Overview of Data Security
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Explain the importance of giving the right people access to the right data.
- List the four levels at which you can control data access.
- Describe a typical scenario for limiting data access at each of the four levels.
Before you start this module, we suggest you complete Data Modeling. The concepts you learn there will be helpful as you complete this module.
Consider Your Data Model
Choosing the data set that each user or group of users can see is one of the key decisions that affects the security of your Salesforce org or app. As you design and implement your data model, give some thought to the tasks your users are completing and the data they need to do them.
Say you’re building a recruiting app to help manage open positions, candidates, and job applications. You have to store confidential data, such as social security numbers, bonus amounts, and applicant reviews, that only some types of users should see. You want to secure sensitive data without making life harder for recruiters, hiring managers, and interviewers.
With the Salesforce Platform’s flexible, layered sharing and permissions model, it’s easy to assign different data sets to different sets of users. You can balance security and convenience, reduce the risk of stolen or misused data, and still make sure all users can easily get the data they need.
The platform lets you specify which users can view, create, edit, or delete any record or field in the app. You can control access to your whole org, a specific object, a specific field, or even an individual record. By combining security controls at different levels, you can provide just the right level of data access to thousands of users without having to specify permissions for each user individually.
Although you can configure the security and sharing model entirely using the user interface, the model works at the API level. That means any permissions you specify apply even if you query or update the data via API calls. The security of your data is protected, regardless of how users get to it.
Levels of Data Access
Let’s take a closer look at the four levels at which you control data access—organization, objects, fields, and records.
Organization
For your whole org, you can maintain a list of authorized users, set password policies, and limit logins to certain hours and locations.
Objects
Access to object-level data is the simplest thing to control. By setting permissions on a particular type of object, you can prevent a group of users from creating, viewing, editing, or deleting any records of that object. For example, you can use object permissions to ensure that interviewers can view positions and job applications but not edit or delete them. We recommend that you use permission sets and permission set groups to manage the objects that users can access and the permissions they have for each object.
Fields
You can restrict access to certain fields, even if a user has access to the object. For example, you can make the bonus fields in a position object invisible to interviewers but visible to hiring managers and recruiters. You also set field permissions using permission sets and permission set groups.
Records
You can allow particular users to view an object, but then restrict the individual object records they’re allowed to see. For example, an interviewer can see and edit their own reviews, but not the reviews of other interviewers. You can manage record-level access in these four ways.
- Organization-wide defaults specify the default level of access users have to each other’s records. You use org-wide sharing settings to lock down your data to the most restrictive level, and then use the other record-level security and sharing tools to selectively give access to other users.
- Role hierarchies give users higher in the hierarchy access to all records owned by users below them in the hierarchy.
- Sharing rules are automatic exceptions to organization-wide defaults for particular groups of users, so they can get to records they don’t own or can’t normally see. Sharing rules, like role hierarchies, are only used to give additional users access to records.
- Manual sharing allows owners of particular records to share them with other users. Although manual sharing isn’t automated like org-wide sharing settings, role hierarchies, or sharing rules, it can be useful in some situations, such as when a recruiter going on vacation needs to temporarily assign ownership of a job application to someone else.
Tip: Make a table of the various types of users in your organization. In the table, specify the level of access to data that each type of user should have for each object and for fields and records within the object. You can then refer to this table as you set up your security model.
Audit System Use
Auditing provides important information for diagnosing potential security issues or dealing with real ones. Someone in your organization should audit regularly to detect potential abuse. Look for unexpected changes or patterns of use.
Record Modification Fields
All objects include fields to store the name of the user who created the record and who last modified the record. This provides some basic auditing information.
Login History
You can review a list of successful and failed login attempts for the past six months. For more information, see Monitor Login History.
Field History Tracking
You can turn on auditing to automatically track changes in the values of individual fields. Although field-level auditing is available for all custom objects, only some standard objects allow it. For more information, see Field History Tracking.
Setup Audit Trail
The Setup Audit Trail logs when modifications are made to your organization’s configuration. For more information, see Monitor Setup Changes with Setup Audit Trail.
Event Monitoring
Event Monitoring lets you see the granular details of user activity (called events) in your organization. You can view information about individual events or track trends in events to swiftly identify abnormal behavior and safeguard your company’s data. For more information, check out the Event Monitoring module.
You got an intro on all the ways you can control data security at Salesforce. In the coming units, you learn more about controlling access, and get hands-on practice with different features.
Resources