Service Account Management Best Practices - Support and Troubleshooting

Service Account Management Best Practices Issue Improper management of service accounts, especially re-using them, can lead to security vulnerabilities, compliance issues, increased administrative overhead, and resource saturation due to prolonged active sessions.

Symptoms Improper management of service accounts, especially re-using them, can lead to security vulnerabilities, compliance issues, increased administrative overhead, and resource saturation due to prolonged active sessions.

Facts Re-use of service accounts credential may pose the following risks:

Increases the complexity of any troubleshooting efforts. It exponential increases the potential impact to integrations and/or origin sharing credentials should credentials expired or be invalidated. Release All versions

Resolution ServiceNow strongly recommends against re-using service accounts due to security, management concerns, and potential resource issues. Instead, follow these best practices for service account management:

Create unique service accounts:

Avoid re-using service accounts as this prevents proper termination and balancing of instance resources Re-use can lead to sessions being kept alive for extended periods, potentially saturating resources Apply the principle of least privilege:

Grant only necessary permissions Remove unnecessary privileges (e.g., remote access, internet access) Use ACLs to define resource access Avoid placing service accounts in privileged groups like local Administrators or Domain Admins

Implement regular recertification:

High-privilege user accounts: every six months Service accounts: every three months Utilize ServiceNow's automation capabilities:

Automate onboarding and offboarding processes Use data certification features for reviews Maintain clear documentation and use consistent naming conventions

Conduct periodic audits and reviews:

Use ServiceNow's reporting tools to monitor account activity Perform regular access audits Store service account credentials securely:

Use a privileged access management (PAM) solution Implement regular credential rotation practices

Related Links Additional Information For more details on implementing these practices and understanding the impact of service account management on instance resources, refer to ServiceNow documentation on User Administration , Access Control , and Instance Resource Management.