Traditionally, background automation of interactive processes meant giving up security and reliability.
With the advent of software such as Expect for controlling interactive processes, it has
become possible to improve reliability and security with relative ease.
This paper reviews the reliability aspects but focuses primarily on the security aspects, presenting
several non-obvious techniques for dealing with passwords and other sensitive information in background
processes. These techniques require no changes to existing programs and no new security
systems are necessary. With the appropriate tools and examples,
