Basic Auth deprecation: aligning ServiceNow inbound authentication with enterprise IAM standards

[Jeff Boltz1]

Hello Community,

We're beginning early architecture planning for ServiceNow's announced deprecation of Basic Authentication for inbound integrations.

ServiceNow recommends migration to modern authentication approaches such as OAuth 2.0, mutual TLS (mTLS), and federated/token-based authentication.

The technical options are understandable. The more interesting question for us is ownership and standardization in a large enterprise.

Our ServiceNow platform team owns the ServiceNow side of the integration: platform configuration, ServiceNow authorization, API access, Machine Identities, roles/ACLs, testing, and ongoing platform support.

However, we do not necessarily own the enterprise identity and authentication infrastructure behind those choices.

For example, our ServiceNow team participates in configuring ServiceNow SSO, but the enterprise identity provider and federation infrastructure are owned and governed outside of the ServiceNow platform team.

We see a similar boundary emerging for inbound API authentication.

Before defining a "ServiceNow standard" such as OAuth Client Credentials, JWT Bearer, federated tokens, or mTLS, we believe the target patterns should first align with the organization's broader:

- Identity and Access Management standards

- Cybersecurity architecture

- API security standards

- PKI / certificate-management standards

- Machine identity standards

- Token and secret lifecycle requirements

The ServiceNow implementation would then consume those enterprise-approved patterns where the platform supports them, rather than creating a ServiceNow-specific authentication architecture independently.

For enterprise customers working through the same Basic Authentication migration:

1. Who owns the target authentication architecture in your organization?

2. Did the ServiceNow platform team select its preferred replacement authentication methods, or did you first align with enterprise IAM / Cyber / API Architecture standards?

3. Have you established a small catalog of enterprise-approved patterns, for example:

   - machine-to-machine authentication,

   - user-delegated authentication,

   - federated enterprise identity,

   - certificate-based authentication,

   - product/platform-specific authentication?

4. If your enterprise has a preferred machine-to-machine standard, how closely were you able to align ServiceNow with it?

5. Where have ServiceNow platform capabilities or third-party product limitations required an exception to the enterprise standard?

6. Who owns operational responsibilities such as:

   - client registration,

   - token issuer configuration,

   - client secret rotation,

   - certificate issuance and rotation,

   - private-key custody,

   - federation configuration,

   - authentication monitoring?

7. How do you govern exceptions when an integration supports "OAuth" but does not support the specific OAuth flow or security profile preferred by your organization?

8. Do you require architecture/security review before allowing an integration team to select a ServiceNow-supported authentication mechanism?

Our goal is not simply to replace Basic Authentication before the deprecation deadline.

We're trying to establish a supportable enterprise model where the ServiceNow platform team owns the ServiceNow implementation, but authentication architecture remains aligned with broader enterprise security and identity standards.

I'm particularly interested in practical governance and ownership models from large enterprises that have already started this work.

Thanks,

Jeff