Manage controls using the Compliance Workspace

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Manage controls using the Compliance Workspace

    This content guides ServiceNow customers on effectively managing controls within the Compliance Workspace. Controls represent specific implementations of control objectives critical for risk mitigation and regulatory compliance. The process emphasizes rationalizing, consolidating, and defining controls thoughtfully rather than bulk importing, to ensure controls align with business objectives and improve IT performance while minimizing overhead.

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    Key Practices for Managing Controls

    • Rationalize Controls: Evaluate each control’s impact on business objectives, its effectiveness in risk prevention or detection, and opportunities to simplify or improve controls as business and IT environments evolve.
    • Consolidate Controls: Identify redundant controls across multiple regulations (e.g., SOX, GLBA, AML) and cross-map them to create a unified control framework. This consolidation reduces duplication and facilitates audit readiness.
    • Define Controls and Business Rules: Establish clear definitions of controls, assign owners, define test criteria and frequencies, assess risks, and prepare necessary attestations and evidence. Plan use cases detailing who interacts with GRC data and how.

    Entity Association and Data Accuracy

    Controls must be associated with entities, which is mandatory on the Control form. Missing or disabled entities can cause inaccurate compliance calculations and should be addressed by adding entities or retiring affected controls.

    Entity Based Access (EBA)

    EBA provides granular data access management tied to entities, enabling administrators to grant access to related records through user or group assignments. When EBA is enabled, new controls and related records automatically inherit entity-based access settings, streamlining access control and enhancing security without manual bulk updates.

    What Customers Can Expect

    • Improved control management aligned with business goals and risk mitigation.
    • Reduced control redundancy through consolidation and cross-mapping, simplifying compliance efforts.
    • Accurate compliance calculations ensured by proper entity associations.
    • Enhanced security and streamlined access control via Entity Based Access automation.

    Controls are specific implementations of a control objective. Retired controls do not appear in the list. Before defining controls, take time to rationalize, consolidate, and define the important controls in your organization.

    Rationalize your controls

    If you upload all your controls in bulk, you are missing the opportunity to refine and streamline your controls set.
    • How does this control affect my business objective?
    • Is this control actually preventing or detecting risk?
    • Is there a different control you can place that better protects your business?
    • Is there a control you can put in place that reduces process overhead and improves IT performance while also mitigating risk?
    • Can a complicated control be replaced with a simpler more effective control?
    As your business changes, and your IT data, processes, and technology improve, replace outdated controls and procedures.
    Note:
    When you define controls manually or when you import them from the Unified Compliance Framework (UCF), an entity is associated with the controls. It is a mandatory field on the Control form. If, however, you import controls from a source other than the UCF, you may encounter controls that do not have associated entities. It is important that you return to the Control form and add an entity to the control. Missing entities can cause unreliable results in calculations. Also, if you encounter a control with an entity that has been disabled, the control should be retired.

    Consolidate your controls

    Look for opportunities to consolidate controls. Look for common, repeated controls across multiple regulatory authorities of frameworks (for example, SOX and GLBA and AML). Avoid operating a single control multiple times for each regulation, by cross-mapping controls and eliminating the redundant ones. This process establishes a single consolidated set of controls = control framework, performing and preserving the cross mapping of controls is critical for audits.

    Define controls and business rules

    The business rules you define up front, establish the GRC configuration settings later. Be prepared to:
    • Identify controls and control owners
    • Define control tests and expected results
    • Establish test and control frequencies
    • Identify risks: impact and likelihood
    • Prepare attestations, assessments, questionnaires, and required evidence
    • Compose likely use-cases (who needs to interact with or view the contents of the GRC system and for what purposes)
    • Map authoritative sources to policies, to procedures, to controls, and to risks

    Entity Based Access (EBA)

    The Entity Based Access feature provides a framework for more granular approach to management of data access to objects associated with an entity. Administrators can grant access to an entity's related records by adding users or user groups, or by using entity user fields for entity-based access configuration. For more information, see Entity Based Access.

    When a user is qualified based on these configurations and has the minimum required roles, they will have access to the following tables:
    • Control
    • Attestation
    • Policy exception to control

    Entity Based Access (EBA) rules

    When entity based record access rules are enabled on the Entity Based Access Configuration Properties page, any newly created controls, control attestations, indicators, and indicator tasks associated with a configured entity will automatically inherit the entity-based access (EBA) value from that entity. Previously, users had to run bulk access updates to apply EBA restrictions whenever new objects were created.

    For more information, see Entity based record access rules to secure new records.