams that depend on it. AI agents are inventoried the moment they’re activated. But discovery alone isn’t the differentiator. What makes the picture complete is enterprise context. Every discovered cyber asset flows into the CMDB (Configuration Management Database) mapped to the services, processes, and teams that depend on it. A device isn't just known, it's understood in terms of business impact. That context is what makes every downstream decision grounded in reality, not assumptions.

Decide: Security teams are drowning in signals that lack business context. The ServiceNow Veza Access Intelligence layers 30 billion-plus permissions across human, machine, and AI agent identities. These are not assigned roles, but actual access paths that are resolved and risk-scored continuously on top of that cyber asset foundation. Every decision is grounded in operational reality to reflect which asset is affected, what business service is supported, and what the blast radius is. Exposures are prioritized by what matters most, not by raw severity scores or probabilistic guesswork.

Act: Detection is only the beginning of the process. ServiceNow connects the dots from finding a problem to fixing a problem with AI agents autonomously remediating across the full security lifecycle from exposure to patch orchestration to incident containment — all without manual handoffs. Most security platforms stop at the alert, but ServiceNow closes the loop, automating and connecting risk directly to the resolution without waiting for work to be assigned.

Secure: Governance is not a late stage checkpoint but rather must be embedded throughout the process. ServiceNow enforces least privilege continuously and governs every agent, model, and workflow at the moment of action. In addition, every decision, exception, and remediation action is automatically captured as evidence. When the board asks for proof of compliance, the answer is already there.