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TABLE OF CONTENTS


What is attestation?

Attestation is a process that involves sending a confirmation request via email to a manager, stakeholder, or another custom recipient before proceeding with the remediation action.


Below you can see a sample attestation e-mail:




How attestation works

Read the steps presented below to understand how the attestation process works:


  1. After enabling and configuring a policy and its remediation, the policy will initiate detection to identify anomalies (matching items) based on the scheduled recurrence you have set (manual or automatic).

  2. For each detected matching item, an attestation is sent to the recipient via email. During this period, the workflow execution in the "Tasks notification" panel is displayed as "In progress".

  3. From the attestation email, the recipient can either approve remediation or designate the item as an exception. If the recipient does not respond within the specified time frame, the remediation action will be automatically executed.

  4. If remediation is manually approved (or no response is received within the designated time-out days), the remediation action will be executed. Conversely, if the item is set as an exception, it will not be performed.



Configure attestations

You can configure the following attestation settings for Out-of-the-Box policies:


  • Recipient: you can choose whether you want the attestation to be sent to the manager or to a custom address.

  • Additional message: you can add a custom message to accompany the default request message. Please note that the request message itself is not editable.

  • Time out days: the number of days given to the recipient to take action.


We've added a toggle option, “Proceed automatically to the next action when Approval is timed out”, under the TimeOut box in the Edit panel for Tenant admins editing Out-of-the-Box policies. The info icon and tooltip clarify the approval action's behavior based on the toggle's state, streamlining the approval process when the recipient doesn't provide an answer.



Understand who the recipient is

By default, in the configuration panel of many Out-of-the-Box policies, the "Manager" option is selected under the "Send attestation to" drop-down menu. 


However, it may not be clear who the manager is. In this case, it's the manager of each individual item. To check who will receive the attestation for each matched item, you can click on "Go to full report" in the Policy Box and refer to the "Manager" column in the table. 



Time-out days

It's important to notice that if no response is received within a designated time frame, and the “Proceed automatically to the next action when Approval is timed out” toggle is enabled, the action will be executed automatically. 


Configuring a reasonable amount of time-out days for each policy ensures that the recipient has sufficient time to review and approve the remediation action before it takes place.


Below are the default time-out days with their respective configuration settings:


All licenses:

Except Inactive MS 365: E1, E3, E5, F3, G1, G3, G5 Plans and Inactive MS365: E3, E5, F1, F3, F5 Plans

Default time-outTime-out settings
3 days
  • Min: 1 day
  • Max: 180 days


Following licenses:

Inactive MS 365 (E1, E3, E5, F3, G1, G3, G5 Plans) and Inactive MS365 (E3, E5, F1, F3, F5 Plans)

Default time-outTime-out settings
15 days
  • Min: 15 days
  • Max: 180 days



How to configure attestation settings for Out-of-the-Box playbooks

Follow the steps presented in the carousel below to edit the attestation settings of Out-of-the-Box playbooks:





What if an attestation cannot be managed?

If the attestation request is sent to a person who is unavailable to manage it, a tenant admin can step in and manage the request. Follow the steps below to see how to: 



1. Go to "ACTIONS"





2. Select "Manage Worklows"




3. Select "Approvals"




4. Select "..." and click on preferred actions

Go to the pending attestation you need to manage and click on "..." to Approve or Reject the remediation action. 





You're all set!

However, keep in mind that this solution shouldn't be the norm. To avoid having to resort to this, it's important to:


  • Understand who the manager of each item is and, if necessary, change the attestation recipient (Custom Address) in Remediation Settings.

  • Set a number of timeout days that will allow enough time for the current manager to deal with the attestation request.