Exploring Cloud Account Management
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Summary of Exploring Cloud Account Management
The ServiceNow Cloud Account Management feature within Cloud Workspace provides a streamlined framework to automate and manage cloud account lifecycle tasks such as creation, suspension, reactivation, and certification. It enhances administrative efficiency by enabling data certification that ensures the integrity and security of user accounts across your cloud environments.
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As an administrator, you can monitor key account statistics like critical severity accounts, suspended accounts, certification due dates, and budget statuses directly from the Home tab.
Key Features
- Entitlement-Based Access: Cloud Account Management capabilities are available through the ITOM Cloud Accelerate license, requiring the Cloud Governance Suite (CGS) license as a prerequisite. The CGS license grants access to asset exploration and the home page, while the combined CGS + CAM licenses enable account overview, request submissions and approvals, account certification, compliance dashboard viewing, configuration management, and automated request policies.
- Compliance Dashboard: Consolidates cloud data and security/compliance metrics from ITOM Visibility and Cloud Account Management for unified reporting and monitoring.
- Cloud Terminology Alignment: Recognizes equivalent cloud account structures across providers (Azure subscriptions, AWS accounts, GCP projects) and access methods (console and programmatic access), standardizing them as cloud accounts and IAM service accounts within the application.
- User Personas: Supports distinct roles including Requester (initiates requests), Approver (reviews requests), Admin (configures and onboards accounts), Certifier (validates account data), Asset Viewer (views configuration items and dashboards), and Account Manager (manages account details and ownership access).
- Automation and Control: Enables defining request policies for automating account creation, suspension, approvals, and budget validations, promoting consistency and compliance with organizational security policies.
Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers
- Standardized Account Management: Simplifies cloud subscription account workflows with defined procedures and role-based permissions to ensure governance and security compliance.
- Lifecycle Management: Facilitates easy suspension, reactivation, and addition of unmanaged cloud accounts.
- Enhanced Visibility: Provides dashboards and reporting tools to monitor account health, policy compliance, and operational risks effectively.
- Data Integrity Assurance: Supports certification processes that verify rightful ownership and control of cloud accounts, aiding regulatory and security requirements.
Next Steps
Customers should ensure appropriate licensing (CGS and ITOM Cloud Accelerate) to enable these capabilities and consider assigning defined user roles to align with their cloud governance practices. Utilize the compliance dashboard for ongoing monitoring and leverage request policies to automate account management processes tailored to your organizational needs.
The ServiceNow Cloud Account Management in Cloud Workspace application provides a framework to streamline the cloud account creation and management process.
Cloud Account Management overview
The automation capabilities of Cloud Account Management in Cloud Workspace simplify administrative tasks related to account management, such as creation, suspension, reactivation, and certification. Data certification confirms the integrity and security of user accounts within the organization's cloud environment.
As a Cloud Account Management admin, you can view the account statistics displayed on the Home tab, which include critical severity accounts, high severity accounts, suspended accounts, accounts due for certification, and accounts with undefined budgets.
About Cloud Workspace entitlements
- Cloud Account Management entitlement becomes available with the ITOM Cloud Accelerate license.
- The Cloud Governance Suite (CGS) license is a prerequisite to have Cloud Workspace. The CGS license provides the following capabilities:
- Access the home page
- Access the asset explorer, which provides an overview of your cloud assets and asset details
- The Cloud Governance Suite with the Cloud Account Management entitlements (CGS + CAM) provides the following additional capabilities:
- View an overview of your accounts and account details
- Submit, view, or approve account requests
- Certify an account
- View the compliance dashboard
- Configure Cloud Account Management or view configuration details
- Create request policies to automate the complete account creation and suspension process
Compliance dashboard in Cloud Workspace
The compliance dashboard consolidates data from ITOM Visibility, Cloud Account Management to provide a unified view of cloud data and key metrics critical for security and compliance reporting.
For more details, see Viewing the compliance dashboard.
Cloud account terminology
- Microsoft Azure Cloud (Azure) refers to subscriptions
- Amazon AWS Cloud (AWS) refers to management and member accounts
- Google Cloud Platform (GCP) refers to projects
- Console user access
- Programmatic user access
- AWS refers to the IAM user
- Azure refers to service principals
- GCP refers to service accounts
Cloud Account Management user personas
| User | Description |
|---|---|
| Requester | Initiates cloud account creation requests and requests for suspension or reactivation of their own accounts. |
| Approver | Reviews account requests and either approves or denies them. |
| Admin | Confirms that the Cloud Account Management configurations align with cloud configurations. Customizes the default data certification policy. Onboards accounts created outside the Cloud Account Management application. |
| Certifier | Approves an account as certified or failed. Acts as a verification entity by confirming the accuracy and integrity of the data. |
| Asset viewer | Can view all the configuration items (CIs) in Asset Explorer and access the compliance dashboard. |
| Account manager | Can view all account details and associated assets. Account managers have edit access to accounts with primary ownership and read-only access to those with secondary ownership. |
For more information about Cloud Account Management groups and responsibilities, see Cloud Account Management ACL groups, roles, and responsibilities.
Cloud Account Management Benefits
The Cloud Account Management provides several benefits.
| Benefit | Feature | Users |
|---|---|---|
| Simplifies subscription account creation by defining standardized procedures and user roles and permissions to promote consistency and compliance with security policies. | Requester | |
|
Enables suspending or reactivating accounts, and adding unmanaged accounts. Offers a visualization dashboard to manage accounts and request policies to automate account creation, approvals, and budget checks. |
Add an unmanaged cloud account |
Admin |
| Streamlines performing verifications that a person or entity has legitimate ownership or control over an account for security, compliance, and regulatory purposes. | Certifier |