Human-Centered Cybersecurity Revisited: From Enemies to Partners Communications of the ACM

When evaluating robotic process automation (RPA) software, it is important to consider the level of vendor support and the size and activity of the user community. These factors can greatly impact the success of an RPA implementation and the ability to troubleshoot issues. RPA is being used in healthcare to automate administrative tasks such as patient registration, appointment scheduling, and claim processing. RPA can also be used to monitor patient data in real-time, flagging any abnormalities and alerting staff to potential issues. Recent times have witnessed a significant surge in the usage of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software, largely attributed to its capabilities to streamline repetitive functions, lower error rates, and enhance effectiveness. However, the plethora of RPA software offerings available can make the task of choosing one that aligns with your specific business requirements a daunting one.

The research should consider different security outcomes, as well as different user groups and application areas. As a first step, this means considering an enabling approaches mindset when formulating research questions and choosing the methods and outcome measures. The examples described here, including the HaaS framework, human adaptivity, and resilience, already illustrate cases in which humans can positively contribute to security beyond compliance.

This includes identifying the processes that need to be automated, understanding the benefits of automation, and setting clear goals for the implementation. This will help ensure that the implementation is aligned with the organization’s overall goals and objectives. Finally, it is important to evaluate the analytics and reporting capabilities of the RPA software. The software should provide detailed insights into process ChatGPT App performance and identify areas for improvement. The software should be able to protect sensitive data and ensure that processes are secure and compliant with regulations such as GDPR and HIPAA. RPA software should be able to integrate with a variety of other software and systems, including enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, and other business applications.

In the human resources industry, RPA is being used to automate tasks such as employee onboarding, payroll processing, and benefits administration. This not only saves time but also reduces the risk of errors, which can be costly in this industry. RPA can also be used to monitor employee data in real-time, flagging any issues and improving compliance. GenAI will affect process design, development, and data integration, reducing design and development time as well as the need for desktop and mobile interfaces. Yet this genAI efficiency still leaves current digital and robotic process automation platforms orchestrating the core process, subject to their deterministic and rule-driven models.

Kofax is another RPA software that offers strong scalability and integration capabilities. Kofax can integrate with a wide range of business systems, including ERP and CRM software, and offers a range of tools for managing and monitoring bots. Automation Anywhere is another popular RPA software that offers a range of features for automating business processes. Its software robots can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud and can handle complex tasks like invoice processing, data extraction, and report generation.

Forget AI—Here’s How Leaders Save Time Using Neuroscience

These approaches consider not only the interactions of humans and technology but also the systemic factors influencing those interactions, such as leadership and organizational security culture. Figure 1c therefore depicts multiple interactions among humans and technology, complementing each other in a system context. This stands in contrast to constraining and considering approaches, where the focus is on technology design, with the human element placed below or subordinate to the technology. Viewing the human as a potential security resource and an equally treated partner to technology in tackling security challenges opens new avenues for research and practice. Studying in which cases humans can actively contribute to security and fostering supporting factors may complement the set of available approaches to encourage secure behaviors and counteract quickly evolving cyber attacks. We therefore suggest working toward an evidence-based foundation for applying enabling approaches in cybersecurity and call for more empirical research on the human contribution not only to failure but also to success.

Another crucial aspect of creativity in scientific discovery is the ability to form hypotheses, an area where AI, for all its processing power, often relies on human ingenuity. The study suggests that top-performing scientists used AI not only to confirm existing knowledge but also to explore new hypotheses, testing boundaries that may have previously gone unchallenged. This capacity for hypothesis generation is a distinctly human trait, rooted in our unique cognitive ability to speculate, imagine, and foresee potential outcomes. Instead of storing passwords within our bots, we rely on our password management system to ensure that access remains tightly controlled. We’ve started to rethink some of our larger automations, breaking them into smaller pieces.

WorkFusion can integrate with a wide range of business systems, including Salesforce and SAP, and offers a range of tools for managing and monitoring bots. The chosen approaches manifest in the published research and in the related tools or policies. For example, if the goal was to avoid human error by enforcing a new security policy, measuring compliance as an outcome appears to be a suitable measure. However, potential human contributions to security, extending beyond mere compliance, are neither considered nor measured.

OpenAI data indicates that generative AI could impact more than

30 percent of U.S. jobs and replace half of the professions in

these fields. Already, 85 percent of employees feel that this

process affects at least 10 percent of their responsibilities. The company has a comprehensive training program and certification process that ensures its developers are proficient in using the UiPath platform. UiPath, Automation Anywhere, and Blue Prism are the current market leaders in the RPA industry. These companies have established themselves as reliable providers of RPA solutions and have a significant market share. According to the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant report, the top-rated RPA tools are UiPath, Automation Anywhere, and Blue Prism.

Which RPA software is most suitable for integrating with SAP systems?

For example, requiring people to remember numerous complex and random passwords conflicts with human memory. This concerns all steps in the process, from determining the need for new technologies, to designing them, to interacting with them as employees or customers. UiPath is another popular RPA software solution that offers robust security features. It provides secure credential management, role-based access control, and encryption of sensitive data. UiPath also offers compliance reporting and auditing capabilities to ensure that the organization meets regulatory requirements. Automation Anywhere is a cloud-based RPA software that offers excellent scalability and integration capabilities.

Microsoft Power Automate is an RPA software solution that offers advanced security features, including secure credential management, role-based access control, and encryption of sensitive data. It also offers compliance reporting and auditing capabilities to ensure that the organization meets regulatory requirements. Blue Prism is an RPA software solution that provides advanced security features, including secure credential management, role-based access control, and encryption of sensitive data.

Let’s look at the example of applying agentic AI to IT operations (a.k.a. AIOps, observability and automation). ITOps use cases involve descriptive, predictive, prescriptive and cognitive phases, leveraging real-time telemetry data. What makes ITOps use cases challenging is dealing with the “data value gap.” Dealing with volume, velocity, veracity and variety of the telemetry data and generating the desired context becomes very challenging. Use Perplexity Spaces for initial research and data gathering, then transfer insights to Custom GPTs for automated processing and application. Integrate Perplexity’s search capabilities into Custom GPTs via API requests, combining advanced search with automation.

Envisioning a research agenda for enabling approaches.

This does not necessarily imply that the potential does not exist, but rather reflects a set of assumptions held by the researcher as well as a lack of inquiry and analysis. In line with the saying “What you look for is what you find,” we suggest a conscious and careful selection of approaches, and hence related solutions. Table 1 directly compares examples of different security-related application areas along with their underlying questions and related evaluation measures. Pega Robotic Process Automation is a powerful RPA software that is designed to handle complex business processes. Its software robots can automate a wide range of tasks, from simple data entry to complex decision-making processes. Pega Robotic Process Automation’s drag-and-drop interface and extensive library of pre-built bots make it easy to create and deploy automation solutions quickly.

This not only saves time but also improves the customer experience, as orders can be processed more quickly and accurately. RPA can also be used to monitor customer data in real-time, flagging any issues and improving customer satisfaction. Overall, RPA technology is an effective way to automate routine and repetitive tasks within business processes, which can lead to increased efficiency, productivity, and cost savings. Overall, these five RPA software options offer a range of features and capabilities for businesses looking to automate their processes. Each software has its own strengths and weaknesses, and businesses should carefully evaluate their needs before choosing the best option for them. Another top RPA software is Automation Anywhere, which offers a comprehensive automation platform with advanced analytics and cognitive capabilities.

• This acceleration has pushed Simpson’s team to adapt quickly and has underscored the need for flexibility in their approach.
• However, there are significant infrastructure challenges that are holding back businesses from gaining a competitive advantage, bringing disruptions to the market and leapfrogging their market capitalization.
• This will enable robots to sense and respond to their environment instead of following preprogrammed rules and workflows, exposing them to more complex and unpredictable situations.
• If we truly want to understand and improve security behavior, it is essential that we also incorporate insights from disciplines primarily concerned with the “people” and “process” aspects, such as the human sciences and safety science.
• Unlike previous approaches, enabling approaches take a “solution fostering” perspective rather than a “problem preventing” one.

In a world captivated by AI’s potential, we should recognize that it is our own creative potential, harnessed to its fullest, that ultimately defines AI’s impact. We have 243 shared mailboxes in our accounting center alone, with several hundred people working on those. We want to ensure our people in the accounting center are not only providing good customer service but also receiving quality service from the shared mailbox teams. This acceleration has pushed Simpson’s team to adapt quickly and has underscored the need for flexibility in their approach.

The other aspect of the conversation with Simpson which was helpful was around security and governance. As my colleague Jon Reed mentioned, UiPath took a bold approach during the FORWARD event in urging attendees to exercise caution when using AI agents. This was quickly juxtaposed against a scorched earth landscape warning us not to trust AI Agents. For me, this contextualized a montage shown earlier ChatGPT in the day when CEO Daniel Dines had reminisced about his dream of finding a way to ‘free his mind’. At the time, this seemed a little too fantastical – it didn’t fit with the serious and focused character that Dines presents in person. The technology is changing quicker than we can keep up with — just as soon as we finish one project, new advancements come along and give us even more options.

Agentic AI Platform For ITOps: Security, Ethics And Infrastructure Challenges

It is particularly well-suited for businesses that need to automate complex workflows and processes. Automation Anywhere can integrate with a wide range of business systems, including Salesforce and Oracle, and offers a range of tools for managing and monitoring bots. UiPath is a leading RPA software provider that offers a comprehensive suite of tools for automating complex business processes. Its software robots can handle a wide range of tasks, from data entry to customer service, and can integrate with other systems seamlessly. UiPath’s user-friendly interface and extensive documentation make it easy to get started with RPA even for non-technical users.

Automation centers of excellence and line-of-business management will be challenged to train and safely provision their use and control proliferation of AI models and copilot platforms. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Further examples of envisioned solutions aligning with enabling approaches are summarized in Table 1. For example, security-awareness campaigns do not always translate into actual behavior.6 Security technologies are often designed by experts, for experts.

Understanding these platforms’ functionalities is essential for choosing the one that best fits your goals. Many of us are actively exploring how to use these technologies to meet specific requirements. Perplexity Spaces vs Custom GPTs—two standout platforms—each cater to different aspects of AI functionality. The following research questions concerned with both research content and methodology can guide future research and address potential challenges related to enabling approaches. A third set of examples concerns human resilience, for example, in terms of their ability to flexibly and manually handle processes in emergency situations. Not every process can reasonably be automated, so humans remain a relevant and essential part of the sociotechnical system.

The Blue Prism Community is a growing community of RPA professionals who share knowledge and best practices. This includes providing training on how to use the software, as well as how to identify processes that can be automated. By providing comprehensive training, organizations can ensure that employees are fully equipped to use the software and that they understand the benefits of automation.

Unlike previous approaches, enabling approaches take a “solution fostering” perspective rather than a “problem preventing” one. Along with this transition comes a change in how humans are viewed, from being a problem that needs to be controlled or considered to recognizing them as a potential security asset. This switch in perspective allows for complementing existing research approaches with a more holistic consideration of the human role in cybersecurity and an analysis of the human factors contributing to success. We should question the goals we are setting and the conditions in which we expect people to achieve these goals. Only when we stop enforcing compliance with inept policies and technologies can we expect to permanently build people’s security capacities. Furthermore, initial research indicates that humans are motivated and able to behave securely when they are adequately enabled to do so.

Constraining Approaches

Agentic AI and the rise of LAM (large action models) now show the promise to make this vision a reality. The first set of examples comprises complementing technological developments with human strengths and capabilities. Membership in ACM includes a subscription to Communications of the ACM (CACM), the computing industry’s most trusted source for staying connected to the world of advanced computing. If we shift our perspective to see AI as a tool that responds to creativity rather than one that generates it, we open up new possibilities for human-AI collaboration. The power of AI lies in its ability to serve as an amplifier for human cognition—a partner that enhances our capacity for innovation but depends on the human mind to drive it forward. One of the study’s most telling findings is the difference in the types of innovations generated.

UiPath, Automation Anywhere, and Blue Prism are all highly rated RPA software solutions that offer robust support and active user communities. Finally, it’s important to monitor and evaluate the implementation process to ensure that it is successful. This includes tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) such as cost savings, productivity gains, and error rates. By monitoring and evaluating the implementation, organizations can identify areas for improvement and make adjustments as needed. In the rapidly evolving field of AI tools, Perplexity Spaces and Custom GPTs emerge as powerful platforms, each featuring distinct capabilities to address various user needs.

Based on insights from the human sciences and safety science, we suggest supplementing the current portfolio of mainly constraining and considering approaches with enabling approaches. These acknowledge that today’s sociotechnical systems are highly complex and interconnected and that a combination of factors contribute to error but also to success. Enabling approaches therefore aim to make use of all available resources, including and especially focusing on the human and the greater sociotechnical system. They aim to integrate humans as a potential security resource and treat them as an equal partner to technology.

This allows for seamless automation of processes across different systems and departments. RPA technology can be used in a wide range of industries, including finance, healthcare, manufacturing, and retail. It can automate tasks such as invoice processing, customer service, and supply chain management. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software has become an essential tool for businesses to automate repetitive tasks and increase efficiency.

Simpson’s team often receives long lists of requested automation projects, but they must continuously evaluate these against emerging technologies that might provide new or more efficient ways to achieve their goals. Most of the industries currently most affected by generative

artificial intelligence (AI) were at least at risk of automation

just a few years ago. Generative AI can replace specialized skills

and interactive functions that experts previously considered

impossible for computers, including programming, forecasting,

writing, creativity, communication, promotion, and analysis. Robotic Process Automation has been effectively applied in various industries, including finance, healthcare, and manufacturing. For instance, RPA has been used to automate invoice processing in finance, patient onboarding in healthcare, and quality control in manufacturing. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data.

A detailed plan will help ensure that the implementation stays on track and that everyone involved understands their role in the process. GenAI innovations, edge intelligence, and advancing communication services are encouraging developers of physical robotics to take a fresh look at embodied AI. This will enable robots to sense and respond to their environment instead of following preprogrammed rules and workflows, exposing them to more complex and unpredictable situations. Decision-makers in asset-intensive industries will begin to see value in the combination and invest in physical automation projects to enhance their operational efficiencies.

Sometimes it is necessary to switch to manual, human-based handling, as in the case of emergencies. Further challenges of automation lie in the invisibility of the underlying processes and unexpected outcomes16 that can make it difficult for humans to anticipate, evaluate, and decide upon the provided information. And finally, automated processes are also largely designed by humans and thus not completely free from error or bias, as seen in artificial-intelligence-based security tools. WorkFusion is a cloud-based RPA software that offers excellent scalability and integration capabilities. It is particularly well-suited for businesses that need to automate repetitive, high-volume tasks.

• By thoroughly understanding each platform’s unique features, strengths, and limitations, you can make an informed decision that aligns with your objectives and maximizes the potential of AI technology in your projects.
• The Blue Prism Community is a growing community of RPA professionals who share knowledge and best practices.
• This piece aims to present a brief overview of the top 5 leading robotic process automation software anticipated for 2023.
• Further examples for solutions aligning with considering approaches are summarized in Table 1.
• John Robins is director and head of AI & Data and Industrial Business at Synapse, part of Capgemini Invent.

Unlike earlier automation technologies that primarily affected

routine tasks, generative AI is likely to replace many cognitive

and non-routine tasks, especially in medium- and high-salary

professions. The most affected industries include high-paying

sectors such as STEM, finance, and law, as well as office and

administrative support roles. Another notable RPA software, Automation Anywhere, provides regular updates and has a strong focus on longevity. Automation Anywhere offers a lifetime license for its software, ensuring that customers can continue to use the software for as long as they need to without having to worry about additional fees or licensing costs. When it comes to vendor support and community, it is important to evaluate the level of support offered by each vendor and the size and activity of the user community.

Initial research in the direction of enabling approaches has already provided us with some examples in which humans in cybersecurity can be a security partner or a wall of defense rather than an enemy. Yet, while some of the examples date back a couple of years, research on using an enabling approach or mindset is still scarce in the cybersecurity domain. When policies are not in line or even in conflict with users’ perceptions or primary tasks, the effects can be cognitive process automation counterproductive. Focusing on “enabling approaches” that treat humans as partners adds another layer of protection to our cybersecurity defenses. Our account managers, who number 4,500 strong, don’t need to know what robots we have or who’s handling downstream processes. They just need to be able to say, ‘File this for me.’ Then, behind the scenes, the automation takes over — whether it’s data extraction, feeding databases, or processing accounting statements.

Additionally, UiPath offers long-term support for its products, guaranteeing that customers can rely on the software for years to come. It offers both attended and unattended automation, and it can integrate with other Microsoft products such as Office 365 and Dynamics 365. The cost of Microsoft Power Automate is based on the number of flows and runs, and it can be a cost-effective solution for companies that already use Microsoft products. The software should be able to handle a large number of processes and tasks, and be able to scale up or down as needed.

However, UiPath has a dedicated SAP automation solution that makes it a preferred choice for SAP integration. Overall, when selecting an RPA software, it is important to consider the software’s update frequency and longevity. UiPath, Automation Anywhere, and Blue Prism are all top RPA software that offer regular updates and long-term support, making them reliable choices for businesses of all sizes. Overall, there are many factors to consider when choosing an RPA software, and cost is just one of them. By carefully evaluating your needs and budget, you can find a solution that meets your requirements and helps you achieve your automation goals. UiPath is another popular RPA software, and it offers both a free and a paid version.

Automation Anywhere’s drag-and-drop interface and extensive library of pre-built bots make it easy to create and deploy automation solutions quickly. Considering approaches not only increase awareness of human factors in cybersecurity but also lead to the design of security solutions with enhanced usability. While partially beneficial and even necessary in some cases, constraining approaches are not without their challenges. On the other hand, not all processes can be easily automated, including authentication and communication.