Robotic Process Automation (RPA) resolves major security challenges in RPA deployment

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is expected to significantly improve the advantages of enterprises, including higher efficiency and accuracy and substantial cost savings. However, it is easy to be overlooked that if the privileged account authentication or password used by RPA software robots and managers is not properly protected and managed, RPA deployment may cause major IT security risks.

Driving factors for the popularization of RPA (using software robots to automate manual tasks)

Companies from all walks of life have invested in RPA to automate the time-consuming and repetitive manual operations that are common in the daily business development process.

Use software robots to automatically complete manual tasks.

Information security risks overlooked in RPA deployment

No matter how much your company pays attention to security, it is easy to overlook IT security when deploying new technologies such as RPA in a hurry. In view of the obvious advantages of using RPA, it is not surprising that business units want to implement RPA plans as quickly as possible. However, if your company’s business users do not frequently implement and submit IT projects, they may not understand all the information security implications.

Like any other new technology, if security is not considered in the solution, RPA may also become a new attack opportunity. RPA software directly interacts with your company’s business systems and applications; this may cause major risks when robots automate and execute routine business processes. Although robots do not need administrator authority to complete tasks, they need privileges to log in to ERP, CRM, and other business systems to access, copy, or paste information; or to transfer data between different steps in a process. Similar to other industries RPA in healthcare industry require lot of security to safe guard patient data.

How do bots usually obtain privileged credentials or passwords?

The default method is to directly write the privileged credentials or passwords to the scripts or regular processes executed by the robot; this is also a common hidden danger in the rapid establishment of RPA solutions through the desktop. With the gradual popularity of RPA, the number of privileged account authentication or passwords that are hard-coded or stored in an insecure location in scripts has also increased accordingly, which greatly increases the risk of attacks against privileged account authentication or passwords.

What are the risks?

When using the above method, the credentials or passwords used by high-privileged (privileged) accounts will eventually be shared and reused. For the credentials or passwords used by humans, corporate policies usually require regular changes; while the credentials or passwords used by robots are different, remain unchanged and unmanaged, which brings a series of risks:

• Attackers can read and search Script to obtain hard-coded credentials or passwords
• Users with administrator privileges can retrieve credentials or passwords stored in insecure locations. As RPA solutions continue to expand, more and more robots are included, and the risks are also rapid increase. Therefore, companies need to consider robots as digital entities and implement identity and access management (IAM) strategies that include these digital entities.

3 types of privileged credentials or password protection methods:

•Safely save and manage privileged credentials or passwords To prevent privileged credentials or passwords from falling into the wrong hands, you need to delete these credentials or passwords from scripts and other insecure locations, and use a system with the following characteristics to save the credentials or passwords :

• Encrypt the credential or password
• Keep the credential or password in a safe place
• Verify the identity of each robot before providing the credential or password
• Automatically change according to company policy or periodically according to actual needs
• Avoid human intervention in this process Intervention
• Can be expanded to adapt to the rapid growth of RPA usage

•Restricting the application access of the robot. In the worst case, the attacker obtains the privileged credentials or passwords used in the RPA platform. You can limit the number of applications that these credentials or passwords can access to minimize the impact of the attack. A best practice is to assign minimum privileges to the robot, allowing the robot to access only the specific applications needed to complete the task, preventing the robot from executing other applications, especially when the robot needs the local administrator authority to use an application on the PC This should be the case even more during the program. In this way, you can prevent an attacker from using multiple applications on the same client, gaining local administrator rights and installing spyware or other malicious software on the PC.

•Monitoring the intervention of managers. Even the smoothest implementation of RPA procedures sometimes requires the intervention of RPA managers. In order to protect the administrator’s credentials or passwords and eliminate the risks associated with administrator intervention, you should implement a security infrastructure with the following characteristics: • Use encryption, secure storage, and automatic replacement of robot credentials or passwords to protect the administrator’s credentials or Password • Allows isolation and monitoring of manager activities, so that the information security team can view privileged connections in real time, and suspend or terminate suspicious connections; ensure that audit records are preserved to track down responsibilities

Conclusion:

For many companies, RPA is a recognized way to improve the efficiency and productivity of performing batches of routine tasks, and to help your employees focus on higher-value activities that can increase economic benefits.

No matter what stage your company is in the RPA introduction process, you just start trial implementation or are ready for large-scale deployment, you want to ensure that the RPA platform will not expose your company to cyber attacks and threats.

Effectively protecting the privileged credentials or passwords used by software robots and RPA managers is to protect your company’s key assets. You should also consider limiting the scope of applications that the robot can access; ensure that you can isolate and monitor RPA manager intervention, suspend manager intervention, and keep a comprehensive audit record of these interventions. View various rpa healthcare use cases here.

By NuAIg ai consulting services and rpa consulting services