Removing assignments from findings and remediation tasks
Summarize
Summary of Removing assignments from findings and remediation tasks
This process enables remediation owners and vulnerability analysts to unassign themselves or their group from findings and remediation tasks that may have been incorrectly assigned. This ensures that records are routed to the appropriate owners, enhancing workflow efficiency.
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Key Features
- Unassignment can be performed on records in any state except Closed or Resolved using the Unassign button or More options menu.
- When a remediation task is unassigned, all associated findings in the same assignment group are also unassigned.
- Unassigned records are displayed under the Unassigned module for easy tracking.
- Approval workflows can be triggered based on system properties, allowing for controlled unassignments.
- Vulnerability administrators have the ability to disable approvals and redirect unassigned records as needed.
- Daily scheduled jobs monitor unassigned records, providing reassignment counts for analysis and improvement of assignment rules.
Key Outcomes
By effectively managing assignments, users can ensure that tasks are appropriately routed, improving operational efficiency and accountability. Monitoring tools and approval workflows offer insights into assignment effectiveness and help maintain control over unassigned records.
You can remove yourself or your group from the Assigned to and Assignment group fields on findings and remediation tasks if you believe they were incorrectly assigned.
Overview of the workflow
Remediation owners and vulnerability analysts can unassign records using the Unassign UI action. This helps route records that are outside their scope to the appropriate owners.
Use case
Use the Unassign option when a finding or remediation task is not relevant to your scope or was mistakenly assigned to you or your group.
Unassigning from findings and remediation tasks
You can unassign records in any state except Closed or Resolved, using the Unassign button or the More options menu ().
- Remediation tasks: When a remediation task is unassigned, all associated findings with the same assignment group are also unassigned. Note:Items with a different assignment group than their remediation task are not unassigned, as they are likely manually assigned.
- Findings: Records unassigned manually or via UI appear under the Unassigned module.
Any records that you update assignments for with the UI action or manually are displayed on the Unassigned module.
Approval workflow and system properties
By default, unassigning a record triggers an approval workflow if the system property sn_vul.unassign_vr.approval_required is set to true. This generates an approval request that appears under My Approvals. If approved:
- The Assigned to and Assignment group fields are cleared.
- The Assignment type is set to Unassigned.
- The record can be optionally reassigned to a group defined in sn_vul.default_assignment_group.
- Notifications are sent to the new group.
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If rejected, the reason appears in the Notes tab.
As a vulnerability administrator, you can:
- Disable approvals by setting sn_vul.unassign_vr.approval_required to false.
- Redirect unassigned records to a specific group by setting its sys_id in sn_vul.default_assignment_group.
- Manage notifications using the Unassign notification user group if no default group is set.
The Assignment type (Manual, Rule, or Unassigned) helps identify how a record was last assigned. When unassigned, this field is set to Unassigned and is visible on both the record and list views.
Monitoring unassignments with scheduled jobs
A daily Reassignment count for assignment rules scheduled job tracks unassigned records to assess assignment rule effectiveness. This job counts:
- Findings reassigned to Unassigned.
- Manually unassigned records.
- System-unassigned records
These counts appear in the Assignment Rules list under the following columns:
- Manual items count
- Unassigned items count
- Navigate to .
- Select Administration in the navigation pane.
- Select Review on the Assignment rules tile.
- On the Rules page, select Assignment in the navigation pane.
- Use the gear icon to add both reassignment columns to the list view.
Each reassigned record retains a reference to its original assignment rule. The list view displays reassignment counts for each assignment rule, helping you identify rules that may need adjustment.
The following example shows reassignment counts for two assignment rules.