CIs attestation

  • Release version: Washingtondc
  • Updated February 1, 2024
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of CIs Attestation

    CIs attestation enables organizations to verify the existence of their IT infrastructure and applications within the Configuration Management Database (CMDB). This process ensures the integrity of the CMDB by systematically identifying and removing stale Configuration Items (CIs) associated with outdated infrastructure or applications.

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    Key Features

    • Attestation Policy Creation: Use the CMDB Data Manager in CMDB Workspace to create policies that specify which CIs need attestation and their frequency.
    • Task Assignment: Assign attestation tasks to knowledgeable users who can attest or reject CIs based on their management experience.
    • Smart Detection and Auto-Attestation: Streamlines CI attestation by automatically attesting CIs detected by discovery programs, contingent upon certain conditions being met.
    • My Work View: Users can access their assigned attestation tasks through the My Work view in CMDB Workspace for easy review and processing.

    Key Outcomes

    By implementing CIs attestation, organizations can maintain an accurate CMDB, ensuring that only relevant CIs are retained. Users can efficiently attest or reject CIs, and those marked for rejection can be retired, archived, or deleted. Smart detection further enhances efficiency by automating the attestation process for recently discovered CIs, helping to keep the CMDB current and reliable.

    Verify the existence of actual IT infrastructure and applications that you own, systematically and in bulk. As CIs are continuously ingested into the CMDB from various data sources, ensure the integrity of the CMDB. Remove any stale CIs that are associated with IT infrastructure or applications that no longer exists.

    Use the CMDB Data Manager in CMDB Workspace to create an Attestation policy, specifying CIs that need to be attested and the attestation frequency. Assign Attestation tasks to users that are familiar with or that manage the CIs, and who can attest or reject the IT infrastructure or applications that those CIs represent. Rejected CIs that are no longer needed can then be retired, archived, or deleted from the CMDB.

    Users can go to the My Work view in CMDB Workspace to see their assigned attestation tasks, and then review and process the tasks.

    Smart detection and auto-attestation

    Smart detection streamlines and simplifies CI attestation. With smart detection you can auto-attest CIs that are automatically detected by discovery programs, based only on recent discovery results.

    The following conditions must be met to enable smart detection:
    In addition, smart detection uses the following system properties as filters when creating a list of CIs that are candidates for auto-attestation. To be included as candidates for auto-attestation, CIs must be discovered:
    • Within the discovery time window specified by the sn_cmdb_ws.attestation.smart_detection.discovery_window system property (for example, within the last 30 days)
    • By any discovery source that isn't excluded by the sn_cmdb_ws.attestation.smart_detection.discovery_source.exclusion system property
    Then, when you review those candidate CIs, you can choose to auto-attest them.

    Properties associated with Attestation

    Property Description

    sn_cmdb_ws.attestation.smart_detection.disabled

    Disables smart detection.
    sn_cmdb_ws.attestation.smart_detection.discovery_source.exclusion

    Comma-separated list of discovery sources that are excluded in smart detection processing. For example, a data source that is unreliable in detecting CIs.

    CIs discovered by discovery sources in the list, can't be candidates for auto-attestation.
    sn_cmdb_ws.attestation.smart_detection.discovery_window

    Number of days (discovery window) that smart detection uses to determine whether a CI is a candidate for auto-attestation. Only CIs that were discovered within this discovery window can be candidates for auto-attestation.