Security Operations email parsing

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Security Operations email parsing

    Security Operations Email Parsing enables ServiceNow customers to automatically generate Security Operations records—such as security incidents, vulnerabilities, and observables—from emails sent by external detection systems like malware detectors, vulnerability scanners, firewalls, and threat intelligence tools. This integration method helps streamline threat detection and response by transforming email data into actionable records within Security Operations.

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    How Email Parsing Works

    • Each Security Operations plugin (Security Incident Response, Threat Intelligence, Vulnerability Response) defines an emailto property specifying the email address for receiving external emails.
    • Incoming emails are stored in an email events table and processed to match against configured email parsers.
    • Matched emails trigger transform and duplication rules to create or update Security Operations records and link the email to these records.
    • Unmatched emails are listed separately for review and can be reprocessed to refine parsing rules.
    • Duplication rules prevent multiple records for the same issue by defining criteria and actions such as updating existing records or creating child records.
    • Email events are automatically deleted after 30 days by default.

    Handling Multiple Records in a Single Email

    The parser supports splitting a single email into multiple sections using a configurable Record Separator. For example, a malware detection email reporting multiple infected systems can be segmented so each system generates its own Security Incident record. Shared information (like malware name or hash) is extracted from header sections and applied across records, while system-specific data is extracted from each section individually.

    Records are only created for sections containing section-specific data, ensuring headers without unique identifiers do not create unnecessary records.

    Practical Application for ServiceNow Customers

    • Use Security Operations Email Parsing to integrate data from external security tools efficiently, reducing manual data entry.
    • Configure email parsers and transforms to accurately extract relevant fields both globally (e.g., malware details) and per affected entity (e.g., system IP or status).
    • Review unmatched emails to continuously improve parsing accuracy and coverage.
    • Leverage duplication rules to maintain clean and consolidated Security Operations records.

    Additional Capabilities and Notes

    • Email parsing works alongside platform inbound actions but does not replace them; it cannot set values on indirect fields like journal entries.
    • Transforms must be configured to search appropriately within the email body, either at the start of a line or anywhere in the body, depending on the data context.

    Generate new Security Operations records from external detection systems using Email Parsing. This feature provides a method for integrating information from external tools such as malware detection, vulnerability detection, firewalls, threat intelligence, and more.

    How emails are parsed

    Any system that can send an email, can create Security Operations records, for example, security incidents, requests, vulnerable items, vulnerabilities, security incident observables, attack methods, and more.

    All Security Operations plugins (Security Incident Response, Threat Intelligence, and Vulnerability Response) have a property (email_to) that defines the email address where external integrations should send emails to, to be parsed by the email parsers. See Email Processing > Properties for more information.

    Email sent to any of the Security Operations email addresses is stored in an email events table. These emails are processed to determine whether they match any email parser.

    Emails that have a match are flagged and the transform and duplication rules create or update a Security Operations record. The email is linked to that record and flagged as matched.

    Emails that do not match are listed in Unmatched Emails as a Security Operations record. They can be reviewed to help build email parsers to handle these emails. A Reprocess action allows you to run the unmatched email through the parsers again. The original email log is linked to that record.

    The duplication rules for the email transform manage multiple emails relating to the same issue. These rules define what makes a duplicate record and can prevent duplicate records from being created. When a duplicate is detected, the rule specifies what action to take: no action (do not create a new record), create the new record as a child record of the existing record, or update the existing record. When updating the duplicate rule specifies which fields in the existing record are updated.
    Note:
    A Security Operations email parser works in conjunction with platform inbound actions and does not replace them. It does not support setting values on indirect fields for example, sys_journal_field entries.

    By default, email events are deleted after 30 days.

    Multiple records

    External detection systems (malware detectors, vulnerability, and so on) can send emails that report on multiple items at one time. The email parser supports separators within the email.

    For example, a malware detector could send you an email report about all systems within your network infected by one particular malware with information about the malware first, followed by a list of the systems affected.

    Figure 1. Sample malicious email
    Malicious email example
    In this example, when the Record Separator is set within your Email Transformas =================, it splits the email into four sections that are evaluated separately. This creates a Security Incident for each of the three affected systems.
    Note:
    The header section is detected but does not have any affected systems so, it is used in all three records and does not create a fourth record.

    Field Transforms pull in data from each section. If something in the header or footer of the email applies to all records, such as Malware Hash, Malware Name, and Type in this example, the field transform for them should set Search for value to a value that searches within the email body either At the start of a line in the email body or Anywhere in the email body.

    Field Transforms must be set to search At the start of a line within the record section or Sec for data that is defined within each section, such as System, IP address, or Status. The record section options are only available when there is a record separator defined within the email transform.

    When parsing an email with a separator defined, records are only created for sections with at least one piece of section-specific data.

    In this example, three records are created, even though there are four sections defined. The first section is a header, and it lacks anything specific to only one system. If any of the fields within the first section were filled in (System, IP, or Status), then a record would be created for that section, as well.