Robotic process automation security risks and ways to eliminate them

In 2022, the global robotic process automation market was estimated at $2.3 billion and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 39.9% by 2030.

This ultimately means RPA will boost productivity for businesses.

The enablement of software robots to take on tedious human work does bring more than a few benefits, including but not limited to increased employee productivity, lower operational costs, better accuracy and customer satisfaction, and improved data security and analytics.

Nevertheless, RPA technology poses some security risks if not handled properly. Along with its many advantages and perfectly tangible benefits, RPA increases the organization’s attack surface, making its sensitive data an attractive gain to cyber criminals. 

This article explores potential security challenges RPA can evoke and how experienced RPA professionals deal with the safety risks.

Robotic process automation and security considerations

• Potential data exposure:
  • By replacing human workers, RPA bots often handle sensitive customer data or have access to confidential business information. Cybercriminals can try to abuse the privileged gateways and gain control over insecure or poorly configured RPA bots.As a result, attackers get unauthorized access to the internal organization’s systems and infect them with malware to steal or even destroy sensitive information. This poses a significant threat to data privacy and undermines compliance with regulations like GDPR and HIPAA.
• Bot tampering:
  • The unprotected source code of RPA bots provides malicious actors with numerous opportunities to access the bot’s script, make alterations, and perform unauthorized actions.  Apart from tampering, cybercriminals can get unlimited access to RPA bot activity by stealing bot credentials stored improperly or unchanged over time.
• Insufficient logging and monitoring:
  • All activities of the RPA bots, including what tasks they perform, when, and where, should be tracked and logged for further audit in case of incidents. Inadequate logging and lack of audit trails make detecting and responding to security incidents challenging. To top it off, insufficient monitoring of logged activity leaves organizations in the dark about any minor security breach until significant damage has been done.
• Increased threat landscape:
  • RPA solutions require many internal and external integrations, which, along with improper implementation and weak data encryption, can enlarge your IT infrastructure’s threat landscape.Your organization may become exposed to attacks like SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS). In addition, by taking advantage of unprotected bots, cybercriminals may attempt to overwhelm an RPA system with excessive requests (DDoS attacks), causing downtime or performance issues.

Countermeasures of RPA

Stick to the principle of least privilege

The rule of least privilege is a common practice applied by IT administrators to ensure employees get only those access permissions needed to fulfill their job responsibilities.The same rule applies to RPA systems since bots perform actions previously conducted by humans, like accessing databases, copying data, and sending it by email. So, configuring minimum access rights for a bot to get the job done is vitally important.

In addition, we recommend performing regular access audits of your RPA bots’ activities to clearly understand which applications your bots have access to and what they can do with this access. This will help reduce potential damage should a cyber attacker gain control over your bots.

Regularly update and patch RPA software

RPA software updates often contain eliminated errors and improved security patches. Delaying your RPA system updates makes your solution an easy target for cybercriminals. Therefore, staying up-to-date with the latest RPA software releases helps improve the overall security of your solution and mitigate known vulnerabilities.

Continuous monitoring and incident response

Consider implementing robust monitoring and logging solutions, like a security information and event management (SIEM) system, that tracks bot activities in real time to detect unusual behavior and take measures before a severe data leak occurs. Moreover, have an established proactive incident response plan to minimize the impact of security breaches.

Focus on secure RPA development

RPA implementation is usually an ongoing process since RPA bots can require continuous monitoring, software updates, and upgrades to keep up with the changing business needs.

With regard to this, carefully choose who will be responsible for your RPA development. Whether it will be your IT department or an outsourced RPA software provider, they should follow security coding best practices, utilize secure frameworks and development tools, and establish a comprehensive quality assurance process to detect issues and errors in bot configurations before software deployment.

Ensure your RPA system’s performance and security are regularly tested during the development process and throughout its maintenance. In addition, make sure your RPA bots integrate well with your company’s IT systems or third-party software without creating backdoors for cybercriminals.

Reinforce security policies

With the adoption of RPA, update your existing security policies to align with the new IT infrastructure borderlines. Establish clear and comprehensive security guidelines tailored to RPA that, above common data protection mechanisms, will include change management and training strategies. Make sure that all team members understand and adhere to these policies and regularly update them to address evolving threats.

RPA continues to play a significant role

Robotic process automation offers numerous benefits if implemented with due security measures. Data breaches can have severe consequences, so businesses should not underestimate safety concerns and follow cyber security best practices to eliminate RPA security risks. 

As RPA continues to play a pivotal role in the digital transformation of businesses worldwide, organizations should prioritize safeguarding sensitive information and approach RPA security with the same rigor and dedication as any other critical aspect of business operation.

This piece was written and provided by Aleksey Savanovich, RPA Consultant