Synergy Group was engaged by the Department of Defence (DoD) through Defence Security and Vetting Service (DS&VS) to deliver an RPA solution to support the security incident reporting process. The process is triggered when a Defence Employee or industry partner encounters a security incident and submits an “XP188 Security Incident Form” via a PDF smart form. The automation receives this incident, validates the data based on business rules and enters the incident into a target application.
The automation project required Synergy Group to develop a solution to:
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Monitor a shared Microsoft Outlook inbox to determine when a new “XP188 Security Incident Form” has been submitted;
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Launch the Department’s target application (DPSMS) and navigate to the submission page;
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Scan the contents of the PDF for malicious code and extract all relevant tags in XML;
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Based on reference tables, held in a Binary format, determine the Incident Category & Establishment Type;
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Transfer all data ingested from the XML into each related field in DPSMS (>60 fields), attach a copy of the original form and email for record keeping and complete the Security Incident Report process;
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Move the now-processed email to a completed items folder to ensure no duplicate processing can occur.
What are the benefits?
The automation has increased data quality, expedited registration of incoming security incidents, enabled more accurate reporting of incident types, and reduced data entry errors.
Increased incident reporting (due to enhanced usability) and more consistent data capture has provided clearer visibility of trends and emerging issues.
Reductions in processing time will return an annual saving of 2,600 hours.
