Domain separation in GRC

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 4 minutes to read
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    Summary of Domain separation in GRC

    Domain separation in Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) applications allows you to logically segregate data, processes, and administrative tasks into distinct domains. This capability enables control over user access and data visibility, making it ideal for organizations that require strict data segregation between business entities, customized processes per domain, and some global reporting within a single ServiceNow instance. Users can expand or collapse domain scopes to view data across domains based on granted permissions.

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    How Domain Separation Works in GRC

    While GRC fully supports data separation, it does not fully support separation of logic and process. Records in GRC—such as entities, controls, risks, and indicators—can be generated automatically or manually, with domain assignment depending on the domain iterator or the user’s domain. Proper domain assignment is critical to ensure visibility and access for the intended users. For example, risks or controls meant for multiple domains should be created at a higher or global domain level to avoid indexing conflicts and access issues.

    Users should avoid assigning risks or controls in higher domains to users in lower domains, as this prevents attestation and assessment processes from generating correctly.

    Practical Use Cases

    • Separate GRC data by department, allowing each business area to have distinct entities, policies, controls, and risks that are not shared with others.
    • Users can toggle domain scope to include or exclude data from other domains when viewing controls or risks.
    • Domain separation applies by default to key tables such as Task [task] and Configuration Items [cmdbci], and can be extended to custom tables by adding a sysdomain field.

    Important: Platform tables with the sys prefix should not be domain-separated as this can cause unexpected behavior.

    Limitations and Considerations

    Domain separation supports multi-tenancy within a single instance but some global properties and processes remain shared. For example, global settings like the “Remember me” login option apply across domains and cannot be domain-specific. If complete isolation of system properties and processes is required without shared global data or reporting, separate ServiceNow instances are recommended.

    Domain Value Allocation

    Different GRC objects receive domain values based on their relationships:

    • Entities derive domain from their applicability.
    • Entity types assign domains to associated entities.
    • Item assessments and issues inherit domain from their related risks or controls.
    • Indicators and related tasks obtain domains from associated controls or risks.

    If the domain source is global or undefined, the default domain is assigned.

    Creating a Domain

    Domains can be created by adding records to the domain table, enabling customized segmentation of data and processes within your ServiceNow GRC platform.

    This is an overview of domain separation and the Governance, Risk, and Compliance applications. Domain separation enables you to separate data, processes, and administrative tasks into logical groupings called domains. You can control several aspects of this separation, including which users can see and access data.

    Domain separation is best for those customers who:
    • Need to enforce absolute data segregation between business entities (data separation).
    • Customize business process definitions and user interfaces for each domain (delegated administration).
    • Maintain some global processes and global reporting in a single instance.
    These users can choose to expand or collapse the domain scope to show or hide data from other domains.
    Note:
    Users always have access to data from domains that have been explicitly granted to them by domain visibility.

    Support level: Basic

    • Business logic: Ensure that data goes into the proper domain for the application’s service provider use cases.
    • The application supports domain separation at run time. The domain separation includes separation from the user interface, cache keys, reporting, rollups, and aggregations.
    • The owner of the instance must set up the application to function across multiple tenants.

    Sample use case: When a service provider (SP) uses chat to respond to a tenant-customer’s message, the customer must be able to see the SP's response.

    For more information on support levels, see Application support for domain separation.

    How domain separation works in GRC

    • While GRC supports separation of data, separation of logic and process is not fully supported.

    • Many types of records in GRC are automatically generated through user processes. Entities, controls, risks, indicators, and control tests are all fields that can be generated automatically. For records that are automatically generated, the domain of the record is determined by the domain iterator configured for the job. Otherwise, it defaults to the default domain (if defined) or to the Global domain. For records that are manually generated, the domain is derived from the domain of the user creating the record.

      Automatic generation should be kept in mind when working in a domain-separated GRC implementation. Users should be sure that they are creating / generating records at the right domain level so that they are visible to the right set of users.

      For example, suppose you have domains that look like:
      • Global
      • TOP
        • Domain A
        • Domain B
    • If you have a risk or control that you want to be assessed by users in domains A and B, the risk or control should be generated or manually created at the global level. If the risk or control is created in Domain B, you will not be able to recreate the risk or control in Domain A due to indexing.
    • If you have a risk or control that you want to be assessed by users in TOP and Domain A, you can create the risk or control in Domain A.

    Unless the risks and controls are in the Global domain, users should not assign risks or controls in a higher domain to users in a lower domain. In the example above, if you have a control in the TOP domain, you should not assign it for attestation to users in Domains A or B since those users would not have access to the control; thus the attestation or assessment questionnaire would not be generated.

    Similarly, users should not assign control objectives and risk statements in a higher domain to attestations and assessments in a lower domain. Otherwise the attestation or assessment questionnaire would not be generated.

    Use case

    GRC data for IT can be separated from the GRC data of other departments. Each business area using the GRC application can have separate data that cannot be shared with other departments. Therefore each department can have its own entities, policies, controls, risks, and so on.

    When looking at a control from the IT domain, the user can choose to expand the domain scope to show values from the Finance domain or collapse the domain scope to show only controls that match the IT domain.

    By default, domain separation adds a domain field to the Task [task]and Configuration Items [cmdb_ci] tables and their extensions.

    You can extend domain separation to any new tables you create by adding a sys_domain field to the table's dictionary definition. By default, the system only domain-separates platform and baseline application tables where appropriate.

    Warning:
    ServiceNow does not recommend domain separating platform tables (any table with the sys_ prefix such as the Dictionary Entry [sys_dictionary]and Dictionary Entry Override [sys_dictionary_override] tables) because it can produce unexpected results.

    In this use case, client scripts, business rules, workflows, processes, and so on can be domain-separated.

    While the behavior offered with domain separation provides multi-tenancy support, multi-tenancy is still contained within a single instance. This means that some global properties, some global data, and some global processes are shared across all domains. For example, the system’s “Remember me” option on the login page is global and cannot be specified per domain.

    If you need complete and total separation of all system properties and do not require global reporting or global processes, separate instances are the best option.

    How domain values are allocated to GRC objects

    Records that are automatically generated, the domain of the record is determined by the domain iterator configured for the job. The following table shows how domain values are allocated to different GRC objects:

    GRC objects Domain source
    Entity Gets domain value from Applies_to.
    Entity to entity type Gets domain value from Entity type.
    Item assessment Gets domain value from item (risk or control).
    Issue Gets domain value from item (risk or control).
    Entity to information object Gets domain value from Entity.
    Indicator Gets domain value from control or risk.
    Indicator Task Gets domain value from indicator.
    Supporting Data Gets domain value from indicator.
    Indicator Result Gets domain value from indicator.
    Note:
    When the domain source is global or nil, then that object's domain will be set to Default.