Bot security is at the top of the list for all businesses looking to leverage Robotic Process Automation (RPA). After all, if you can’t trust the technology you’re using, how can it save you any time?

Major Area to Focus While Building Secure Bots with Bot Creator

There are a few major areas to focus on when it comes to bot security. First and foremost, you need to be aware of any key sensitive areas in your company, which includes any information that is critical to your company’s security such as the following:

• Usernames
• Passwords
• Financial information
• Customer data

Once you’ve taken stock of your company’s sensitive information, you can set up a safe environment for your bot builder to run in. This will prevent the bot from having access to any data it should not have access to, allowing you to make the most of the efficiency RPA ecosystems bring to any business.

1. Reduce the Attack Surface Area

With a more efficient system, you’ll be able to reduce the amount of time you spend on administrative tasks, leaving your employees to do their jobs.

It’s important to make sure you’re securing the ecosystem which is dedicated to your robot(s), including setting up the appropriate firewalls to ensure it does not access any other areas of your company. This will protect your company from attacks such as SQL injections, man-in-the-middle, and other forms of cyber attacks.

2. Secure Defaults

Over the years of learning about RPA, it has become increasingly clear that the default settings are often not the most secure. These defaults are based on the generic use case of the application, but not specific to your company or industry. Changing the settings to be more specific to your needs will help secure your system.

For example, if you are using automation for document classification, the default setting might be to share the document with everyone with access within the system. Instead, you can change this option to only allow the person who classified the document to view it.

3. Be Sure to Limit the Bot's Accessibility to the Exact Resources Where It's Needed

The best way to share information and data with team members, colleagues, and clients is to centralize it and make it available to everyone. That’s why RPA robots are designed to access central databases and business applications.

However, it’s important to understand that any information that is not specifically tailored to a particular bot will be publicly accessible to other bots and anyone who has the authorization to access your network. That’s why per-bot security should be applied to ensure the privacy of your internal data.

Setting up per-bot security is a process that involves creating a separate environment for each bot to exist within, while still allowing them to have access to the data they require.

4. Practice Defense in Depth as a Layered Approach to Your Security Measures

There’s no right or wrong way to practice defense-in-depth, but it’s important to understand that when you’re using bot creator to create bots, it’s important to have security measures in place at every layer and every stage of the process.

That means developing a strategy that will protect your Bot from the time it is first activated, to when it is connected to the network, to when it starts interacting with the applications and data available to it, to when it completes its task and the time it is scheduled for a next run.

5. Design in a Way that Allows it to Fail Securely & Restart

One of the benefits of having system bots is that they will continue to work even if a Windows update or other event causes a system failure. It will also continue to work if your Internet connection goes down temporarily.

However, this doesn’t mean you don’t need to worry about bot failure. You just need to take steps to ensure the bot can roll back or restart itself if an error occurs. This means creating a system that allows the bot to “fail-safe” by allowing it to revert to a safe state.

The element that makes RPA a game-changer for businesses is that it is self-learning, meaning it can be used to automate complex processes with minimal input. However, to ensure that you are being as efficient as possible with your bot design, security should be at the forefront of your mind throughout the entire process.

Are You Planning to Integrate Robotics Processing Automation into Your Business?

BotPath offers advanced features such as visual builder and a comprehensive suite of RPA solutions for enterprises that can help businesses to automate and streamline the existing business processes and improve business performance.

We have a team of skilled RPA developers who can help you create RPA solutions that can meet your business needs. So, get in touch with us today and transform the way your business works as we help you with our cutting-edge robotics processing automation implementation.