Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has played a key role in the digital transformation journey of enterprises over the years, helping them achieve efficiency, scalability, and cost savings. A Grand View Research report estimated the 2025 global RPA market size at USD 4.68 billion, with a projection to reach USD 35.84 billion by 2033. The analysis clearly indicates that RPA adoption continues across many industry sectors despite the rise of agentic AI. In fact, current trends indicate that RPA vendors are now evolving their products beyond rule-based task automation. Bots are integrating into agentic systems, leveraging the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to autonomously handle complex tasks, including contextual decision-making. They now handle sensitive data, manage critical workflows, and deal with system credentials. And therein lies the challenge, as the risks increase with a wider attack surface.
The 6 Predictions for the AI Economy: 2026's New Rules of Cybersecurity report from Palo Alto Networks warns that autonomous agents may pose significant security vulnerabilities. Identity threat is a crucial concern as a single compromised bot can trigger a chain of automated actions. Since RPA is often integrated with other enterprise systems, the consequences of such security lapses can be grave. Gartner predicts that insufficient AI risk guardrails could result in thousands of AI-related legal disputes by the end of 2026. This perspective only reaffirms that security is now a key focus area for robotic process automation companies. This shift in approach from efficiency-led to security-led will become the key differentiator for their products in a competitive and thriving market.
Let us now explore four key RPA security best practices that can help RPA vendors stay competitive and futuristic.
- Adopt the Secure-by-Design approach
- Apply the Principle of Least Privilege
- Implement zero-trust architecture
- Fortify credential management
To address the futuristic threats bots will face, it is imperative that RPA development relies on the secure-by-design (SbD) approach. Security must be embedded into the end-to-end RPA lifecycle, making bots proactively secure. A recent report titled UiPath 2026 AI and Agentic Automation Trends Report acknowledges this trend of enterprises making security a priority. The report further states that providers now embed governance across the lifecycle as a guardrail. It means enforcing governance-as-code as a standard from the inception phase. It translates to including policies, acceptable behaviours, automation workflows, and explainability built into the bot to counter possible threats.
This approach, also referred to as Trust by Design, will have a human-in-the-loop for critical workflows to enforce requisite checks. Some perceive this approach as expensive, coming at the cost of innovation. However, according to the IBM report Secure by design, smarter with AI, 69% of organisations following the SbD approach saw enhanced Return on Investment (ROI) for their new products and services. It means that SbD, combined with AI technologies, will shape the environment through which threats move, and will not merely focus on stopping the attacks. It makes the bots more robust, reliable and resilient.
One of the key aspects discussed in RPA security is the surface of attack. Since bots are integrated into and interact with multiple enterprise systems, the attack surface widens. Overprivileged bots can create havoc, especially when combined with autonomous agents, as seen in the latest trends. This is where the Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP) matters. It helps define the maximum level of access a bot should be allowed to have while performing its assigned tasks. This significantly reduces the attack surface and blast radius of any malicious activity, intended or otherwise.
PoLP is commonly implemented through mechanisms like role-based access control (RBAC) and multi-factor authentication (MFA). Specific to RPAs, this also means ensuring no passwords are ever hardcoded into the scripts, as that continues to be a key security risk. According to the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP), PoLP is often a building block of a comprehensive security framework, namely the zero-trust model.
While PoLP determines the extent of access a bot is allowed to have, a zero-trust architecture governs how and when that access is granted. This is crucial in RPA environments as bots interact continuously with systems at high speeds. Bots often wield more privileges than human users, and in the AI era, this can compound with identity threats looming large. The zero-trust framework will help RPA companies address this challenge. Assigning a unique identity to every bot prevents any impersonation and increases traceability and accountability with continuous validation. The zero-trust architecture approach mandates that no request, whether from a person or a bot, should be trusted. Rather, every request must be verified for authenticity and then granted access.
RPA companies must enforce centralised credential management through secure vaults. Many modern RPA platforms encrypt and rotate passwords automatically to avoid unauthorised access, thereby reducing breach risks. Automated credential management also enables audit trails for the bots to ensure compliance. There is better visibility into the actions of bots, enabling RPA companies to scale efficiently while managing huge bot armies.
RPA security moves beyond protecting today’s bots to empowering tomorrow’s workforce. As bots converge with agentic intelligence to deliver on futuristic use cases, RPA companies are at a point where they can seize the advantage to lead enterprise digital transformation. By implementing these four security best practices, they can unlock greater efficiency levels while inspiring confidence to sustain innovation and deliver consistent value. Along with these key security practices, constant monitoring, robust logging, and periodic audits strengthen the overall bot security.
How Infosys BPM can help
Infosys BPM’s Robotic Process Automation (RPA) services are a posse of carefully crafted offerings that help our customers build the next-gen digital workforce. Our RPA BPM bot solutions combine our BPM expertise with Artificial Intelligence (AI) to deliver futuristic and secure solutions. Our successful RPA implementations include AssistEdge, our award-winning, proprietary, multi-functional RPA platform, as well as leading third-party tools and platforms.
