Robots Go Rogue When Unattended! Here is How to Tame Them

Automation comes in different forms depending on the way people interact with them. They can work with any application the way people do, with the only difference being that they are not visible to the human eye. They are called unattended robots that do not need human interaction. Unattended robots are adapted for end-to-end automation of business processes complementing the front-end robots and automating back-office work at scale. They operate at a pre-determined schedule, or as triggered by logic in the process flow. Of late, the unattended robotic sphere is becoming the holy grail of entire RPA industry, and therefore a number of challenges seeking attention.

The fully autonomous unattended robots have similar system requirements as humans do. Only when equipped with the networks and applications humans have access to, the performance would be at par. It includes access to mission-critical enterprise systems. Just as a real-life person's identity is vulnerable with respect to security systems, the unattended robotic system can quickly become a haven for data thieves.

The ever-growing tribe of citizen developers with sheer laxity toward security protocols has created many loopholes in the security infrastructure of the companies. Is there a way at all to be uncompromising creativity and innovation on top which is not possible with attended automation?

The possible solutions can be having automated and centralized management of RPA credentials, removing hard-coded credentials from robot scripts, etc. The security measures can ensure that the security mechanism works without failure. Giving bots their own unique identity, credentials, and entitlements is also a best practice. But to leverage full benefits of RPA, companies must adopt DevSecOps and integrate automation and security right from the beginning.