How To Solve The Biggest Problems With Robotics Process Automation And Business Intelligence Opportunities In Insurance, Wealth Management And Banking Sectors
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a powerful, emerging technology and a hot topic of conversation. Despite the buzz, many people remain fuzzy on understanding the specifics. Does RPA mean that organizations will soon employ armies of futuristic robots to do the work that humans once did (remember the movie I, Robot)?
Not quite. Let’s start with a definition. RPA is “the use of software with artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities to handle high-volume tasks that previously required a human to perform.” In other words, RPA uses “software robots” to automate much of the manual “hand work” involved in daily business, such as entering data (invoices, POs, etc.) from one application into another. What RPA does NOT focus on is the “head work,” or cognitive automation, required to extract information from unstructured sources. This is the work—and irreplaceable value—of humans in the organization. RPA is not meant to replace employees, but rather, allow them to leverage their experience and capabilities and focus their efforts on business-critical work. RPA simply fills in the gaps—providing 24×7, cross-geography support for time-consuming, repetitive tasks.
RPA and Privilege Connection
So what do IT security professionals need to know about RPA platforms and the connection to privileged credentials? Simply put, it is a new attack vector and organizations need to protect the powerful, privileged accounts within these RPA platforms.
Because RPA software interacts directly with business applications and mimics the way applications use and mirror human credentials and entitlements, this can introduce significant risks when the software robots automate and perform routine business processes across multiple systems.
Locking Down RPA Credentials
CyberArk solves the privileged account security challenge for both human and application users. Through the C3Alliance, we’ve partnered with some of the world’s leading RPA players, including Automation Anywhere, BluePrism, WorkFusion and UiPath, to provide a simple, easy-to-deploy and cost effective solution to this growing security challenge. This best-in-breed credential management solution:
- Implements and manages a unique account for every target system that needs to be accessed by a robot:This eliminates the need to put a powerful credential, such as a domain credential, into the application’s server for the robots to leverage. Additionally, if a system is breached, the breach will only affect that particular system—there will not be a larger, ripple effect across multiple systems.
- Securely stores and retrieves credentials: Instead of storing credentials within the application, robots can request credentials from CyberArk’s centralized, encrypted vault, as needed, via CyberArk Application Identity Manager, to perform their necessary tasks.
