A Holistic Approach to Ensure Security and Compliance while using Robotic Process Automation

Abstract

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is gained immense popularity among IT leaders over the years. RPA Bots are often easily and quickly deployed for automating repetitive business processes or tasks, which successively helps organizations to save lots of a substantial amount of their time and money. There are several success stories which vouch for usage of RPA, at the same time, there are some key aspects to be taken care in terms of security to minimize problems with the RPA. RPA automates a process, reducing human intervention and involvement. So, many expect it increases security by default. It should be noted, automation doesn’t mean it ensures security and compliance of the process by default. It's important to note that the method of RPA can often be quite risky in some cases. This is because RPA bots will handle sensitive data and transmitting it across systems associated with the business for various processes. So, if the sensitive data is not secured in right manner, it might get exposed, which can impact the business. So, while considering RPA, an organization should make sure it understands the security implications to the business process. With this paper, we would like to present a holistic approach to address all key aspects organizations needs to take care in terms of security, compliance and auditability starting from identification of the business case, design and development of the RPA bots till usage. It covers the crucial 3rd dimension of RPA Bot, along with the software and human user of the traditional software usage to consider and ensure overall security and compliance of the business process.