With the beautiful stories about RPA, we must not be ignorant of the risks associated with deploying robots or automating business operations. The increase in cyber-attacks, RPA introduced new forms of threat that can be leveraged by hackers to access unauthorized systems and exploit vulnerabilities.

Routine procedures such as transfer of files, processing of orders, payroll management, payment verification, etc can be automated and to do this the automation platform requires access to confidential information of staff, customers, vendors, etc. Credit card numbers, financial information, Social Security numbers, etc could be misused by software robots or robotic workflow developers.

These security risk issues exist in the two forms below:

a) Data Security Issues: This has to do with improper use of confidential personal and corporate data. Implementing companies must work to ensure the full privacy and security of data used by machines.

b) Access Security Issues: This relates to unauthorized users' possibility of accessing and using confidential data dealt with by bots. Access to such data must be prevented from employees and hackers.

Here are some ways to tackle RPA security issues that should be around: Integrity, Confidentiality, Traceability and Control:

(i) Governance & Product Security: It is important to build an RPA security strategy with clear policies that should be compliant with the company’s security policies. Besides, it is crucial to perform security architecture risk analysis of chosen RPA solutions and include security scanning tools as part of the bot creation/maintenance process.

(ii) Prevention of Unauthorised Access: Everyone on an RPA team must not have free access to the data; there must be an assignment of roles (i.e Bot Creator, Tester, Controller, Runner). Assigning roles to RPA members ensures the curtailing of too many accesses to sensitive data and thereby keeping fraudulent activities under check. Password or login credentials must be used by all users and processes to have access to the credential vault. Like this, only specific authorized users may get to the sensitive data area.

(iii) Active Directory Integration: This assists in assigning roles by centralizing team credentials for easy management. Active directory integration creates a control center for login credentials. With this, activities of robotic processes can be tracked

By Amenallah Reghimi

Keywords: AI, Innovation, Predictive Analytics

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