Authentication

ServiceNow®'s authentication validates the identity of a user who accesses an instance, and then authorizes the user to features that match the user's role or job function.

Get started

Multi-Provider Single Sign-on (SSO) Username and password configured in identity providers, which have a matching user account in the database.	OAuth Inbound and Outbound OAuth based authentication validates the identity of the client that attempts to establish a trust on the system by using an authentication protocol.
API Access Policy API access policy defines the permissions and access to an API that can be controlled through a policy.	Digest Token Authentication Username and the secret in the table, perform an hash operation that is user-specific such as SHA1, SHA 256, or MD5. This value has to be appended as part of the URL suffix, which works on the query param.
Time Limited Authentication Configure link based authentication on the ServiceNow instance. The configured link can be shared with the user through Email or SMS and user can use those links to login to instance.	Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) MFA enables you to provide second level of authentication that includes using passcode from an authentication app, hardware key, biometric authenticator, SMS, or Email.
Certificate based authentication Unique PEM encoded certificates mapped to users instead of user name and password for certificate based authentication.	Self Registration Use external user self-registration to on-board a large volume of external users to your instance.
LDAP Integrate with a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) directory to streamline the user login process

You can use several different methods to authenticate users. User credentials are matched to different saved credentials for each method.

Note:

• The Okta SSO plugin is deprecated.
• To learn more about the security properties that affect authorization processing, see Access control in Instance Security Hardening Settings.
• You can use SAML and Digest Authentication through the Multiple Provider SSO application.