Regulatory compliance made easy with CSDM maturity in ServiceNow

[Sujit Agrawal]

Regulatory compliance requires organizations to meet certain standards and practices, often imposed by industry, government, or both (think SOX, GDPR, HIPAA, etc.). Achieving and demonstrating compliance can be complex, especially when IT environments are fragmented, lack visibility, or have disjointed data. The Common Service Data Model (CSDM) in ServiceNow offers a standardized framework to structure, manage, and relate IT services and configuration items (CIs) within the ServiceNow platform. As organizations mature their adoption of CSDM, they unlock direct advantages for regulatory compliance.

How CSDM Maturity Eases Regulatory Compliance:

• Unified and Trusted Data Foundation

• Automated, Evidence-Based Auditing

• Streamlined Policy Enforcement

• Rapid Response and Mitigation

• Efficient Reporting and Continuous Improvement

Policy Mapping: Regulatory requirements can be directly mapped to CIs and services as defined by CSDM. This enables proactive compliance monitoring.

Central Source of Truth: CSDM enforces a structured, organization-wide view of services and assets. This means all compliance-relevant information is available at a single place. With mature CMDB, IT records are accurate, reducing discrepancies often flagged in audits.

Automated Controls and Evidence Capture: CSDM creates explicit links between business services, processes, applications, and infrastructure, making it easy to show regulators how controls are implemented and monitored. ServiceNow workflows can automatically log changes and incidents, providing a clear audit trail for compliance verification.

Rapid Response with Automation: CSDM allows for quick identification of affected services/CIs in the event of a compliance breach, aiding rapid remediation. ServiceNow can trigger automated actions (like access reviews, patching, change approvals) based on policy breaches, reducing manual interventions.

Standardized Reporting: Pre-configured CSDM structures enable out-of-the-box compliance reports for auditors and executives. Consistent and well-documented data structures give regulators confidence in your organization’s compliance posture.

Continuous Improvement: Mature CSDM provides real-time compliance status and alerts on non-compliance, ensuring issues are caught early.

Next Steps and Recommendations:

• Assess your CSDM maturity: Use ServiceNow’s CSDM maturity model as a guideline for phase-wise improvement, in conjunction with your regulatory obligations.

• Align compliance requirements to CSDM entities: Map key regulatory controls to CIs like Business Applications, Services, etc.. Use Information Objects defining what data is managed (e.g., Customer Account Data, Health Records) making regulation mapping easier.

• Automate evidence and reporting: Leverage ServiceNow’s workflow and reporting capabilities for continuous compliance.