CSA CERTIFICATION

[AbishekharT]

what is Elevated privilege?

[Sandeep Rajput]

 Elevated privileges in ServiceNow are temporary, session-based permissions given to a user to access highly sensitive administrative or security features. Users must manually turn on these special rights when they log in. These rights end when the user logs out.

An example of elevated privileges is elevating as security_admin to grant roles and make changes in ACL.

For more information please refer to https://www.servicenow.com/docs/r/platform-security/c_ElevatedPrivilege.html

[TharshneK185996]

Hi @AbishekharT ,

An elevated privilege role is a role that stays inactive by default, even after it's assigned to you. You have to manually "elevate" to it before you can use its permissions. This exists to prevent powerful roles from being active all the time, reducing the risk of accidental or unauthorized changes.

A few key points:

• Elevated roles are not active on login - you must manually elevate each time you want to use one
• The elevation only lasts for your current session - logging out or session timeout removes it
• Any role can be configured as an elevated role by an admin, it isn't limited to just security_admin
• If one elevated role contains another elevated role, you still need to elevate to each one separately - elevating to the parent role does not auto-elevate the child role

Regarding the admin role:
Only a user with the admin role can grant admin to someone else. A user with just user_admin cannot do this. Similarly, to grant security_admin to another user, you need the admin role and must first elevate to security_admin yourself.

Regarding security_admin:
Out of the box, security_admin is the only role that comes pre-configured as elevated. It's assigned by default to the system admin account and controls access to ACLs and High Security Settings.

In short - elevated roles give you a manual checkpoint before using sensitive permissions, so access isn't granted automatically just by being logged in.

Role What is do?

security_admin

Create and modify ACLs, manage security rules and access controls.

Hope this helps!

[Tanushree Maiti · Accepted solution]

Hi @AbishekharT 

Elevated privileges in ServiceNow are an additional security measure used to protect highly sensitive administrative tasks from accidental or unauthorized changes. This special permission gets activated the permissions for your current session only.

The most common elevated privilege is the security_admin role. When elevated, this role allows administrators to perform restricted actions such as modifying High Security Settings and creating or editing Access Control Lists (ACLs), which are otherwise protected.

refer: Elevated privilege roles 

Elevate to a privileged role 

[jeffreybell]

Hello @AbishekharT  out of curiosity did you take the system administration fundamentals offered by the ServiceNow University? I checked one of my older books (Xanadu) and found a section on it