Exception Management overview

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Exception Management Overview

    Exception Management allows organizations to request exceptions when they cannot comply with vulnerability management or security policies. This process involves requesting, reviewing, approving, or rejecting exceptions for vulnerable items (VIs) or remediation tasks (RTs) that are not remediable under existing policies. Approved exceptions indicate an acceptance of risk due to non-remediation.

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    Key Features

    • Definition: An exception is a request to postpone remediation of a VI or RT for a defined period.
    • Request Process: Remediation owners can initiate an exception request, which, once approved, changes the VI or RT to a Deferred state.
    • Approval Workflow: Exception requests undergo a risk assessment by vulnerability analysts and require a two-level approval workflow, depending on available approvers.
    • Tracking: The status of an exception can be monitored through the State Change Approvals tab for the corresponding VI or RT.
    • Expiry Management: Expired exception requests revert VIs or RTs to their Open state, allowing for further action.
    • Deferral Tracking: A scheduled job tracks and posts counts of records deferred multiple times.

    Key Outcomes

    By utilizing Exception Management, ServiceNow customers can effectively defer remediation for vulnerabilities while understanding the risks involved. Upon approval, customers can manage the status of exceptions, ensure compliance with security practices, and maintain visibility over deferred items, ultimately enhancing their vulnerability management processes.

    When your organization can't comply with a published vulnerability management or security policy, standard, or guideline, you can request an exception. Exception management entails requesting, reviewing, approving, or rejecting exceptions to a vulnerable item (VI) or remediation task (RT) that cannot be remediated according to the policy.

    Some vulnerabilities might not have an existing patch, fix, or solution. When an exception is approved, it also means that you're accepting a risk because you're acknowledging and agreeing to the consequences of not remediating the vulnerability.

    Life cycle of an exception

    Definition of an exception
    An exception is a request to defer the remediation of a VI or RT for a specified period. For example, as a remediation owner, you can request an exception if a patch is not available for a machine.
    Requesting an exception
    As the remediation owner, you can ask for an exemption for a VI or RT using the exception management process. After the exception approver approves this request, the VI or RT moves to a Deferred state.
    Approving an exception request
    VIs or RTs that can't be remediated immediately are reviewed by vulnerability analysts, assessed for risk, and approved for deferral until they can be remediated. Approving an exception request can be a two-level workflow. If only the first-level approver is present, the exception can be requested and approved. However, if there's no first-level approver, an exception can't be requested. See Add an exception approver for more information.
    Note:

    • Starting from Vulnerability Response v15.0, if you are deploying the VR application for the first time, the flow designer for exception management is enabled by default. If you are already using the workflow, you can update to the flow designer. In both cases, you cannot change it back to workflow. To configure approval rules for exception management and false positive, see Configure approval rules for Exception Management.

      Once an exception request for a VI or RT is approved, you can perform the following actions:
      • Reopen
      • Delete
      • Update the Assignment to or Assignment groups fields
    • Starting with v23.0 of Vulnerability Response, the Exception Rule State Approval workflow is deprecated and replaced by the flow Exception Rule Approval in the flow designer.
    Tracking an exception request
    After raising the exception, you can track its status by using the State Change Approvals tab of the VI or RT. If an action is taken on an RT, you can't track the status of the individual VIs in that RT.
    Expiry of an exception request
    When an exception request for a particular VI or RT expires, the impacted VI or RT reverts to its Open state.
    Figure 1. Exception management approval process prior to VR v15.0
    Life cycle of an exception requested for a VI or remediation task. The exception request starts with the remediation owner and ends with the exception approver L2.

    If a single VI or all the VIs in a RT pass in the next scan, then the VIs and, where applicable, the RT State field changes to Closed with the substate Fixed.

    Multiple deferrals

    Track the number of times a record or a remediation task is deferred. A scheduled job, set deferral counts, runs daily to post counts for the records that are deferred more than once in the Deferral count column in the Multiple deferrals module for VR. All counts for records associated with a remediation task are collected and posted if a remediation task is deferred more than one time.