As enterprises refine their strategies for handling Non-Human Identities (NHIs), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has become a powerful tool for streamlining operations and enhancing security. However, since RPA bots have varying levels of access to sensitive information, enterprises must be prepared to mitigate a variety of challenges. In large organizations, bots are starting to outnumber human employees, and without proper identity lifecycle management, these bots increase security risks. RPA impacts Identity and Access Management (IAM) by managing bot identities, enforcing least-privilege access and ensuring auditability across all accounts.
Continue reading to learn more about RPA, its challenges with IAM and best practices organizations should follow to secure RPA within IAM.
What is Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) uses bots to automate repetitive tasks that are traditionally performed by human users. In the context of IAM, RPA plays an essential role in streamlining the user lifecycle, including provisioning, deprovisioning and secure access to credentials. These RPA bots act as NHIs and require governance just as human users do for authentication, access controls and privileged session monitoring. As RPA adoption grows, IAM systems must consistently manage both human identities and NHIs within a unified security framework. Here are the key benefits of RPA:
- Improved efficiency and speed: RPA automates time-consuming, repetitive tasks like provisioning and deprovisioning, enabling IT teams to focus on higher-priority tasks.
- Better accuracy: RPA minimizes human error and reduces the risk of misconfigurations by following pre-defined scripts. Bots also automate credential handling and eliminate common issues like password reuse.
- Enhanced security: RPA strengthens IAM by triggering immediate deprovisioning once an employee leaves an organization. Automated bots can also detect and respond to behavioral anomalies in real time, limiting the impact of unauthorized access.
- Stronger compliance: RPA supports regulatory compliance mandates by automatically logging every bot action and enforcing access policies. Combined with zero-trust security principles, RPA enables continuous verification of all identities — human or machine.
Challenges RPA introduces into IAM
As organizations scale their use of RPA, several challenges emerge that can weaken the efficiency of existing IAM strategies, including bot management, larger attack surfaces and integration difficulties.
Managing bots
RPA bots are taking on more critical tasks across enterprises, and managing their identities and access becomes a top priority. Unlike human users, bots work silently in the background but still require authentication and authorization. Without appropriate identity governance, improperly monitored bots can create security gaps within an organization’s IAM. A common problem is how bots store credentials, often embedding hardcoded passwords or API keys in scripts or configuration files.
Increased attack surface
Each RPA bot has a new NHI, and each NHI introduces a potential attack vector for cybercriminals to exploit. Without strictly enforcing the Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP), bots may be overprovisioned with access that exceeds their needs for repetitive tasks. If compromised, bots can be used to move laterally within a network or exfiltrate sensitive data. Securing bots’ privileged access and managing their credentials with Just-in-Time (JIT) access is crucial to maintaining zero-trust security.
Integration difficulties
Many legacy IAM systems were not built with modern RPA integrations in mind, making it challenging for enterprises to enforce consistent access policies across both human users and NHIs. Integration gaps can result in unmanaged credentials, insufficient audit trails and inconsistent enforcement of access controls. Without alignment between RPA and IAM, organizations risk having less visibility and inconsistencies across automated processes.
Best practices for securing RPA within IAM
Securing RPA within IAM requires more than just granting bots access; organizations must treat automated processes with the same attention to detail as they do for human users. Here are some best practices to ensure RPA deployments remain secure and aligned with zero-trust security principles.
1. Prioritize bot identities
Treating RPA bots as first-class identities is crucial to maintaining strong IAM. Since bots interact with core systems and often operate with elevated privileges, it’s important to ensure each bot has only the minimum level of access required for its specific task. Each bot should be assigned an identity with its own unique credentials so they are never shared or reused across other bots or services. This approach to bot management allows security teams to grant or revoke access without disrupting broader workflows and to better track each bot’s activities.
2. Use a secrets manager
RPA bots typically interact with critical systems and APIs, relying on credentials or SSH keys to function. Storing these secrets in plaintext configuration files or scripts makes them easy targets for cybercriminals and difficult to securely rotate. A dedicated secrets management tool like Keeper® ensures that all credentials are encrypted and centrally managed in a zero-knowledge vault. Secrets can be retrieved at runtime, so they never reside in memory or on a device.
3. Implement PAM
Bots that perform repetitive, administrative tasks often require privileged access, making Privileged Access Management (PAM) essential. PAM solutions should enforce JIT access, ensuring bots receive privileged access only when needed and for a limited time. With session monitoring and recording to maintain transparency and detect unusual bot activity, implementing PAM eliminates standing access and helps prevent privilege escalation.
4. Strengthen authentication with MFA
Human users managing RPA bots must be required to authenticate using Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). Since MFA is not practical for bot accounts themselves, having an extra layer of protection for the users managing them helps prevent unauthorized access to critical systems, sensitive data and privileged credentials. In addition, organizations should adopt Zero-Trust Network Access (ZTNA) principles by continuously verifying bot identities and context, not only at login but throughout each privileged session.
Secure the future of automation with IAM
Automation continues to transform how enterprises operate, largely driven by the rise of NHIs like RPA bots. To keep up with this technological evolution, organizations must adjust their IAM strategies to accommodate and secure both human users and automated bots. KeeperPAM® helps enterprises close potential security gaps, such as credential theft and privilege misuse, by providing a unified platform for managing credentials, enforcing PoLP, monitoring privileged sessions and managing the full identity lifecycle of every identity — human or not.
