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ServiceNow

ServiceNow

A ServiceNow represents a service destination, where an incoming security event notification can be consumed programmatically to actions.

An event which is routed to a ServiceNow destination will trigger creation of an Incident in the configured ServiceNow destination.

Configuring a ServiceNow destination

The ServiceNow name follows the standard https://xxx.service-now.com, where xxx is your instance name. The ServiceNow instance name, Username, and Password can be fetched from your ServiceNow console. Navigate to your ServiceNow profile and go to Manage Instance Password to get the details.

To configure a ServiceNow destination, do the following steps:

  1. From your Event Notifications instance dashboard, click Destinations.

  2. Click Add + to add a new destination.

  3. In the Add a destination side panel, provide the following details.

    • Name - Enter a name for your destination.

    • Description - Optionally, enter a description for your destination.

    • Type - Under Destination, for the Type, select ServiceNow from the drop-down as your destination type.

    • Instance Name - Enter the name of your ServiceNow instance.

    • Username - Enter the username to be used for connecting to the ServiceNow instance.

    • Password - Enter the password to be used for authenticating the username mentioned earlier to authenticate in the ServiceNow instance.

    • Namespace defaulting to now and it cannot be changed.

    • Event Notifications currently allows creation of entries on "Incident" table only and it cannot be changed.

    • URL gets populated based on the value provided before.

    • Client ID - Enter the client ID needed to retrieve the OAuth access token.

    • Client secret - Enter the client secret required for authenticating the Client ID provided earlier.

      Client ID and Client secret can be fetched from System Oauth -> Application Registries. This is inside your Event Notifications instance console (you can search by clicking on "All"). Make sure it is in active state and applicable for connecting to external clients.

  4. Click Add.

Event Notifications severity (ibmenseverity) to ServiceNow severity mapping

Table 1. Event Notifications severity (ibmenseverity) to ServiceNow severity mapping
Event Notifications severity (ibmenseverity) ServiceNow severity - Impact ServiceNow severity - Urgency ServiceNow severity - Priority
Critical 1 1 1
High 1 2 2
Medium 2 2 3
Low 2 3 4
Anything Else 3 3 4

Testing a ServiceNow destination configuration

You can test a ServiceNow destination in the options menu provided againts the destination. You can effortlessly test a destination, whether the provided configuration is correct or not with a single click.

For more information on testing a destination, see here.

ServiceNow retry policy

When calling a webhook, issues such as network errors and application glitches can cause the requests to fail. A retry is used to provide resiliency to external requests. Attempt to retry the requests in such situations by using the following values:

  • Limit = 60 seconds: total time that the service retries.
  • Step = 5 seconds: after each failure, the service waits 5 seconds before retrying. This delay prevents bombarding of the external services (webhook).

In addition, the following timeout conditions cause the ServiceNow call to fail:

  • A connection timeout of 10 seconds
  • A response timeout of 60 seconds

If a call to the ServiceNow webhook URL fails even after retry attempts, the notification is lost.