Domain separation in Risk Management

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
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    Summary of Domain separation in Risk Management

    Domain separation in Risk Management enables ServiceNow customers to segregate data, processes, and administrative tasks into logical domains. This separation controls user access and visibility to data, supporting multi-tenant use cases such as service providers interacting with tenant customers. It is ideal for organizations requiring strict data segregation between business entities, customized processes per domain, and some global processes and reporting within a single instance.

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    Users can expand or collapse domain scopes to view data across domains to which they have explicit access. However, domain separation in GRC primarily supports data separation, with only partial support for logic and process separation.

    How Domain Separation Works in GRC

    In GRC, many records (entities, controls, risks, indicators, tests) are automatically generated via user processes. The domain for these records is set by the domain iterator configured for the job or defaults to a global or default domain. Manually created records inherit the domain of the user creating them.

    It is important to create or generate records at the correct domain level to ensure visibility by the appropriate users. For example, risks or controls that need to be assessed across multiple domains should be created at the global level. Assigning controls or risks from higher domains to users in lower domains is not supported because those users lack access, preventing proper questionnaire generation.

    Practical Use Case

    Separate business units, such as IT and Finance, can maintain isolated GRC data including entities, policies, controls, and risks. Users can toggle domain scopes to view data solely within their domain or across others where permitted.

    Domain separation applies by default to key tables like Task [task] and Configuration Items [cmdbci], and can be extended to custom tables by adding domain fields. However, domain separation of core platform tables is discouraged due to potential issues.

    While domain separation supports multi-tenancy within a single instance, some properties and processes remain global and shared across domains. For complete isolation without shared global data or processes, separate instances are recommended.

    Domain Allocation for GRC Objects

    The domain assignment for GRC record types depends on their source objects. For example:

    • Risks inherit domain from their Entity
    • Risk assessments inherit domain from the Risk
    • Risk assessment responses inherit from the Risk Assessment instance
    • Aggregated risks derive domain from Entity and Risk statements

    If the domain source is global or empty, the record defaults to the Default domain.

    Domain separation is supported for Risk Management. 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.

    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.

    Overview of domain separation

    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.

    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 sys_domain and sys_domain_path fields 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
    Risk Gets domain value from Entity.
    Risk assessment Gets domain value from Risk.
    Object assessment Gets domain value from Object.
    Risk assessment response Gets domain value from Risk Assessment instance.
    Risk identification Gets domain value from Entity.
    Aggregated risk Gets domain value from Entity and Risk statement.
    Basel reports Gets domain value from Risk events.
    Risk to control Gets domain value from Risk.
    Note:
    When the domain source is global or nil, then that object's domain will be set to Default.