What's New in Zurich

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The Zurich release introduces major advancements to ServiceNow’s Data Privacy solution, designed to help organizations discover, classify, and protect sensitive information within their ServiceNow instances. This session broke down the full lifecycle of managing sensitive data — from discovery to anonymization — while showcasing live demos and AI-powered features that make compliance and governance simpler than ever.

Understanding the Problem

Sensitive data often ends up in ServiceNow unintentionally — in fields like descriptions, comments, or attachments — without the proper security controls. The Data Privacy solution helps identify and manage that data to prevent exposure, meet compliance requirements (like GDPR, CCPA, and HIPAA), and maintain customer trust.

The Core Components

ServiceNow’s Data Privacy framework is built around three key components:

1. Data Discovery - Detects sensitive data (structured and unstructured) across the platform using a combination of regular expressions, keywords, and machine learning models. 

- Patterns identity structured data like credit card or phone numbers.  

- Named Entity Recognition (NER) models handle unstructured data such as names or addresses. 

- Administrators can even use Now Assist to automatically generate custom regular expressions for new data types (ex. Bitcoin wallet IDs). 

- Discovery jobs can run as full, incremental, or attachment-only scans, allowing flexibility and efficiency. 

2. Data Classification – Tags sensitive data based on risk and usage (e.g., Confidential, PII, PHI).

- Classifications define how data should be handled downstream.

- This metadata acts as the foundation for access control, encryption, and anonymization. 

3. Data Anonymization - Controls how sensitive data is removed or masked. 

- Techniques include full removal, static replacement, randomization, or partial masking (ex. keeping the last four digital of an SSN). 

-Supports both batch anonymization (ex. post-clone cleanup) and real-time anonymization, which scrubs sensitive inputs as they're entered in journal fields, comments, or AI interfaces. 

Integrating with AI and GenAI 

A key Zurich enhancement is Data Privacy for Now Assist and Virtual Agent, extending protection to AI interactions. This feature ensures that data sent to or returned from Large Language Models (LLMs) is automatically masked — preventing unintentional exposure during GenAI processing. It’s available to all Now Assist and Virtual Agent customers as a core capability, not requiring additional licensing.

Attachments and File Types

The discovery engine now supports scanning of common attachment types — including PDF, DOCX, TXT, CSV, and Excel — which are frequent sources of hidden sensitive data in ITSM and HR workflows.

Deployment and Licensing

- Data Privacy requires either a Vault entitlement or standalone license. 

- Real-time channels for Now Assist and Virtual Agent are available t no cost. 

- A 30-day trial is available via SubProd or PDI environments for testing discovery, classification, and anonymization features. 

Why It Matters 

The ServiceNow Data Privacy solution isn’t just a compliance tool — it’s a proactive way to reduce security risk, prevent data leakage, and demonstrate commitment to responsible AI adoption. With Zurich, organizations can automate the discovery and protection of sensitive data across every channel — structured, unstructured, and AI-driven.