The data retention and cleanup policy for enterprise customer data in the Automation 360 platform outlines temporary storage measures and secure deletion protocols to minimize data exposure risks.

The policy outlines data handling practices for the following:
  • Data being transferred and stored
  • Retention schedules for different data types
  • Options for manual or automated deletion to safeguard data privacy and security

The policy outlines products and features within the Automation 360 Control Room that, when used, might store customer data. It provides guidance on features that store customer data during the subscription period and those that temporarily store customer data while executing an automation. The policy also offers recommendations for managing enterprise customer data retention, ensuring that data is stored temporarily on Automation 360 Cloud as part of an automation process.

Customer business data processed during an automation run is often transferred or extracted from one system and stored in another system as a permanent record. Some features might store customer data in Automation 360 as part of this process. When customer data is stored temporarily on the Automation 360 Cloud during the automation, delete the data after it is no longer needed in order to minimize the risk of data exposure or breach.

The automation definitions, credentials, and associated business dashboards might store sensitive data over a longer period of time. Additional controls, including a secure recorder and enhanced credential encryption, are implemented to strengthen security and reduce risk in the Control Room data and encrypted files.

Data in transit is encrypted using TLS 1.2 for both service-to-service and browser-to-service exchanges. Data at rest is encrypted, securing files and databases with support for Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) on SQL. Additionally, field-level encryption using AES-256 is applied to specific sensitive data, including hashed passwords, credential vault data, prompt data, and sensitive data transmitted via password fields.

Automation definitions

When an automation is created, all the related dependency files are stored in the platform repository as part of the definition. Files such as bots, forms, processes, and data files can be deleted through the product interface or the API.

Recorder

When a developer uses the recorder, images of each capture are saved in the Bot definition during build time to visually identify cloned objects. User interface element properties are also stored in the bot to enable automation. When secure recording is enabled, only object properties are saved, while images are excluded, and Bot Creators can choose which properties to store. Without secure recording, images are saved in the Control Room. When a bot is deleted, its stored images are removed.

Note: The secure recording feature is not available for AISense Recorder, therefore images from AISense Recorder are stored with the bot definition in the Control Room.

Bot Insight

Business related dashboards capture business metrics over a longer period for reporting progress over time.

Workload Management

Workload Management includes business customer data to be processed as part of an automation. You can set the data retention policy using the auto-purge setting.

The completed work items in the Control Room (Administration > Settings > Workload Management) are deleted automatically for better workload management. With the auto-purge setting enabled, completed work items that are older than the specified number of days (between 1-90) will be automatically deleted. For more details, see Purge work items. You can also use API to set the auto-purge option.

Note:
  • We strongly recommend that you enable and configure the auto-purge option to avoid potential data loss.
  • In an upcoming release, auto-purge setting for inactive work items will be enabled by default.

Bot Lifecycle Management

You can use the feature to move bots within different environments and help you prevent failure or disruption of data. The exported .zip files older than 30 days will be automatically deleted from your Control Room. For more details, see Bot Lifecycle Management.

Automation Co-Pilot for Business Users

Automation Co-Pilot for Business Users can store customer data to be processed as part of an automation in file storage on Automation 360 Cloud.
  • Data and files retention
    Bot execution details (inputs and outputs) are deleted 90 days from the time the automation is executed.
  • Process requests
    You can automatically delete this data (using user interface or via API) after the bot execution is complete, with a configurable delay from immediate up to 60 days per process.
  • When process requests are hard deleted
    Post execution, all customer data in the attached files is deleted from file storage after 90 days. Business customer data attached to requests is deleted from the database when the file is removed.

Document Automation

The original document and processing results are stored in file storage. By default, all files, documents, and derivatives created during the extraction process are deleted when the customer downloads the results using the Download Data action. Additionally, an administrator can clear the option to delete the derivatives after download, allowing the data to remain in file storage and then be deleted as per the retention policy of 90 days from the date of execution.

Automation recordings

Users can now capture and record up to 5 minutes of an automation execution for subsequent troubleshooting. Recordings of successful automations are deleted after 3 days from the date of the recording. Unsuccessful automation recordings are deleted after 7 days from the date of capture.

AI Governance

The AI Governance feature provides audit information including prompt storage when you use foundational models in the automation. Prompt data and credentials for authorized access to models are securely stored using industry-standard encryption algorithms, with prompts retained when using AI Studio or the AI Governance command package. Users with appropriate permissions can view both the audit summary and the detailed information. See AI Governance.

The Control Room enables customers to:
  • Manage their data logging preferences
  • Control access to view the logs
  • Secure sensitive data through encryption
Note: The audit logs are retained in the system for 180 days.

AI Guardrails

The sensitive entities, such as PII, PHI, PCI, identified in prompts are masked by replacing them with non-sensitive tokens to prevent exposure to LLMs. These tokens are then replaced with the original values when the model responds. Both the sensitive entities and their tokenized versions are securely stored in a vault and retained for only 30 days when AI Guardrails is enabled.

To enable and enforce AI Guardrails, navigate to Settings: Administration > Settings > AI Guardrails > Enable. For more information, see AI Guardrails.

Data cleanup on automation-hosting devices (Windows server)

As a best practice, use a dedicated child bot for device cleanup, including closing open applications, deleting temporary files, and removing any locally stored sensitive data. This helps prevent conflicts with unexpected Windows server files, reducing the likelihood of errors in subsequent automations. These deletion actions also ensure that any subsequent automation on the device does not conflict with unexpected Windows server files, thereby mitigating the probability of bot errors. See Error handler package.

Upon contract termination, see the Automation 360 Cloud page (data retention policy details) on the Automation 360 Cloud FAQ page.