Salesforce Data security is the most heated topic of discussion in the digital world lately. Hacking has become more sophisticated, and there are a lot of cases being reported about data breaches. On the other hand, private information is mowed largely moving on to the cloud, and the policies and requirements related to it are also becoming more stringent. When it comes to the cloud platforms, Salesforce is the major one among CRM applications, and the uses are inquiring largely about the security of this platform.
Salesforce is basically a platform for you to work on and not a product as such. Salesforce did its job well by making this comprehensive platform with a lot of security tools coming packed with it. But again, Salesforce is a platform, and while working on it, you can still make mistakes by not being fully aware of the risks involved.
First, you have to consider whether your Salesforce developers have customized this platform to allow information to be copied or moved to other disjointed systems. Salesforce becomes much more complex as the developers and admins try to tailor-make the activities and tools in light of your business needs. It is very easy for the users to lose track of how the information is used and transferred when their major focus is kept on core business management.
So how you may know you when your Salesforce information is at risk. Every enterprise working on a CRM system needs to have a foolproof action plan to validate its security standards. In this article, we will take you through some steps as to how to identify the risk factors on Salesforce customization and ensure sustainable security.
Step 1: Have you defined your security well on Salesforce?
At this step, you have to define security in customized terms based on your project and objectives. For this, you need to talk to different teams along with compliance, security, and legal people to make sure that all involved have a fair understanding of the security risks and the implications of security breaches. Make sure that they all are aware of the possibility of storing information on a cloud vs. on-premises.
At this phase, the key factor is to communicate with everyone involved as to how you want Salesforce to be implemented and how to work with it in the future. However, do not try to change things until your objective is very clear from the data protection standpoint. You need to consider all aspects of security related to your industry the obligations to your customers as well as investors. Also, consider the regulatory compliances like PCI, GDP, HIPAA, etc.
One thing that always stays the same about Salesforce is that it will continue to change every now and then. So, as FLOSUM experts suggest, it is also important to custom define the standards and revisit the rules and regulations from time to time. Throughout your period of usage of Salesforce, you need to keep on maintaining your security principles.
Step 2: Understand how your enterprise uses Salesforce and how it aligns with your overall security administration practices
For this, you need to know the nature of your data in the system. As you know clearly about your security stands from phase #1, next, you need to identify where you stand now. You have to do an exercise for data classification and understand what data is currently in your system. You may first look at the information being stored and what compliances it meets.
Next, you may review all the data types and what information needs further security compliance measures. You may also adopt shield security platform encryption if you have not already implemented it. There are many tools available to identify what is needed for you and how to do a business impact analysis to introduce data encryption.
Along with this health check, you need to also analyze the extent of your data exposure. Check out whether you fully know what your developers and administrators are doing while dealing with data and their data exposure footprint. So, your health check needed to go beyond its fundamental purposes. This has to be made an objective review where you have to check the code and configuration as well as overall data management culture of the organization.
Step 3: Checking the code and configuration
Salesforce features a default health check that you can see at the setup menu and use to check your data security against standard industry practices. You can check and identify how much you are leveraging from the data features related to the settings, security management systems, password policies, and so on.
However, you should go beyond the basic health check. The default health check may not look at the developers’ fundamental code for point-and-click configuration and the setup by administrators. So, you need to conduct a thorough, objective review of your code and configuration in Salesforce.
Step 4: Document your security model for Salesforce and keep it up-to-date
Lastly, you need to document your security model and also review its implementation. Most of the Salesforce users do not really know how to do it and why your security model’s documentation is important. In order to make perfect documentation, you need to map everything as roles, profiles, permission sets, organization-wide defaults, and the sharing rules.
Properly documenting all these will also make it easier for everyone to understand and shed light on what should not be happening in security best practices. For those joining the team, this can act as a guiding material as to what you do not want to be happening. Considering all these steps to run properly through Salesforce implementation projects will ensure that security is to take care of at best from the bottom up. Remember, security can be weaved into the fabric of operations irrespective of whatever project you are handling. When it comes to Salesforce on the cloud, this becomes more critical. Every step you take should be complying with the security standards you have defined.
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