Security Design Considerations In Robotic Process Automation.docx
- 1. Security Design Considerations in Robotic Process Automation “Robotic process automation (RPA) is a new favorite among IT leaders. It can be quickly deployed to automate repetitive tasks, and it saves organizations time and money. That said, RPA is risky. RPA bots handle sensitive data, moving it across systems from one process to another. If the data is not secured, it can be exposed and can cost organizations millions of dollars.” Robotic process automation: is the event-driven software used to automate tasks and processes otherwise performed by humans. Robotic automation is a style of automation where a software robot mimics the work of human users to perform various tasks that are repetitive, high volume, and rules-driven. Through automated processes, the software robot executes a workflow involving multiple steps and interactions with different enterprise applications. Robotic process automation remains a popular software market for improving operational efficiency with tactical automation most often happening via screen scraping. Two Types of Robotic process automations: Automations can be executed in two modes: Attended Unattended An attended automation assists an agent/human in handling simple, repetitive tasks. In contrast, an unattended automation automates specific tasks which are not required agent/human intervention. Depends on the Project or Use case, the robotic automations can interact with enterprise applications, data bases or financial systems and help processing the required tasks with or without presence of human. “As per 2022 Gartner Magic Quadrant Evaluation Report, strategic planning assumptions: By 2024, 95% of RPA vendors will offer automation via both API and UI integration. By 2024, 80% of enterprise customers who have deployed attended automation primarily on a desktop will pivot to wider UX covering web, mobile and voice interfaces.” Benefits of Robotic process automations:
- 2. Over the past few years, robotic process automation (RPA) has become a popular technology due to its ability to automate repetitive and high-volume tasks in order to reduce manual effort, eliminate error and improve process productivity. With RPA, software bots can mimic human actions such as logging into various applications/systems and navigating through user interfaces to perform tasks such as creating tickets and downloading data. Bots can also provision and deprovision user access and respond to customer queries. RPA is versatile and flexible, allowing it to integrate easily with existing processes. It helps reduce cost, maintain consistent quality, improve delivery timelines, and enhance the customer experience. Security challenges with RPA: Organizations looking to implement RPA should be aware of the security-related Risks. These include: Compromise Privileged access accounts - In terms of RPA security, the risks associated with the abuse of privileged access by RPA bots are mostly the same as those related to privileged access abuse by humans. For example: Privileged access given to an RPA bot account may be used by attackers to break into the system and steal or misuse your sensitive business information. For better auditing and troubleshooting purposes, it is essential to distinguish the activities of a bot from those of an employee. Never use an employee’s credentials for RPA implementation. Create unique identities for every bot in your system, and do not store passwords in the source code. Keep passwords in a centralized, encrypted location such as a password vault and change them frequently. Limit the number of employees who have access to RPA credentials. Configure a robust authentication method like two-factor authentication or token authentication for extra security. Malfunctioning and System outage risks - System outage (or downtime) refers to the period when a system/network cannot perform its primary function. Downtimes can happen because of numerous reasons. Most frequent reasons for this issue are, Human error, Outdated or unstable hardware/software, Bugs in the server operating system, and Integration/interoperability issues. In RPA, there are two potential risk scenarios related to system outage: unexpected network failure may disrupt the bot’s operation leading to a significant loss in productivity. A rapid sequence of bot activities may cause system failure or outage.
- 3. “For Instance, in 2018 on Amazon Prime day, millions of shoppers faced a high- profile outage on the Amazon “Deals” page because its servers did not manage such a massive online traffic spike.” Data Breach - Confidential information is any information related to a company’s business and affairs that is not available to the public and has commercial value. Unauthorized disclosure of a company’s financial information, marketing plans, upcoming projects, and any other materials marked onfidential may have devastating consequences. In RPA, a risk scenario related to disclosure of confidential information may appear when intentional, negligent, or improper training of an RPA bot has caused leakage of confidential data, such as payment or credit card data, to the web. System vulnerabilities - In simple terms, vulnerabilities are weaknesses in an information system that allow cyber attackers to illegally gain access to the system and perform malicious actions. One of the ways vulnerabilities may appear is when a malicious user behaves imprudently by visiting an unsafe website. In this case, the website is a threat resource that triggers a vulnerability. Some of the most common examples of vulnerabilities are: Missing data encryption, SQL injection, Missing authorization, Cross-site scripting and forgery, Weak passwords, Upload of infected software. Even though most advanced RPA systems nowadays use encryption while transferring data, there are still low-security-level RPA tools where non-encrypted data transfer may cause sensitive data leakage. Lack of Visibility on the Bots executions - Audit logs capture bot activity. These are important to track bot health and effectiveness. For instance, if a bot stops working, the audit log helps identify the underlying reason, whether it is improper use by an employee or malicious code. Bots need to be periodically monitored at various levels to ensure they do not misbehave, which can lead to high error rates and potential damage. In some cases, bots may not perform as intended due to erroneous coding or inadequate testing, this will result in issues and errors during go-live. RPA software out of the box provides some extent of logging but if the automation logic design does not take care to enable detailed logging, dashboards for monitoring and notifications then there will not be much visibility on all these issues. Security Design Considerations in RPA: Robotic automations execute the logic based on its design and implementation, means it has the potential to touch every enterprise application within the organization and the confidential personal
- 4. and customer data within it. Whether its an attended automation or unattended automation it is important to consider security standards within the Robot automation design. The cost of a security incident can be tremendous. Enterprise-ready RPA must assure both business and IT that the RPA deployment will not compromise security or compliance. Five Best Practices to consider RPA security design: Accountability for Bot Actions – For better auditing and troubleshooting purposes, it is essential to distinguish the activities of a bot from those of an employee. Never use an employee’s credentials for RPA implementation. Create unique identities for every bot in your system, and do not store passwords in the source code. Keep passwords in a centralized, encrypted location such as a password vault and change them frequently. Limit the number of employees who have access to RPA credentials. Configure a robust authentication method like two-factor authentication or token authentication for extra security. Automating Credential Management – Successful RPA deployments require automated credential management, including machine-generated passwords, automatic password rotation, identity verifications and just-in-time or time-limited credential access. RPA teams can save passwords in single password storage or vault without creating any security leaks. Never use an employee’s credentials for RPA implementation. IT administrators can configure minimum access rights for a bot to access applications and databases. Strong Governance Framework – It is very important to define rules and regulations in order to maintain security in RPA solutions. Without proper governance, RPA cannot ensure the security it is supposed to offer. Detailed criteria, development criteria, and business justification are some features that fall under an excellent governance framework. Roles & Responsibility Management - Build and implement a system with clear roles and responsibilities for everyone in the department/team responsible for the automation process. Strategy and regulations - The company should clearly elaborate the rules and requirements set out in their current security regulations and provide adequate supervision to ensure compliance. Awareness - Top managers should raise awareness of RPA-related risks and the potential impacts internally (within the responsible teams) and externally (among the RPA bots’ creators). Regularly validate RPA scripts and audit logs to ensure a bot is working correctly. Your vendor and internal teams should work
- 5. together to establish a robust governance framework. The framework must clearly define the automation scope, prioritize identified RPA candidates, and evaluate regulatory and business risks for each RPA candidate. The framework needs to define each team member’s roles and responsibilities clearly. It is also advisable to update your company’s Information Security Management System (ISMS) and Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies to incorporate RPA specific requirements. Continuous Review and Change Control – Create a transparent business continuity plan that specifies the backup procedures and data sources required to carry out every task. It is the responsibility of an internal audit team to check and review the documents in the business continuity plan to see if there is any information, like how to restart each process/activity even after failure. Build weekly or monthly review plans on overall RPA infrastructure in the company and review Bots performance. Implement framework based design approaches to maintain the Bots logic easily by the developers. Implement CI/CD pipeline process to deliver RPA software upgrades or patch updates and deliver fixes smoothly. Logging, Auditing and Monitoring – Enforce proper regulations to monitor the performance of RPA bots and ensure that all bots function in accordance with the set rules. Periodic risk assessment is necessary to track the possibilities of new risks, mitigate, and review security risks in the RPA, to check if any restrictions have been lifted, and to determine if any RPA bot needs to be avoided. It is critical to monitor and log every transaction of an RPA script. Efficient security and risk management practices ensure consistent and accurate logging. Accurate, system-generated logs can help you analyze the root cause when a bot malfunctions. It is a good practice to secure RPA logs in a separate system and encrypt sensitive data. Rapidly detect and respond to unauthorized or anomalous robot behavior by assigning human managers, enforcing least privilege and making actions traceable. RPA Security Checklist: Above 5 best practices action plan helps for Security and Risk Management leaders to mitigate RPA risks. Below are few more comprehensive securities checklists that can be useful when you start design and implementing RPA. Enhance software development practices to include secure bot development/deployments. Implement Bot based on input feed from a secured location. Treat a robot like a user and create a separate set of credentials (or) implement integrations with secrets server using access token mechanism to get credentials. Use a secure authentication mechanism. Maintain a password vault to store bot credentials and rotate bot credentials often. Establish mechanisms to find, avoid and control bot abuse such as a provision to lock down bots. Do not leave any credentials in the source code. Use two-factor authentication for an extra layer of security. Follow the principle of least privilege and grant only the necessary permissions to the bots. Ensure that all transactions are correctly logged. Review RPA scripts and logs regularly. Conclusion: Organizations adopting RPA to improve productivity should plan their implementations carefully to protect themselves from security breaches. RPA creates new application layers that are vulnerable to risk. Moreover, without constant supervision, bots may not work effectively, causing issues, errors, and potential damage. Since bots may need access to confidential information, it is imperative for
- 6. organizations to institute the right security measures. Some of these measures include creating governance frameworks, audit logs, password vaults, and version controls. Establishing these processes will allow RPA to manage security risks by itself, thereby ensuring best bot performance and reduced business risk.