When something breaks, IT and security are always the first on the phone together. An outage, a zero-day vulnerability, an insider threat—these moments erase the line between the two functions. They’re two halves of the same defense, working together to protect uptime, data, and trust. Yet in many organizations, their tools and priorities still live in separate systems, making collaboration harder just when it matters most.

As ServiceNow expanded in size and complexity, the gap between IT and security began to matter more. An overwhelming number of alerts and a lack of visibility made it difficult to prioritize the most critical threats. Compliance audits demanded duplicate evidence. Teams were responding quickly, but not always together. So, the question became obvious: if IT and security already shared accountability, why shouldn’t they share the same platform?

Built by security people, for security people

Before we had a dedicated security operations platform, the security team tried to manage incidents and vulnerabilities through IT workflows. It worked—until it didn’t. 

Like many organizations, we discovered that security demands a different kind of precision and control than traditional IT processes. But instead of adding yet another bolt-on tool, the team decided to build security on the platform itself. 

That moment became the foundation of ServiceNow Security Operations (SecOps)—and, later, the model for how IT and security could operate in unison. We learned that resilience doesn’t come from more systems. It comes from one system, built to handle more.

A single platform for shared responsibility

Today, IT and security operate side-by-side on the ServiceNow AI Platform, sharing data, workflows, and insights to detect and respond to risk as a tag-team.

The foundation of this model is simple: IT runs in the same place that security protects. On a unified platform, that connection becomes visible and actionable. Both teams now share a single source of truth—the Configuration Management Database (CMDB)—which provides shared context across systems, assets, and business services. That context and visibility power accurate prioritization. Aligned on the same data, issues can be ranked, routed, and resolved faster, based on what’s truly critical to the organization. Routine patching, vulnerability management, and incident investigation now draw from the same system of record. What used to require handoffs between teams now happens through coordinated workflows powered by AI.

AI Agents and Now Assist serve as the connective intelligence across this ecosystem. In IT operations, AI handles repetitive tasks such as scheduling and applying server patches, boosting productivity by more than half. In SecOps, AI documents investigations, drafts resolution notes, and generates post-impact analyses, saving analysts valuable time and reducing business disruption. Routine tasks are handled by AI automatically, resolving over half of false-positive phishing cases in less than twenty seconds.

Building trust through risk and compliance

Unifying IT and security also required a stronger foundation for governance. ServiceNow implemented its Integrated Risk Management (IRM) solution to give teams a single, real-time view of enterprise risk.

Policy, compliance, and audit are no longer separate conversations—they’re part of a continuous feedback loop. Over a dozen compliance teams across the organization—from legal and privacy to security—use IRM to monitor controls, certifications, and audit readiness directly within the platform. The result is not just better reporting, but a culture of accountability. Every control owner can see, test, and prove the effectiveness of their safeguards.

This integration has changed the tempo of risk management. By bringing cyber and operational risk into the governance framework, ServiceNow can now surface insights daily, empowering IT and security leaders to act on the same, trusted data.

From reactive response to proactive resilience

The unified platform has fundamentally reshaped how ServiceNow protects its business. Security operations that once relied on manual triage have evolved into AI-augmented SecOps. Automation and intelligence handle much of the repetitive work, freeing analysts to focus on higher-value response. Starting with semi-automated workflows for phishing, ServiceNow steadily scaled security automation through close collaboration with IT and product engineering. Our workflows became intelligent, contextual, and autonomous.

Today, AI not only accelerates remediation but also continuously learns from outcomes to strengthen the next response. Playbook automation for AI Agents, and Now Assist generates recommended actions and post-incident reports, reclaiming more than 1,700 hours for analysts every month.

Governance that enables innovation

We expanded our use of AI across the enterprise to make governance essential. The company introduced AI Control Tower (AICT) to create visibility into where and how AI is used, ensuring every automation aligns with policy, risk, and ethical standards.

Governance shouldn’t slow innovation; it should give technology direction. By building oversight directly into the platform, ServiceNow ensures that AI development and deployment happen with confidence and trust. Security isn’t an afterthought or a barrier—it’s part of the foundation.   

Results

By unifying IT, security, and risk on the ServiceNow AI Platform, we’ve turned operational alignment into a measurable advantage:

• Server patch management productivity increased by 53 percent, as IT and security jointly streamlined vulnerability response through shared workflows
• Incident documentation and analysis are completed seven times faster, with AI assisting analysts in drafting resolution notes and post-impact reviews
• Security risk assessments are 66 percent more efficient overall, with AI helping teams identify, prioritize, and mitigate threats faster
• Over half of false-positive phishing cases are resolved within twenty seconds, dramatically reducing investigation time and improving response precision
• Automation and AI-driven playbooks have reclaimed more than 1,700 hours each month, allowing security teams to focus on higher-value response and prevention

ServiceNow’s transformation is more than just faster response; it’s about building confidence that scales. By uniting IT, security, and risk on one AI-powered platform, we’ve created a living model of resilience, where prevention, detection, and recovery flow through the same system of action.