The use of robots is nothing new, especially in system and process automations. However, from a business perspective to handle daily, recurring tasks and business processes, there is substantial room to grow. Automation for handling manual repetitive tasks provides massive benefits in reducing costs in many ways, including the reduction in processing errors, increased throughput, 24×7 operations and better use of human expertise when needed.

One area which can benefit is the protection of personally identifiable information (PII). With numerous cybersecurity initiatives (GPDR, FCRA, HIPAA, etc.) and executive orders in place (EO 14028), it is important to ensure that all digital content processed and stored is protected and, when disseminated, protects the information from unauthorized access and use. One way to ensure that data is protected is ensuring that it is processed during initial processing through automation, AI and ML.

In this example, we will show how to integrate Robotic Process Automation into our ArkCase Case Management System to automatically detect and redact PII in documents ingested by the system. Naturally, the process can be executed in batches to process all existing content, as well. The use case is documented using the following two products:

• ArkCase is a global leader in enterprise case management software that enables businesses to deliver exceptional service to their clients and provides a low-code environment that is cost effective to implement and maintain. ArkCase customers can meet deadlines, reduce errors and eliminate manual processing of cases.s, and eliminate manual processing of cases.
• UiPath is a leader in Robotic Process Automation (RPA). The main goal of any RPA tool is to reduce manual and repetitive tasks. The UiPath provides enterprise tools to achieve this goal. Automation (RPA). Main goal of any RPA tool is to reduce manual and repetitive tasks. UiPath provides enterprise tools to achieve this goal.

Use Case: Integrate UiPath with ArkCase to preprocess all new documents and automatically redact PII data prior to submitting the document for additional workflow processing.

The business process chosen for this focuses on the redaction of PIIs, such as social security numbers, phone numbers and email. The manual process which is being automated follows the steps outlined below:

1. Authorized user is notified of a task to complete
2. User opens queue items and locates documents that need redaction
3. Opens document in ArkCase Document Viewer
4. Searches for SS# pattern
5. Marks the results for redaction
6. Annotates each redaction with a redaction code
7. Saves and close the document
8. Marks the document as redacted and renters it into queue for workflow routing

The entire process can take 15-30 min per document and is prone to human errors.

The following shows how we created the UiPath bot to perform the above actions autonomously based on a notification triggered when a new document is ingested into the system

1. UiPath Studio was used as tool of choice to create the bot.
   
2. Bot will login to ArkCase and open the required document in ArkCase document viewer. Normally, a system ID is used for robots, but any authorized user ID can be used. All transactions will be logged for the ID used.
   
3. Bot will run the pre-defined SS# pattern search from ArkCase Document Viewer.
   
4. Bot then redacts all results and add required annotation tags to the redaction.
   
5. Bot then goes back to the queue item and marks the document as Partial Redacted
   

The entire process took about 1-2 seconds and can scale hundreds and thousands of documents through both parallel robots running on the same machine or dedicated virtual or physical hardware. The bot was also configured to automatically route any issues, such as patterns not meeting certain confidence values, to humans for review.

The integration can be easily expanded to include the following:

1. Use case extension for other PIAA fields, such as credit card numbers, phone numbers, etc., with little effort
2. Integrate with other enterprise application systems via RESTful services
3. Audit trails and integration of UiPath and ArkCase logs with SIEM tools like Splunk
4. Spawn of 100s of robots to scale via parallel processing
5. Other ArkCase use cases in the FOIA space

Figure 1: ArkCase and Robotic Process Automation workflow for bulk data processing with PII data identification and data segregation

Return of Investment

Even in this small use case, let’s say in a day, ArkCase redacts about 200 documents taking a human 15 min per document, i.e., 300 min or 6 hours a day or a full day of work. UiPath can free up one human so that they can focus on more pressing and critical tasks. Furthermore, a bot can work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. At a fraction of the cost of a full-time person, it is hard to ignore those savings!