Salesforce Security Best Practices (US Edition)
Practical security guidance for US Salesforce administrators, architects, and security teams. Covers profile management, field-level security, sandbox governance, and data masking strategies for SOC 2 and industry regulations.
Over 74% of data breaches involve a human element — credential theft, privilege misuse, or misconfigured access — meaning technical security controls alone are insufficient. This webinar walks through a four-step continuous security framework: assess your org health, secure your application, secure your data, and improve security awareness.
Book a DemoWhat's covered in this webinar
The Threat Landscape for Salesforce Orgs
- 74% of breaches involve a human element: credential theft, misuse of privileges, or social engineering
- 83% of breaches involve external actors, but 17% are internal — employees with legitimate but over-broad access
- T-Mobile and Equifax breaches illustrate the real-world cost of inadequate access controls
- Publicly shared objects in Salesforce Experience Cloud affect over 70% of orgs with communities
Assessing Your Org Health
- Salesforce Health Check, Portal Health Check, and Optimizer are free built-in tools — use them
- Publicly shared objects in Experience Cloud are a primary exposure point for external data leakage
- Understanding your current security posture is the prerequisite for any meaningful improvement
- Professional org assessments identify gaps that automated tools miss, including configuration drift
Securing Your Application
- Enforce MFA for all users — Salesforce mandates it but some orgs have turned it off
- Restrict Salesforce access to corporate IP ranges via VPN or certificate-based authentication
- API access control is not enabled by default — log a ticket with Salesforce to restrict connected app access
- Remove View Setup permissions from users who do not need it to minimize information disclosure
Securing Your Data
- Field-level security, object-level sharing rules, and least-privilege access must be continuously reviewed
- Sandbox data masking prevents production PII from reaching development and testing environments
- Shield encryption secures data at rest, but authorized credentials still expose data at application layer
- Regular data audits identify over-exposed fields and outdated records that increase breach impact
Use this when
✓You need to demonstrate Salesforce security compliance for a SOC 2 audit or executive risk review.
✓Your team has never run a formal security assessment of your Salesforce org and you need a starting point.
✓You need to reduce the risk of credential theft or insider threat across a large Salesforce user population.
✓Your organization uses Salesforce Experience Cloud and you are concerned about publicly shared object exposure.
✓You are preparing for a Salesforce security assessment and want to understand the standard framework and checklist.
✓Your team is responsible for sandbox governance and needs to ensure developers are not working with live customer data.
Frequently Asked Questions
The three most common issues are: publicly shared objects in Experience Cloud communities, MFA that has been disabled or bypassed, and connected apps with unrestricted API access. Over 70% of orgs with communities have at least one publicly shared object that external users can access without appropriate authorization.
MFA prevents credential theft from being exploited, but it does not protect against privilege misuse by authenticated users, misconfigured sharing rules, over-broad access profiles, or API integrations that bypass user authentication. A layered security approach is required.
By default, Salesforce allows any connected app to authenticate using a user’s credentials. This means tools like Data Loader, Workbench, or third-party integrations can access your entire org if credentials are compromised. Enabling API access control requires a Salesforce support ticket and prevents unauthorized apps from connecting.
Shield provides platform encryption for data at rest and event monitoring, which are valuable controls. However, Shield does not prevent authorized users or compromised credentials from accessing data at the application layer. Sandbox data masking, least-privilege profiles, and field-level security are complementary controls that Shield does not replace.
At minimum annually, and after any significant org change — new clouds, major integrations, org mergers, or significant user base growth. Security is a continuous cycle: assess, secure application, secure data, improve awareness, repeat. Orgs that treat it as a one-time project consistently fall behind the threat landscape.
Ready to see this in your Salesforce org?
Book a 45-minute session and we'll walk through this use case using your own data and configuration.
Explore more
Sandbox DataMasker
Mask PII and PHI in Salesforce sandboxes automatically on every refresh, preventing production data from reaching developers and testers.
Personal Data Discovery
Scan your Salesforce org to locate personal data fields across all objects, so you know exactly what you’re protecting.
GDPR Compliance
Map your Salesforce security and data practices to GDPR obligations including data minimization and access controls.
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