6 Tips for Safe RPA Implementation
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) allows a business to deploy a digital workforce in the form of bots that can emulate a human’s actions within computer systems, executing tasks more efficiently and freeing the user from repetitive and tedious tasks.
RPA naturally increases productivity and helps streamline operations. There is a near limitless number of tasks RPA can tackle. However, since RPA bots will handle customer data, financial information, or any otherwise sensitive data, it's essential to keep certain security practices in place. Leaks or attacks are always a possibility.
Here’s a short but impactful list of the best security practices to follow when implementing and using RPA.
Involve your security experts
Your security team should take an active role in both the implementation of RPA and the creation and deployment of every RPA bot. By establishing a common risk framework for your security team and RPA bot operators, you can perform risk analysis on every stage of RPA deployment. Security experts should integrate their regular software security practices in RPA to identify security flaws before they pose a problem. Building such a framework ensures that every bot created and used is secured.
Create unique credentials for every bot
It is crucial to always clearly distinguish between a real user's actions and a programmed RPA bot. To avoid confusion, bot operators should never give RPA bots privileges and credentials of actual real humans.
Each bot should have its own set of credentials that can identify it. This mitigates the impact of a potential hack by ensuring that every step can be retraced. Should a bot be misused, its records can be beneficial in building future securities and repairing any damage done. To do that, we need to distinguish between the scripted activity of a bot and the actions of a real user.
Manage bot privileges carefully
Monitoring the scope, reach, and access that RPA bots can have within your organization can help avoid wrongful access. Limit each bot only to have the privileges necessary to perform its intended function. Avoid giving write access to bots that read databases. Limit what user data a bot can access if it handles confidential customer information.
Generally, a bot should have as little access as possible - just enough to perform its tasks.
Protect your systems with SSO, LDAP, and multi-factor authentication
While your RPA bots may have their own credentials, you should still treat these with as much of a secure approach as you would any company credentials. The use of popular security practices like a single sign-on or lightweight directory access protocols should be implemented just as they would be for a regular company employee. Meanwhile, multi-factor authentication can be used in vital areas that an RPA bot can access. This enforces a set of human eyes on every critical login situation by requiring a second, human identification to allow the bot access.
Analyze your RPA records
RPA bots have the capability of logging every single action they perform. These records are a powerful tool for cybersecurity experts. Processes that handle sensitive data can be monitored for compliance with policies or security practices. Security experts can scan RPA records for vulnerabilities or signs of tampering. Threat modeling exercises can be used to determine technical weaknesses or process gaps. Should such a need arise, RPA bots can even create an audit trail and provide proof of compliance and due diligence.
Each bot should have its own set of credentials that can identify it. This mitigates the impact of a potential hack by ensuring that every step can be retraced. Should a bot be misused, its records can be beneficial in building future securities and repairing any damage done.
Łukasz Chojnowski,
CEO at AnyRobot
Lukasz Chojnowski
Verified writer
