GRC/IRM Training – What is Available? What should I take? - Updated June 2025

[Jan Spurlin]

ServiceNow has several courses that are available for GRC.  There are also free resources that are available. Even if signed up for an instructor-led course, these are good to review both prior to the course and afterwards.  This article will explain what is available and try and explain who should be taking what courses.  

At the end of this article there are links to all the GRC courses available on ServiceNow University.

GRC Courses Offered by ServiceNow

Course	What is covered in the Course	Who should take the course and why
Welcome to ServiceNow (SNW)	This is a course targeted for people that will be "using" the ServiceNow platform. It provides the basic information about navigating on the platform and introduces terminology that will help.	Everyone
ServiceNow Administration Fundamentals (SNAF)	This extends the Welcome to ServiceNow course.  It gets into some of the basics when working with tables, views and forms.	Implementers, Developers and Admins This course is highly recommended before taken any implementation course.
GRC: IRM Fundamentals (IRMF)	This is the starting point (after SNW) for GRC training. It focuses on how to use the GRC applications. It covers ·  the process flow of transactions ·  role assignment ·  basic table structure that supports the application ·  and more	Everyone Even if you are a seasoned GRC professional, you should take this course. The focus is not on the basic concepts of GRC in general. Instead the focus is on the application ServiceNow developed to be used by GRC professionals.
Third-Party Risk Fundamentals (on-demand in ServiceNow University)	The course will include the basics of the ServiceNow Third-Party Risk application. Some of the topics that will be covered include: ·  Creating and sending an assessment ·  Navigating the Vendor Portal ·  Remediating Issues	Anyone interested in Third-Party Risk Management. This is a good one to suggest to customers prior to defining requirements.
GRC: Integrated Risk Management (IRM) Implementation	This course extends the material covered in the IRMF course. It dives into the table structure, Business Rules and other code supporting the application. It discusses possible configuration and customization changes being made to the application. This course focuses on Compliance and Risk only. As of June 2025, this instructor-led course is based on Xanadu. Note - there is an on-demand version of this course, on Xanadu - but the stories behind the slides are better in the instructor-led course.	Implementers and anyone seeking the CIS-RC certification. This course focuses on answering the following types of questions: ·     What do I need to know before I start on an IRM implementation project? ·     What functionality in the baseline needs to be discussed with my customer for potential configuration or customization?
Third-Party Risk Implementation (VRMI)	This course focuses on how to implement Third-Party Risk. Some of the topics include: ·     Third-Party Risk Calculations ·     Building Third-Party Risk Assessments ·     Building the Third-Party Portfolio ·     Integrating Third-Party answers back into GRC controls	Implementers/Technical Consultants Anyone seeking the CIS-VRM certification
GRC: Audit Essentials (on-demand in ServiceNow University)	This course is broken into four modules, each module providing best practices, common configurations, and detailed information about Audit Management.	Implementers/Technical Consultants Anyone seeking the CIS-RC certification.
GRC: Classic Risk Assessment Fundaments (on-demand in ServiceNow University)	Classic Risk was the first risk management application released by ServiceNow. It offers a simpler risk assessment process. Some customers prefer this approach - but it is very different from the assessment process in Advanced Risk.	Implementers/Technical Consultants Anyone seeking the CIS-RC certification.
GRC: Regulatory Change Management Essentials (on-demand in ServiceNow University)	This course will help customers manage regulatory changes that could impact their organization.	Implementers/Technical Consultants Anyone seeking the CIS-RC certification.

If you find a course on this page, you will still need to register for it via the ServiceNow University site.

ServiceNow University link:

https://learning.servicenow.com/now/lxp/home

Free GRC Training Resources

The following is a list of sources for free training on GRC. 

• Community – GRC
• YouTube – ServiceNow Support
• Developer Site

Community – GRC

New Customer sub-forum

https://www.servicenow.com/community/new-customers-policy-risk/tkb-p/grc-policy-risk-new-customers-k... 

YouTube – ServiceNow Support

This is one of my favorite places to go and get some quick training. There are somewhere around 300 videos on this site and more are added each day.  Here is the link to the ServiceNow Support YouTube home page

Clicking on the Playlist option will group the videos, making it easier to find what you want/need.  As of today there are 22 GRC videos. These range in length from 5 minutes to 25 minutes.  Here is the link to the GRC videos:  YouTube GRC Videos

Developer Site

The training on the Developer site is not GRC specific, but there are several topics that would be useful to a GRC team. Here is the link to the Developer site:

https://developer.servicenow.com/app.do#!/home

In the menu bar at the top of the page, there is an option called LEARN.  Underneath it there several subtopics.

• Learning Plans – this will walk you thru topics. You do not have to go thru every topic in the list. Cherry pick the ones that are relevant to you!
• Now Learning – a link to the Now Learning site.

The best way to find links to the most current version of all the courses listed in the table above is to go to ServiceNow University and follow the instructions below:

https://learning.servicenow.com/now/lxp/home

• Select the Credential program option next to the Career Journeys at the top of the page. 
• Select Credential Path
• Select the Implementer block.
• Under the "Choose One" options, select Risk and Compliance or Third-Party Risk Management - depending on what you are interested in.
• Even if you are not interested in getting the certification, this is the easiest way to get to all the courses mentioned above. You are not committing to getting certified by following this path.
• At this point, you will have reached a page that has multiple sections for your journey.
  • Section 1 - this contains many of the basic ServiceNow courses. The CIS-RC exam will not cover topics in these courses, but having a good background on the ServiceNow Platform will help.  Please see the notes below about these courses.
  • Section 2 - this contains the courses you should take if you are going to take the CIS-RC exam. Questions from ALL of these courses will be on the exam.
  • Section 3 - This course provides a link to the "exam blueprint". It explains how to sign up for an exam, provides guidance on topics covered on the exam and provides a few sample questions.

Non-GRC courses in Section 1 of the ServiceNow University Journey

• Welcome to ServiceNow and ServiceNow Administration Fundamentals are described in the matrix above and are highly recommended for students that want to get certified.
• The other courses in this section are optional, but may be beneficial. Below is a brief overview of each.
  • UI Builder Fundamentals - if you are a developer and will be supporting or building workspaces, this would be a good course to take.
  • Flow Fundamentals - Flow Designer is ServiceNow's workflow tool for technical and non-technical users. If you are a business user with a technical perspective, then this would be a good course to take. Many technical business users end up being citizen developers - and this is a very useful tool.
  • Get Started with Now Create - if you are a project manager and need to develop all the documents needed for the project, this would be a good quick course. There are a LOT of templates in Now Create that customers can leverage.
  • ServiceNow Platform Implementation - this is a 3-day instructor-led course. It is primarily focused on students that will be implementing either a very large site or are involved in implementing multiple sites.

Good luck on your IRM journey!