RPA is a software technology that makes it simple to build, deploy, and manage software robots that mimic human actions when interacting with digital systems and software. Software robots, like humans, can understand what’s on a screen, complete the correct keystrokes, navigate systems, identify and extract data, and perform a variety of defined actions. However, software robots can perform the task faster and more consistently than humans, without the need to stand up and stretch or take a coffee break.
Cyber Attacks on Robotic Process Automation
There are numerous benefits to implementing Robotic Process Automation (RPA). It does, however, face its own set of challenges, including cyber threats. Data theft, unauthorized use of privileged access, and denial-of-service are all common and emerging constraints to RPA growth, posing significant risks to organizations.
Even RPA vendors are offering advanced capabilities in their technology such as, workload management, SLA-based automation, automation lifecycle management, credential management, and adding new data APIs. These enhancements help attract new industries looking for improved operational and safety capabilities in business.
RPA has numerous advantages for business automation. It improves employee efficiency by de-prioritizing low-value and high-volume repetitive tasks and reallocating their attention to higher-value tasks and innovation. This contributes to a reduction in employee stress and an increase in productivity. It is an excellent cost-cutting tool because it allows organizations to do more with less. Transactional work is more efficient. The risks of operations are reduced because the possibility of human error is automatically eliminated, resulting in more accurate and efficient operations. It also contributes to output consistency.
RPA improves process scalability by allowing automated services to operate continuously throughout the year. As a result, businesses can scale processes across multiple units and locations more easily. The positive side effect is that compliance and audit challenges are reduced because human access to sensitive information is reduced.
The technology is vulnerable to cyber-attacks, which endangers businesses. Because companies are gradually adopting RPA-based technology as a digital strategy for business development, it is critical that a robotic automation program introduced into the system considers both the business process and the security risks, thereby laying the groundwork for safety measures and checks to be implemented.
Data theft, unauthorized use of privileged access, denial-of-service, and remote code execution are some of the potential security risks associated with RPA. However, there are ways to address these risks and prevent them from occurring in the first place. A company must choose and plan the appropriate RPA environment, control access to that environment, conduct regular audits, customize the environment, implement credential encryption, and use a password vault.