On many occasions, I talked to organizations new to Salesforce that were worried about storing their data online. At a very high level, this post presents the security in place with Salesforce.

When it comes to data, Salesforce and the cloud computing model mean that you are not storing your data on your own server and that multiple clients’ data could be stored on the same server. What it does not mean is that you give up control of who can access your data or that your data is more vulnerable. It is indeed the contrary. There are two levels of security in place. The first one comes to you out of the box and ensures the protection of your database. The second level provides you with tools to implement your specific permission requirements.

Level 1: Infrastructure

Because of the shared infrastructure, Salesforce has higher level of security than most organizations are able to implement independently. You can find a great description of this here but know it includes:

• Secure data centers.
• Secure transmission and sessions.
• Network protection.
• Disaster Recovery.
• Security Monitoring

Level 2: Your permissions

Obviously, any level of security requires consideration of different elements: user training, password policy, user permission, backup, etc.  And it is has to do as much with the tool you are using as the policy you put in place (we all know the old story of the monitor with a password written on a post- it).

This is an overview of the basic security controls Salesforce has to offer:

• User control. You decide who has access to your database by creating user logins.
• Application control.  Found in the Salesforce profiles, this helps you control which tabs and applications (the ones you build or the ones you download on the AppExchange) each user can see. For example, all users can see the Volunteer application but only the development team can access the Opportunity tab.
• Object permission control. Also found in Salesforce profiles, this allows the administrator to decide what general permission (Read, Create, Edit, Delete) per objects are available for a given user. For example, you might only allow some users full access to the Opportunity object (traditionally capturing more sensitive information such as donations).
• Record level security Control. Known as the organization wide defaults, this allows you to define who can see what record. For example, all organization records are shared among all staff except organization records created by the executive director.
• Field level security Control. This lets you decide the permission on individual fields. For example, everyone can see all contact records but only some can see the lifetime total amount donated field.

Salesforce provides a secured platform with ways to implement specific permissions which is usually sufficient for most. However each organization should decide whether or not this is adequate and I hope this post will help you understand some of the security controls available. More information can also be found in the Best Practices from Salesforce.