Hyperautomation is a process in which businesses automate as many business and IT processes as possible using tools like AI, machine learning, event-driven software, robotic process automation, and other types of the decision process and task automation tools.

Over the last few decades, many organizations have been using robotic process automation (RPA) to launch their automation journeys. But now, the automation landscape is rapidly changing, and RPA is just one technology on a growing list of supporting services. 

According to Gartner, enterprise architecture and technology innovation leaders need to start delivering end-to-end automation beyond RPA, combining ancillary technologies in a process that’s referred to as hyperautomation. In addition to RPA, the core components of hyperautomation include artificial intelligence, machine learning, business process management, and optical character recognition (OCR), among other things.

In short, automation is becoming faster and more powerful than ever — and we’re just starting to see what’s truly possible through the revolutionary power of hyperautomation.

What Are the Benefits of Hyperautomation?

Hyperautomation can help a business in many ways by delivering the following benefits. 

Easier Scalability - One reason teams have trouble scaling is that they lack the internal resources to keep up with manual tasks like data entry and order processing. Oftentimes, teams simply can’t move quickly enough to achieve scale. As a result, businesses end up hiring more employees or outsourcing operations - both of which are expensive and time-consuming. 

By leveraging hyperautomation, teams can expedite manual workflows while also teaching machines how to learn and improve over time to reduce and eventually eliminate human intervention. This allows teams to accomplish more and achieve growth with fewer resources. 

Tighter Integration - Hyperautomation also allows teams to integrate various technologies across legacy systems and processes, resulting in improved data sharing with greater flexibility. At the same time, errors decrease, and technology takes care of routine tasks and human intervention is removed from the equation.

Improved ROI - Ultimately, hyperautomation allows teams to drive stronger profits due to enhanced productivity and reduced backlogs. This, in turn, can lead to faster payment and claims processing, streamlined workflows, and stronger customer experiences.  

How Hyperautomation Impacts Identity Access Management 

As you can see, hyperuatomation can bring significant benefits to an organization. However, it can also lead to critical security risks. 

In many cases, this is due to a lack of robust identity access management (IAM) policies and tools. Unfortunately, this is something that organizations often overlook in their hyperautomation efforts. 

Hyperautomation without Strong IAM: A Risky Combo

If you’re new to the topic, IAM involves creating strong access controls for both human and nonhuman identities (e.g., databases and cloud services) in cloud environments.

The main IAM risk that businesses face when deploying hyperautomation is that many new identities are usually required to aid in the transformation. These identities can be spread out among numerous teams and roles, including data science, project managers, engineers, executives, rank-and-file end users, and a variety of bots that aid in various workflows. 

Organizations tend to have problems when they attempt to scale their automation and add new identities into their environments without having a system in place to track and monitor them. This often leads to identity sprawl - and a general loss of control over who is accessing information, where they are accessing it, and what they are doing with it. 

As an example, a healthcare provider might use a bot to pull PDFs from a repository and export them into an RPA and OCR workflow. That bot could potentially be exploited to also send documents to a third-party server, without the organization being aware of it. This results in a potentially costly data breach - and the loss of sensitive patient data. 

To reduce these critical risks, businesses therefore must be very careful when moving forward with hyperautomation, giving IAM the attention it deserves during the process. 

How to Reduce IAM Risks During Hyperautomation

The best way to prevent or eliminate access risks throughout hyperautomation is to implement a platform that enables full visibility into your cloud environment. That way, administrators will be able to quickly identify who has access to critical systems and databases in order to prevent information leakage from occurring. 

In addition, administrators need to work to achieve a zero-trust environment where identities are always analysed and can only access systems that they need for specific projects and tasks. For example, an engineer might not necessarily need unchecked access to a pool of data. In a zero-trust model, the engineer would only be able to access it during certain parts of a project or during certain hours. 
For the best results, teams are also encouraged to implement strong separation of duties, preventing identities from having conflicting responsibilities that could open the door to risk. 

How Sonrai Dig Can Help

Sonrai Dig is a platform that continuously identifies and monitors relationships between identities and data in the public cloud. 

Sonrai Dig enables organizations like yours to achieve end-to-end governance automation, allowing teams to strengthen their security postures and maintain greater control over all of their information and systems. 

To learn more about how Sonrai Dig can secure your cloud environment, request a demo today. 

Eric Kedrosky is Director of Cloud Security Research & CISO at Sonrai Security. This article originally appeared at https://sonraisecurity.com/blog/what-hyperautomation-means-for-identity-...