RPA is now a billion-dollar industry with a lot of room to grow. Financial and medical institutions first adopted this way of automation, and now, other companies are considering the benefits. They should also consider the risks and, in doing so, put these RPA security best practices in place.

RPA security best practices include choosing the right RPA developer, establishing a security framework, and collecting data to oversee the entire operation. Limiting robot privileges and defining its responsibilities is a must for this process to work.

It’s difficult to understand how to keep your company safe from threat actors unless you know the risks RPA presents. At the same time, it’s easy to disregard automation technology if you don’t understand its rewards. It’s always a good idea to learn why you should adopt RPA before securing it.

Why Choose RPA?

Robot Process Automation (or RPA for short) allows your employees to focus on the important stuff as software takes care of the tedious tasks. RPA is becoming the go-to choice for handling data and related tasks in an efficient way.

You’ll see how productivity and profit skyrocket if you implement RPA the right way.

However, automation doesn’t come with benefits alone: there are certain risks you’ll have to face and mitigate when you implement this solution.

RPA Benefits

• Cost-effective. Cutting costs is one of the biggest advantages automation has. You need fewer employees and infrastructure to do the same work. Because of that, you spend less money – and get the same or an even better return on investment. At the same time, your employees will love not having to deal with the same tasks over and over again – which tends to be a problem otherwise.
• Burnout Prevention. Employees have a hard time dealing with boredom when they face repetitive tasks. In fact, the less creative a job is, the more likely it is for an employee to become bored. This fact is nothing to disregard: productivity and profits plummet when employees suffer from burnout symptoms.
• Efficiency Boost. Burnout affects productivity. At the same time, dealing with repetitive tasks reduces the time your employees have to work on the important stuff. As RPA takes the tedious tasks over, you’ll see how efficiency skyrockets: no more issues thanks to robots taking care of the little stuff while humans look at the bigger picture.
• Profit Increase. As you reduce your operations costs, see an efficiency boost, and employees work better than ever before, you’ll see an increase in your profit line. Of course, it’s not guaranteed – and it won’t happen overnight if it does. More likely than not, automation will free up unnecessary costs and boost your business model.

Is RPA Safe?

RPA implementation is relatively new, making it a double-edged sword: you can reap many benefits, though that leaves you open for attacks you didn’t have to worry about before. You have to treat this type of automation as any other system. It’s not safe until you make it so.

What does that mean? You have to deploy your RPA system slowly. An infrastructure overhaul happening overnight is the best way to leave holes in your network (that threat actors will take advantage of).

For that reason, going slow and testing things out is a must. You can overhaul the infrastructure of one department alone (that doesn’t deal with too much sensitive information) and start from there. Recognizing RPA problems is a must before you move forward.

RPA Problems

• New Attack Vector. New technologies often present a lot of benefits. However, people overlook the common thread that unites them all: brand-new software or hardware is ridden with vulnerabilities, and threat actors are faster at finding them than developers and users are. For that reason, it’s always a good idea to wait before you implement any new solutions.
• Possible Escalation. One of the biggest issues with RPA is unauthorized privilege escalation. Most people decide to trust robots because they have no way of stealing money or information. Unfortunately, that leaves them wide open for threat actors to hijack them and use their privileges in the worst way possible.
• Intentional Downtimes. Anyone who manages sensitive data has a target on their backs, including robots. In other words, as you implement RPA, threat actors will look for ingenious ways to attack them. They can do so to leak information or to stop you from working. Hackers can attack your robots the same way they do servers via DDoS attacks.
• Undocumented Attacks. Since RPA is relatively new and widespread implementation is still to happen, we don’t know how vulnerable robot automation truly is. As time goes on, we’ll see how developers patch certain vulnerabilities and threat actors exploit unattended ones. For now, the best you can do is follow RPA security best practices.

10 RPA Security Best Practices

1. Look for a Trustworthy Developer

You must do your best to look for a developer or vendor you can trust. Otherwise, you may deploy compromised software, and no amount of cybersecurity will save you from a breach then.

A developer could give you compromised software willingly or otherwise, though that won’t change what happens in the end: threat actors exploit vulnerabilities, leaving you with countless lawsuits at the door.

For that reason, you should shop around, ask as many questions as you can, and seek references before you buy the software you want.

2. Create an RPA Cybersecurity Policy

You need to set up a security policy before you implement RPA. This list will help you with that. However, you shouldn’t stop here: you need to test the software, hire a pentester to see what they can find, and more.

You can create your cybersecurity policy once you have everything you need. At the same time, you need to think about worst-case scenarios to see how your company should react. What happens if a threat actor finds a vulnerability in one of your bots? You have to be ready for that.

3. Define Robot and Human Roles

At this point, you’re ready to test automation for real. However, before you deploy RPA, you need to figure out the best way to assign tasks. Otherwise, you may have humans and robots do the same thing – and that’s not what you want.

Task assignment is crucial for cybersecurity: you should assign critical tasks to humans while robots take care of less sensible things. That way, a threat actor will have little to work with if they find a vulnerability in your RPA of choice.

4. Treat Robots Like Users

Everyone is excited to see how robots improve productivity and increase the profit line, though some forget to oversee the operation. You can’t expect RPA to run smoothly all the time, especially early on.

For that reason, you have to think about bots like you do users: assign them a name or account, what they have to do, and the metrics they must meet. In other words, define their normal behavior and set expectations, so you can figure out what to tweak after a while.

5. Employ No Hardcoded Authorization

One of the biggest issues you could face when implementing RPA is having bots with hardcoded authorizations. That means your robots have privileges in their source code, which you can’t revoke unless you disrupt the flow of operations (something that may cost you a lot of money).

At the same time, a threat actor could do a lot of damage if they find a way to exploit a robot with hardcoded authorizations – and they’ll continue to do so while you scramble to remove that part.

In contrast, having bots perform API calls to check or receive authorizations to perform tasks adds an important layer of protection without hindering automation.

6. Limit Robot Privileges

Sometimes, developers allow robots to have more privileges than they need to perform required tasks. It’s not that crazy to do so: bots have no malicious intentions and won’t cause harm unless there’s a bug or a glitch in the system.

Unfortunately, that’s not a good idea. Threat actors have malicious intentions – and they will take advantage of an overprivileged bot to steal data.

Letting a bot have more privileges than necessary is often a sign of poor code architecture, which means there are other holes hackers can exploit.

7. Use Passwords and MFA for RPA Management

Robots won’t be the only ones doing work when you implement RPA. You still need humans to oversee the operation, manage the network, and fix any issues. Those employees will have a ton of power over your infrastructure, so setting them up with privileged accounts is a must.

You must do a good job when you create privileged accounts: ask users to create strong passwords and use multi-factor authentication.

Remember, passwords are cracked and leaked all the time. Using MFA prevents threat actors from accessing important data, even if they have login credentials.

8. Collect Data as You Oversee the RPA Process

Bots work around the clock, so it’s impossible to keep tabs on them 24/7. Fortunately, you don’t have to. Keeping logs on what robots are doing is enough to watch for suspicious activity and possible vulnerabilities.

For example, a threat actor may hijack a robot’s privileges and use them to steal your information. They could exploit a vulnerability found in software, leaving a trail for you to find when they do so.

In contrast, if you never check the logs (or have none), you’ll never know what happens. Things easily slip under the radar when bots are working nonstop.

9. Perform Random and Routine Audits

Audits are great for ensuring everything is working as it should be. However, both employees and threat actors can learn how to prepare for an audit if they start seeing a pattern. That’s when random audits come into place.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t do routine audits! You must see how your robots are working and whether they’re vulnerable on a regular basis. At the same time, having a surprise audit between the scheduled ones won’t hurt.

Audits help in two ways: first, you’ll see if robots are doing their work properly and check if management is overseeing the operation properly; second, you’ll catch threat actors in the act if they’re attacking your company.

10. Keep It Simple

Keeping things simple ensures you have little trouble with automation. Software crashes, security gets breached, and employees get confused when things become more complicated than necessary. For that reason, your cybersecurity should be efficient, though not barebones.

Let’s say, for example, you decide to restrict certain privileges from your robots. That’s great! However, what happens if you take it too far? What if you decide a bot should get authorization from a privileged user every time it needs to do something?

It’d be a disaster! Cybersecurity is about keeping things safe from harm, not unusable. Simplifying is a must – but you shouldn’t take that too far either.

Who Needs RPA?

RPA is ideal for financial and medical institutions that handle a bulk of data and need the best way to streamline access to information. Other businesses that deal with a lot of sensitive information should consider RPA too. However, companies shouldn’t rush their way to that goal by compromising cybersecurity.

We’ll see robot process automation change the way we work in due time. The biggest companies are the early adopters, though they’re making it more affordable and accessible for smaller businesses, thanks to that. Little by little, they’ll patch and remove vulnerabilities too.

You should pay attention to RPA risks (and see whether the benefits outweigh them) and implement RPA cybersecurity best practices if you want to try this automation process.

Conclusion

RPA security best practices for 2023 include choosing the right RPA developer, establishing a security framework, and keeping an eye on the entire operation to avoid any oversights. Limiting privileges and defining duties for robots is also key to preventing any issues down the line. We at U.S. Cybersecurity are standing by to assist with RPA, should you need it.