Robotic Process Automation is a type of Business Process Automation that helps organizations replace repetitive manual work with automation. RPA essentially creates a non-person account—a “bot”—that mimics the activities of a user. The bot accesses the user’s computer and interacts with various systems in the same manner a person would, using specific keystrokes to engage in two-way “conversations,” share and document information, launch programs, and run processes.

Robots need privileged access to other computers, applications, files, a website, databases, etc. in order to interact with them. Privileged Access Management (PAM) best practices avoid the need to hard code credentials into scripts and give security teams visibility into the accounts being used by robots and the privileged activities they perform.