For organizations searching for business solutions, Salesforce can be a changemaker. Salesforce helps organizations transform their processes — streamlining operations, elevating customer experiences, and driving growth.

As an organization grows more reliant upon Salesforce, the need for reliable and robust testing becomes evident. While manual testing has merits, it can cause even the best testing teams to fall behind as an organization scales and requires more complexity.

If your organization still relies on manual processes to test your Salesforce org, it may be time to transition to an automated testing solution.

In this blog, we’ll talk about the five signs that tell you it’s time to switch to automated testing and touch on how Provar’s suite of quality solutions can help.

Sign 1: Your team is overwhelmed by repetitive and time-consuming tasks.

Organizational growth is excellent. However, growing businesses can quickly become overwhelmed by increasingly time-consuming tasks. If your team is overwhelmed by repetitive, labor-intensive tasks, it’s a clear sign that automation could improve efficiency. Automated testing tools can quickly and concurrently execute test cases across applications and browsers, generate reports, and identify issues. With an automated testing tool like Provar Automation, organizations can take their time back while enhancing test coverage and accelerating development.

Sign 2: Your application ecosystem is becoming increasingly complex.

Salesforce is known for its ability to adapt and scale to meet an organization’s evolving needs. But often, this adaptability leads to increasingly complex configurations, customizations, and application stacks. As the complexity of your Salesforce ecosystem grows with your business, manual testing teams can easily fall behind, resulting in undetected issues, longer testing cycles, decreased customer satisfaction, and potentially costly errors. Automated testing can address these challenges, efficiently handling the intricacies of complex software stacks, ensuring thorough testing, and reducing the likelihood of critical issues evading detection.

Sign 3: Your team has trouble keeping up with Salesforce releases and updates.

Salesforce regularly releases mandatory software updates and enhancements; for organizations that still rely on manual testing, updates, and new releases can cause existing tests to stop working if their teams don’t take the proper precautions. Transitioning to automated testing can take the stress off your team’s shoulders and help your organization leave broken and out-of-date tests in the past. Automating your testing can help your team stay current with Salesforce’s release cadence, preventing breakage and maintaining quality.

Sign 4: You are getting errors and inconsistent test results.

Manual testing relies entirely on humans; therein lies its greatest strength and its biggest weakness. Even when organizations are small, and Salesforce testing is simple, human testers inevitably will make mistakes. With the inherent risk of human error that comes with manual testing, it can be challenging to trust your quality. If you’re noticing increasingly inconsistent test results and more errors from your team, it may be time to switch to automated testing. Automated testing empowers teams to create consistent and repeatable tests, reducing human error and enhancing quality.

Sign 5: You’re missing deadlines and watching costs rise. 

If your organization is in a rapid growth phase, so is your Salesforce ecosystem. But with new functionality comes more complex and time-consuming testing — and more pressure on your teams to deliver high-quality results on time and within budget. Suppose you’re finding that your testing teams are missing deadlines and exceeding budgets as you expand your Salesforce implementation. In that case, it may be time to seek an automated testing solution like Provar Automation. Automated testing can help your organization leverage its Salesforce investment, optimize testing processes, reduce costs, and accelerate project cycles.

Conclusion

At Provar, we build solutions that make Salesforce testing and quality management easier, faster, and more effective. However, we understand that transitioning to automated testing can be intimidating. That’s why the Provar team released a new white paper to help organizations switch!

Transitioning from Manual to Automated Salesforce Testing: Your Complete Guide is a step-by-step guide to help evolving organizations move from manual to automated testing, and it gives you everything you need to learn to transform your testing. Be sure to download the guide for free today, as it has something for testers at every stage!

Salesforce managers, if you're grappling with the frustrating question, "Why is my Salesforce so slow?" you're in the right place.

A sluggish Salesforce can impede productivity and hinder your team's potential. Sure, a slow internet connection (or having 50 open tabs) may be the culprit, however there are certain steps all Salesforce Admins and Managers should be taking to ensure their org is optimized and efficient. In this article, we'll unpack our top tips for diagnosing a slow Salesforce org and provide actionable solutions to optimize its speed and efficiency.

1. Efficient data management: Speed starts with clean data

Efficient Salesforce performance begins with data management. Regularly audit and clean your data, eliminating duplicates and outdated records. Streamline your database to ensure that your team is working with relevant, high-quality information. A clutter-free database translates to faster data access and improved Salesforce speed.

Here are some tips for efficient data management in Salesforce:

• Conduct regular data audits: Schedule regular data audits to identify and eliminate duplicates, outdated, or irrelevant records. Automate this process where possible to ensure continuous data cleanliness.

• Implement validation rules: Create validation rules to enforce data accuracy. These rules can prevent users from entering incorrect or incomplete information, ensuring that your database maintains its integrity.

• Implement data governance policies: Develop and enforce data governance policies. Clearly define who is responsible for data quality and what the standards are. Regularly review and update these policies.

• Refine data access permissions: Monitor and refine who has access to your data. Not only is this important for efficient data management, but also security and compliance regulations. Recent research shows the average Salesforce org has 24 ‘Modify All Data’ permissions and 20 data export permissions. The implications of these access levels are far-reaching, impacting the core of your organization's integrity. Review your profiles and permission sets for free with Hubbl Diagnostics.

• Streamline custom sharing rules: Complex sharing rules can significantly slow down report generation as each rule has to be evaluated during data retrieval. Simplification can be achieved by consolidating user permissions within a minimum number of permission sets, reducing the complexity of assignments.

2. Field health: Identifying and removing empty custom fields

Empty custom fields might seem like a minor issue, but they can cause significant problems in your Salesforce org. Not only do they complicate report-building by cluttering dropdown menus and increasing user confusion, but they also contribute to technical debt, making your org harder to maintain and optimize, ultimately slowing down your team.

According to a recent study, approximately 10% of all custom fields on the most important objects in most orgs (Account, Opportunity, Case) are empty. This means that a field was created but never used.

Use Hubbl Diagnostics’ free solution to identify your empty custom fields on your most important objects (Account, Opportunity, and Case).

3. Code review and optimization: Streamlining customizations

Custom code can be a double-edged sword. While it tailors Salesforce to your needs, inefficient code can slow down your org. Collaborate with your development team to review and optimize Apex code, triggers, and workflows. Efficient, streamlined code directly translates to improved Salesforce speed.

Here are some tips for reviewing and optimizing your custom code in Salesforce:

• Static Code Analysis: Static code analysis is a software testing technique used to evaluate the source code of a program without executing it. It's an essential practice in software development for ensuring code quality, adherence to coding standards, and identifying security vulnerabilities. Utilize static code analysis tools, such as PMD or ESLint, to scan your codebase for issues and identify areas for optimization.

• Review API versions: While API versions themselves don't directly impact the speed of your Salesforce org's user interface, they play a vital role in the efficiency and performance of your integrations, custom code, and data processing operations. Staying current with the latest API versions allows you to leverage improved functionality, performance optimizations, and security enhancements, ultimately contributing to a more efficient and responsive Salesforce environment.

Hubbl Diagnostics automatically scans your Salesforce org, using both PMD and ESLint, to identify code issues and identify older API versions.

4. Field indexing: Accelerating data retrieval

The proper use of field indexing is pivotal for speeding up data retrieval. Work closely with your technical team to identify frequently accessed fields and ensure they are properly indexed. Proper indexing reduces search times significantly, enhancing overall user experience and Salesforce responsiveness.

You can check whether a field is indexed through the Salesforce Schema Builder or the Object Manager.

5. Modernization: Migrating to Salesforce Flow

It’s clear to everyone in the ecosystem that Flow is the automation tool of the future, and with Salesforce having blocked the ability to create new workflow rules and processes, migrating to Flow is no longer an option, but a necessity.

Migration effort aside, flows and triggers can significantly speed up your Salesforce org. In fact, our data shows that over 50% of Salesforce orgs could save more than 100 hours per year by migrating away from workflow and process builder. 6% of orgs would save over 1000 hours!

Here are some recommendations to help you get started in your migration to Salesforce Flow:

1. Build your case using ROI metrics: Demonstrating the value of migrating to Flow can help you secure the resources and support you need to make the move. Hubbl Diagnostics automatically calculates your hours of lost productivity due to legacy code.

2. Upgrade installed packages: Upgrading your installed packages can help you speed up your org, as 8% of active workflow rules are from installed packages.

3. Create a migration plan: Build an understanding of how much declarative automation you need to migrate to Flow with Hubbl Diagnostics. Tabulate the legacy automation on all your objects and note which are firing on the same events.

4. Gamify your modernization: Get some motivation by seeing how you compare against the rest of the ecosystem and celebrate once your legacy automation counts go to zero.

6. Continuous monitoring: Empowering your team with metadata insights

If you have one takeaway from this article, let this be it: Continuous monitoring stands as the cornerstone of a high-performing Salesforce org. Empowering your team with comprehensive metadata insights is not just a practice—it's a strategic advantage. These insights provide a real-time pulse on your Salesforce environment, ensuring that any issues hindering speed and efficiency are promptly addressed.

Hubbl Diagnostics is a free Salesforce metadata analysis solution that allows you to scan your Salesforce org monthly and monitor:

• Org complexity: Review your org’s complexity compared to the rest of the Salesforce ecosystem.

• Object automation: Explore the amount and complexity of automation across your Salesforce org.

• Custom code: Pinpoint custom code issues and identify opportunities for optimization.

• Installed packages: Monitor packages and identify out-of-date or risky installed packages.

• Field utilization: Review field usage and identify underutilized fields.

• Profiles and permission sets: Monitor and assess data access permissions across your Salesforce org.

Embracing continuous monitoring and leveraging metadata insights empowers your team not just to react to challenges but to anticipate them. This proactive approach transforms slowdowns into opportunities for growth, making your Salesforce environment agile, efficient, and truly optimized.

Don't live with a slow Salesforce

Don't let slow Salesforce days persist—empower your team with insights and take the first step toward a faster, more productive Salesforce org with Hubbl Diagnostics.

AUTHOR: Mike Bogan, Director of Product Strategy, Hubbl Diagnostics

If you’re reading this article, chances are you write your own code for Salesforce, or work in an org that utilizes custom code. Which (according to the latest data) means there’s a good chance your Salesforce org has security vulnerabilities that could expose sensitive information, or even provide malicious users the opportunity to infiltrate your system.

Custom code is the most powerful type of metadata. Whether it’s Aura, Lightning Web Components (LWC), Visualforce, Apex, or triggers, custom code provides superpowers to your users. However, with those superpowers comes some risk that must be managed.

You are responsible for the security of your custom code, not Salesforce. It’s time to get your security issues prioritized by severity and level of effort to address.

Is my Salesforce org at risk?

The simple answer: most likely, yes. According to the 2023 Benchmark Report on Salesforce Optimization, on average, we found that:

• The average org has ~2000 custom code security issues.

• Visualforce pages have at least one security issue.

• 33% of Apex classes have a security issue.

• 20% of Visualforce components and triggers have security issues.

• Approximately 10% of custom code in Salesforce orgs is running on API versions >10 years old. Of this, 61% come from installed packages.

“Brand loyalty is based on trust. The health of your Salesforce org is crucial to enhancing the constituent experience and protecting their data. Ineffective and vulnerable orgs can erode constituent confidence, decreasing committed supporters. Ensuring a healthy and efficient org demonstrates respect for constituent time and data, strengthening relationships and increasing revenue and impact.”  —John Vega, Nonprofit Portfolio Delivery Lead, Huron Consulting Group

What are the risks to my organization?

Custom code can be an unintended insecure entry point for malicious abuse. The impact of these vulnerabilities can range from the wrong staff gaining access to sensitive data to external leaks of regulated information that can be an existential threat to an organization.

They can take on many forms, these are some of the most critical:

• SOQL Injections: This vulnerability in code allows hackers to manipulate the SOQL query to execute any command they want to run. This is critical to address as it can provide hackers unauthorized access to your data.

• Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities: XSS occurs when a hacker can inject malicious scripts into a web page viewed by others. Uncovering XSS vulnerabilities from URL parameters in your Apex code is critical to reduce your site vulnerabilities.

• Improper Authorization: Apex code that grants excessive privileges to users, or code, does not properly validate user inputs. Highlighting these issues in your code reduces potential authorization issues.

How to identify Salesforce custom code issues

You wouldn’t be wrong for thinking that manually reviewing all past development for custom code issues would be time consuming.

That’s why we built Hubbl Diagnostics, a free monthly org monitoring solution that allows you to scan all the custom code in your org to identify security risks as defined by source code analyzers, PMD, and ESLint. It also helps you identify out-of-date installed packages that may be contributing to your security risks.

Automate prioritization of your risks

Where do I start? Hubbl Diagnostics not only identifies your security risks, it automatically categorizes your risks by severity and level of effort to address. This means that you can quickly filter down to the highest risk/lowest effort issues and get them addressed right away. Recommended solutions for each issue are also provided.

Mitigate the risks of Salesforce custom code

So, you’ve come to the realization that you may have some security risks. Now what? We recommend the following:

1. Review development best practices: Work with your Admin and Development teams to ensure they’re following the Salesforce Well-Architected best practices for custom development.

2. Review past development: With that framework in mind, review past development to understand whether critical security risks exist. Leverage Hubbl Diagnostics to kickstart your review.

3. Update out-of-date installed packages: These updates should address and help reduce the significant amount of code that remains at risk for containing security issues.

4. Track your progress: Hubbl Diagnostics allows you to monitor your org monthly. Show up at your next review with executive-level visuals that quickly explain the progress you’ve made.

How secure is your Salesforce org?

Custom code is a powerful tool that can provide significant benefits to your users. However, it also comes with significant risks that must be managed. By following the best practices outlined above and leveraging tools like Hubbl Diagnostics, you can help ensure that your custom code is secure and your organization is protected from potential security breaches.

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, organizations constantly seek ways to optimize their processes and deliver software solutions quickly. Time to value is perhaps the most important consideration when deploying an application. Companies want to make the best of their time to deliver value to their customers quickly – nothing is worse than their competitors beating them to the punch.

Testing their Salesforce org is vital in delivering value for those using Salesforce. Testing for bugs before they become an organization-wide issue is paramount, but risk mitigation isn’t all that test automation solutions tout. A good test automation solution will also help an organization offer exceptional time to value, but be warned. Not all solutions are created equal.

This blog post will discuss how Provar Automation, a leading test automation solution designed specifically for Salesforce applications, stands out with its intelligent automation capabilities that save valuable time for testers and organizations. We will explore how these capabilities empower teams to achieve rapid time to value and drive efficiency in their testing efforts. We will also explore why Provar Automation is the only test automation solution on the market that hits the target.

Streamlining Test Automation with Provar

Provar Automation is built to enhance productivity and maximize the end user’s value as quickly as possible. Here are its critical, intelligent automation capabilities that result in exceptional time to value.

Low-Code Test Automation

Provar Automation takes a low-code approach to test automation, enabling testers with varying technical backgrounds to build and execute tests without extensive programming knowledge. Its intuitive interface and visual, user-friendly test builder empower testers – even those with limited technical knowledge – to create robust test scenarios quickly and efficiently. By eliminating the time spent on coding and opening up the ability to test to all members of an organization using Salesforce, Provar Automation accelerates the test creation process and reduces the learning curve for new team members. Provar Automation is the only test automation solution designed by Salesforce experts to work precisely like Salesforce does – with minimal coding experience necessary, a user-friendly interface, and point-and-click functionality – making it the obvious choice for companies executing within Salesforce.

Test Accelerators and Pre-built Libraries

Provar Automation offers a comprehensive collection of test accelerators and pre-built libraries tailored specifically for Salesforce applications. These ready-to-use components provide a head start for test creation, significantly reducing the time and effort required to build test cases from scratch. Testers can leverage these accelerators and libraries to quickly create tests that cover a wide range of Salesforce functionalities, resulting in faster test creation and accelerated time to value – two areas a growing company should look for.

Regression Testing Made Easy

Regression testing is vital to software development, ensuring new updates and changes do not introduce unexpected issues. Provar Automation simplifies regression testing by automatically detecting and updating test steps affected by changes in the application. Through its intelligent automation capabilities, which are powered using the information within Salesforce’s metadata to create resilient tests, Provar minimizes the effort required to maintain test scripts, allowing testers to focus on validating new functionalities and reducing the time spent on regression testing. Some test automation solutions boast maintenance capabilities like innovative healing features, which can handle minor changes but require more effort and human interference with more extensive updates. This is not the case with Provar Automation, whose intelligent metadata-driven capabilities take the manual work off your hands.

Seamless Integrations and Continuous Testing

Provar Automation integrates with popular CI/CD tools and test management systems, including Jenkins, Azure DevOps, JIRA, and more. This integration enables organizations to incorporate test automation seamlessly into their DevOps workflows and execute tests continuously. By automating the test execution process and integrating it with other tools in the software development lifecycle, Provar Automation ensures rapid feedback on application quality, reduces manual intervention, and accelerates time to value.

Case Studies Highlighting Time Savings

Provar Automation’s intelligent automation capabilities have been instrumental in helping organizations save time and achieve rapid time to value. All test automation solutions on the market today note time savings as a key feature – because automated testing certainly reduces time spent maintaining tests over manual efforts – but Provar Automation has been proven time and time again to be 6 to 8 times faster than the competition.

Let’s look at some real-world case studies demonstrating the time-saving impact of Provar Automation.

By implementing Provar Automation, one risk management company automated 70% of its regression testing.

One financial company reports that after adding Provar Automation to its toolkit, its QA team saved a considerable amount of time – enabling the team to implement in-sprint automation and expand its existing library of regression tests. When the company relied solely on manual testing, it would take one month to test approximately 400 use cases, and they can now run 4,000 tests quickly.

Among many other benefits, one healthcare nonprofit created over one hundred test scripts using Provar Automation’s intuitive test-building capabilities in less than 8 months, reduced maintenance manpower during sprints from 20 people to 3 (an 85% decrease), and fully implemented Provar Automation in under four weeks, starting from no Salesforce and Provar Automation experience to successfully build out and automatically running tests.

Conclusion

Provar Automation’s intelligent automation capabilities provide a significant advantage regarding time to value for organizations. With its low-code test automation, pre-built libraries, regression testing simplification, seamless integrations, and continuous testing support, Provar Automation empowers teams to achieve rapid time to value. Through these capabilities, testers can focus on critical aspects of testing, reduce manual effort, accelerate test creation and execution, and ultimately deliver high-quality applications to market faster. Provar Automation stands out among the competition regarding time to value, and this alone is enough for companies across the globe to trust it to support their efforts.

AUTHOR: Mike Bogan, Director of Product Strategy, Hubbl Diagnostics

Security isn’t merely a requirement; it's a strategic imperative. For businesses relying on Salesforce, protecting sensitive data is non-negotiable and stands as the cornerstone of stability and trust. Unfortunately, according to recent data, it’s highly likely that your Salesforce org is at risk.

A failure to comprehend the security implications of customizations in your Salesforce org could result in disaster. These customizations impact data protection, compliance with regulations, risk mitigation, business continuity, cybersecurity defense, reputation, resource efficiency, scalability, and future-proofing. Understanding these implications is essential for safeguarding sensitive data, meeting regulatory requirements, and securing your organization's reputation and future success.

1. Updating installed packages

We all have, and update, apps on our mobile phones. If you run your business on Salesforce, you likely have installed apps (packages) to help run your business.

Installed packages can pose significant risks if not managed diligently. Recent findings indicate that 99% of Salesforce organizations have installed packages with newer versions available, highlighting the widespread prevalence of this issue. This makes sense because, before Hubbl Diagnostics, there was no way to automatically know whether your packages are out of date.

Installed packages security recommendations:

1. Incorporate package review into your business process: As a practice, identify out-of-date installed packages at least once per quarter.

2. Automate out-of-date package identification: Leverage Hubbl Diagnostics’ free solution to automatically check installed packages against a comprehensive database of package versions, ensuring you have access to the latest version of your packages.

2. Reviewing custom code

Custom code, the engine driving innovation in Salesforce, also presents significant security challenges. With an average of approximately 2000 custom code security issues affecting each Salesforce org, businesses must take a proactive stance in safeguarding their digital assets.

Custom code vulnerabilities pose severe risks to your organization.

Example threats include:

• SOQL Injections: This vulnerability in code allows hackers to manipulate the SOQL query to execute any command they want to run. This is critical to address as it can provide hackers unauthorized access to your data.

• Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities: XSS occurs when a hacker can inject malicious scripts into a web page viewed by others. Uncovering XSS vulnerabilities from URL parameters in your Apex code is critical to reduce your site vulnerabilities.

• Improper Authorization: Apex code that grants excessive privileges to users, or code, does not properly validate user inputs. Highlighting these issues in your code reduces potential authorization issues.

Custom code security recommendations:

1. Review development best practices: Work with your Admin and Development teams to ensure they’re following the Salesforce Well-Architected best practices for custom development.

2. Review past development: With that framework in mind, review past development to understand whether critical security risks exist. Leverage Hubbl Diagnostics to kickstart your review for free.

3. Auditing profile and permission sets

Today, the question isn't merely who accesses your data; it's about ensuring the right people do so, securely and with purpose.

Recent research underscores a concerning reality: the average Salesforce org grants expansive data access rights, with 24 assignments allowing users to ‘Modify All Data’ and an additional 20 assignments enabling data export. The implications of these access levels are far-reaching, impacting the core of your organization's integrity.

The ‘Modify All Data’ permission, in particular, grants users extensive powers, touching areas from lead conversions to quota overrides. It's the linchpin of your data security strategy. Salesforce's strategic shift, discontinuing permissions on profiles by Spring '26, underscores the urgency for organizations to reevaluate their data access protocols.

Data access recommendations:

1. Data access audit: Utilize Hubbl Diagnostics to conduct a thorough audit of profiles and permission sets, identifying access gaps and potential security risks.

2. Define access policies: Clearly define who within your organization should have access to critical data. Establish policies that align with both security best practices and regulatory requirements.

3. Migrate to permission sets: Transition from relying heavily on profiles to adopting permission sets. Salesforce’s impending shift emphasizes this migration, ensuring future-proof data security strategies.

Identify your top three Salesforce security risks for free

Get started with Hubbl Diagnostics, the most comprehensive Salesforce org monitoring solution, for free.

As organizations embrace digital transformation and the demand for resilient, robust software solutions grows, scalable test automation becomes paramount for any organization using Salesforce. Testing your Salesforce org is no longer a nice-to-have – it’s necessary to mitigate risk and maintain customer satisfaction. And scalability is no easy feat. Scalability ensures that test automation efforts can expand effortlessly to meet evolving business requirements and accommodate increasing application complexity. Many solutions on the market boast scalability, but their features don’t hold up as a company expands.

Provar Automation, a leading test automation solution designed by Salesforce experts for Salesforce applications, stands out with its exceptional scalability. And with a global presence, Provar is ready to support you wherever you are. In this blog post, we will explore how Provar Automation’s scalable capabilities revolutionize the world of test automation and empower organizations to scale new heights.

Understanding the Importance of Scalability in Test Automation

Test automation scalability is crucial to keep pace with the ever-changing software development landscape. As applications become more complex and business requirements evolve, test automation solutions must expand to cover a broader range of scenarios, configurations, and user profiles. A scalable test automation solution allows organizations to efficiently manage their testing efforts, reduce time-to-market, and maintain a high level of quality across their software releases.

Beware of any test automation solution that highlights its low cost as a competitive advantage. The rule of thumb is the less you pay upfront, the more you’ll have to invest on the backend, and this is particularly important when researching scalable test automation solutions. A good test automation solution will support your organization now and future-proof you as you scale with time. Ultimately, the solution you chose for its low implementation cost will make up for it tenfold in time spent on maintenance and a low-quality output.

Provar Automation’s Scalability in Action

Provar Automation takes scalability to new heights by providing organizations with the tools and capabilities to meet their growing testing needs. Here’s how Provar excels in scalability.

Flexible Test Design

Provar Automation offers a flexible and modular approach to test design. Tests can be organized into reusable components, allowing testers to build complex test suites by combining and reusing these components. They can be reused across numerous business scenarios, such as different orgs, languages, and user profiles. This modularity enables efficient test maintenance and facilitates the scalability of test suites as new functionalities and features are introduced.

Parallel Test Execution

Provar Automation empowers organizations to execute tests in parallel, significantly reducing the overall test execution time. This feature allows Provar Automation users to optimize resource utilization and gain faster feedback on application quality. This capability becomes particularly valuable when scaling up the volume of tests, ensuring that testing efforts remain efficient and time-effective.

Compatibility with Continuous Integration and Delivery (CI/CD) Pipelines

Provar Automation seamlessly integrates with CI/CD pipelines and their tools, such as Jenkins, Azure DevOps, and Salesforce DX. This allows for streamlined test execution as part of the continuous integration and delivery processes. This integration enhances scalability by automating test runs and facilitating the rapid deployment of software updates. Provar Automation prides itself in its wide-ranging integration support and constantly seeks new expansions. While other test automation solutions offer integrations, they often focus on only one or two. Provar Automation is a clear leader in this area.

Cloud-Based Scalability

Provar Automation harnesses the power of the cloud to deliver scalable test automation solutions. Leveraging cloud infrastructure allows organizations to scale their testing resources based on demand dynamically. This elasticity ensures that test automation efforts can handle spikes in workload, accommodate growing application complexities, and scale up or down as required.

Conclusion

Provar Automation’s unrivaled scalability revolutionizes test automation by empowering organizations to scale their testing efforts effortlessly. With its flexible test design, parallel test execution, seamless integration with CI/CD pipelines, and cloud-based scalability, Provar enables organizations to meet the challenges of modern software development. By embracing Provar Automation, businesses can reduce time-to-value (which we will discuss in more detail in our next blog post) and deliver high-quality applications that meet customer expectations, regardless of how large a company scales. Whether you’re a small organization or an enterprise-level company, Provar Automation’s scalability ensures that your test automation efforts can rise to new heights, enabling you to stay ahead in the competitive digital landscape.

AUTHOR: Mike Bogan, Director of Product Strategy, Hubbl Diagnostics

Did you know that 99% of Salesforce orgs have installed packages with newer versions available? Are you aware of the potential security vulnerabilities and performance issues that can arise from neglecting to update these packages?

In this blog post, we'll delve into the impacts of out-of-date installed packages, the challenges faced by Salesforce teams in managing them, and walk you through how to effectively address these concerns.

How many out-of-date installed packages are in your Salesforce org?

Before we explore the challenges and recommendations, let's shed light on the concerning statistics related to out-of-date installed packages.

According to the 2023 Benchmark Report on Salesforce Optimization, on average:

• 99% of orgs have installed packages with newer versions available.

• Salesforce orgs have 14 installed packages with newer versions available.

• 8% of these packages are both out-of-date and haven't undergone security review.

DOWNLOAD: 7 critical org optimizations insights for high-performing Salesforce teams

Understanding Salesforce installed packages

Installed packages refer to apps or code that Salesforce admins can easily add to your Salesforce org with the click of a button. These packages can take the form of managed packages published on Salesforce AppExchange, which implies they have gone through an official Salesforce security review. However, there are also managed packages not listed on AppExchange, unlocked packages, and unmanaged packages, all of which do not ensure the same robust security review has occurred. It’s important to note that ensuring these packages are safe and secure is ultimately your responsibility.

CONTINUED READING: Out-of-date installed package risks: How many are in your Salesforce org?

The impact of out-of-date installed packages

Out-of-date installed packages can have significant consequences for your org, affecting both security and performance. Let's explore these impacts:

1. Legacy declarative automation: Out-of-date packages often contain legacy declarative automation, such as workflows and processes, which can impede productivity and hinder the efficient operation of your org. In fact, 8% of all active workflow rules are from installed packages.

2. Security vulnerabilities: 15% of all custom code security issues come from installed packages. Custom code within out-of-date packages poses potential security vulnerabilities, increasing the risks of data breaches and unauthorized access to sensitive information.

3. Lack of security review: Privately listed applications, in particular, may not have undergone the rigorous AppExchange Security Review process. This lack of review further heightens the security risks associated with these packages.

How to identify out-of-date installed packages in your Salesforce org

So now you know the importance of keeping your installed packages up-to-date, but how can you effectively manage this? Unfortunately, Salesforce has never made this a simple thing for Salesforce teams to manage:

1. Manual AppExchange package version checks: While some package publishers will automatically push upgrades to your org, many do not. Even if you invest the time to manually check for newer package versions by comparing the version numbers in your org with those on the AppExchange, there's no guarantee that you'll find the latest versions. Publishers sometimes neglect to update the AppExchange version number, leaving you in the dark.

2. Lack of transparency with privately installed packages: Packages installed in your org that were not downloaded from the AppExchange will require you to reach out to the publisher to get the most up-to-date version information since there is no published list of package versions.

3. Overwhelming volume: The average Salesforce org has 40 installed packages and 14 with newer versions available. Managing this volume of packages manually is overwhelming and time-consuming, making it challenging to stay on top of updates and security requirements.

To tackle the complex task of managing out-of-date installed packages, Salesforce teams need an efficient and automated solution. That’s why we embedded installed package version tracking into Hubbl Diagnostics, to help simplify the management process.

“Keeping installed packages up-to-date is critical for Salesforce org health, security, and speed. However, identifying newer versions of public and privately listed packages can be challenging. Hubbl Diagnostics automates this process through powerful metadata audits, optimizing performance and driving speed to value while minimizing the risk of data breaches and security risks.” —Chris Conant, CEO, Zennify

How Hubbl Diagnostics identifies out-of-date installed packages

1. Custom Code Security Review: Hubbl Diagnostics is a free solution that enables a thorough review of custom code, whether unpackaged or in unlocked or unmanaged packages. It analyzes configurations and usage patterns, identifying potential compliance gaps and providing specific recommendations to address them, aligning with best practice security requirements.

2. Package Versioning: With Hubbl Diagnostics, you gain access to an aggregate view of orgs across the Salesforce ecosystem. This unique perspective allows you to check all installed packages against a comprehensive database of package versions installed in other orgs. This "crowd-sourced" data ensures better visibility and keeps your org up-to-date with the latest features, reducing security risks and removing legacy declarative automation.

Improve org security and performance with a free org scan

Scan your Salesforce org for free today with Hubbl Diagnostics and take control of your installed packages.

 In the fast-paced world of software development, automated testing has become an essential practice to ensure the quality and reliability of applications built in Salesforce. However, not all test automation solutions are created equal regarding resilience. Many solutions rely on traditional methods that are susceptible to frequent changes and require extensive maintenance. Provar Automation, on the other hand, stands out by leveraging the power of Salesforce’s metadata to build tests that are more resilient than other solutions on the market.

In this blog post, we will explore how Provar Automation’s test-building capabilities outshine its competitors regarding resilience, making it the go-to choice for Salesforce experts and organizations looking for stability in any situation.

Building Tests with Salesforce Metadata

Salesforce’s frequent updates and customizations are excellent for keeping the behemoth platform ahead of time, but this doesn’t come without challenges for test automation solutions. Tests built on HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and DOM-based approaches are prone to breakage during these updates because these factors are unstable – any test automation solution that builds their tests this way relies on outdated and risky practices.

A good test automation solution will employ stable locators for elements, which they can find by leveraging Salesforce’s metadata model. Salesforce defines metadata as data that explains data, and it is this metadata that should serve as a foundation for building robust tests. However, most test automation solutions on the market today don’t work in this way, making them much less resilient than tests built with Provar Automation. Their outdated approach leads to a reliance on manual updates and increased maintenance efforts.

How Provar Automation Builds Resilient Tests

By utilizing the information found within Salesforce’s metadata, Provar Automation understands the location of elements and automatically updates its locators when Salesforce’s metadata changes. Building tests based on Salesforce’s metadata makes them more resilient to changes in the application – it’s that simple. As metadata tied to fields and layouts changes less frequently than the rendered web page source, tests have fewer opportunities to break. This reduces maintenance and ensures testing efforts can focus on the application’s functionality and logic.

Tests built-in Provar Automation are also resilient in their reusability – they stand up to the test of being reused in multiple contexts, such as across different orgs, languages, and user profiles. This reusability improves the efficiency and scalability of the testing process, enabling organizations to streamline their testing efforts and achieve faster time-to-market.

Resiliency also comes into play for tests that must work seamlessly across different Salesforce applications, such as Classic, Lightning, Flexipages, and Dynamic Forms. If tests seem resilient in one application but are not in another, they are not genuinely resilient in the first place. By leveraging the information within Salesforce’s metadata, Provar Automation ensures its tests are compatible with any page layout, org type, or application. This flexibility empowers organizations to adapt to evolving Salesforce environments without compromising test stability.

How Provar Automation Stands Above the Rest in Resiliency

Provar Automation stands out among its competitors by embracing this metadata-driven approach, ensuring resilience and adaptability. Designed explicitly for Salesforce applications by Salesforce experts, Provar Automation eliminates the need for extensive script modifications, saving time and effort. The code used to map Salesforce page elements, predict interactions, understand page layouts, and generate tests is maintained by Provar Automation, ensuring compatibility with each new Salesforce release. All of this allows testers to focus on the actual functionality and logic of their applications rather than being consumed by constant maintenance.

In automated testing, not all test-building capabilities are created equal regarding resiliency. Provar Automation sets itself apart by leveraging the power of Salesforce’s metadata to build resilient tests that stand above other outdated test automation solutions on the market. If you’re seeking a resilient, reliable, secure test automation solution, Provar Automation is the only logical choice.

With the help of Salesforce Experience Cloud, you can design branded digital interactions for sharing information and working together with individuals who are essential to your business operations, such as clients, partners, or staff. An Experience Cloud site is a fantastic location to connect with the significant people in your life, regardless of what you choose to call it—a portal, help forum, community, or something else.

It is imperative that you design a security architecture strategy when it comes to your data in Salesforce Digital Experiences and site. There are various locations where the security settings can be changed; some have an impact on all sites, while others are site-specific. The majority of settings may be accessed in three different places: the Experience Workspaces Settings tile, user permissions in your Salesforce org, and your overall Experience Cloud settings in Salesforce Setup. But have you ever considered the security implications of using static resources with Salesforce Digital Experiences?

In Salesforce, static resources act as a helpful tool for developers, allowing them to upload assets to the Salesforce org. This can include CSS, static HTML, or JavaScript, which could help your site function properly.

To begin, let’s look at open-source assets and how they could affect Salesforce security if uploaded into your static resources.

In this article, we will discuss how open-source assets in Salesforce Digital Experiences can be the entry point for attackers, and why you should care.

Almost 95% of companies are actively using open-source code, which makes it a reason to worry about. Also, a wide-reaching vulnerability was recently discovered in an open-source Java library called Log4j that impacted many Salesforce customers and AppExchange vendors.

Open source libraries have the ability to devastate a business since the code is being developed by individuals outside of an organization, and is subject to social engineering and injection of malicious code. Then why can’t companies just no use such code?

The truth is nothing is entirely secure over the internet. If it’s not open-source code, it could be something else. Also, leaving out working with open-source code can make a company miss out on many benefits. A few of these are mentioned below.

1.   Provides extended flexibility

Although it could be scary to use open-source code after reading so much about its associated vulnerabilities, you can’t deny the ease and flexibility it adds for developers to work with less familiar code to develop complex applications.

2.   Improves developer efficiency

Accessing open-source code can save time for developers in sprints while they develop using the agile methodology. This proves helpful for companies rushing to develop solutions faster to meet customers’ needs.

3.   Enables remote collaboration

We are in the age when working from home has become a trend using remote collaboration among teams. This collaboration is possible only because of open-source repositories that have enabled teams to scale up for development and down for handling maintenance.

Enough reasons to keep using open-source code? So, the only way here is to understand these attacks better and devise ways to safeguard your data while using open-source code. 

You have probably heard that in cyber security, there’s nothing that is 100% secure. This is actually true. As we develop new security tools or measures, attackers simultaneously advance how they perform their attacks. The same is true for open-source code as well.

Now the real question is how are they doing this?

• Social engineering:

Consider a developer working on an open source library such as JQuery. Before finalizing it, the code gets reviewed multiple times for any structural deficiencies, threats, etc. Initially, the review process remains stringent, but the developer earns the trust with the passing days. And sooner or later, the review process becomes more streamlined and less thorough than it was earlier, thus leaving room for errors. Suppose a hacker targets a developer who has already acquired the trust of peers and convinces them to pass their open source repository credentials to the attacker so they can “help” the developer to make updates to the open-source code. In that case, the hacker can gain access to it and exploit the loopholes that have been missed due to the review process gaps.

A Salesforce developer could end up downloading a code or library that has malicious content, and uploading it as a Salesforce static resource. It could be in the form of a trojan or a backdoor keystroke logger, opening a Salesforce Digital Experience for an attack.

• Structural Integrity:

Another potential risk that you might encounter while using an open-source code is structural integrity. Once an issue is found that can be exploited on an open-source code, it can be exploited anywhere it was used, making it a source for mass exploitation. For example, if you are using the same open-source code across multiple sites.

It can be devastating for a business to face a malware attack because of a loophole in their Salesforce static resource assets. What’s more threatening is that Salesforce Digital Experiences aren’t just used by customers but also include data about and for partners and employees. All of this sensitive data could be up for grabs because of vulnerabilities. That’s quite scary!

How to Overcome Risks Associated with Open-Source Assets

It’s pretty clear that using open-source code is essential for Salesforce developers. We can’t completely skip it even when we know its vulnerabilities. Then what else can we do?

Writing all the code in-house and altogether leaving out the open-source code isn’t a long-term solution to this problem. What’s needed here is to understand the risk and find a way to save the data from it. We’ve covered a few examples below on preventing attacks and saving your data while using static resources.

1.   Follow strict open-source protocols

The kind of flexibility open-source code adds for developers is unmatched. So when you know open-source is vital for you, you need  to scrutinize the code and ensure that the code is safe for use by running comprehensive security reviews on all open source code and approving it prior to allowing it to be uploaded to Salesforce.

2.   Implement a Strict DevOps Deployment Process

Creating a strict review process is not enough. It still is possible that a piece of code that was not reviewed makes it into a production environment. It is because of this that you must also implement strict deployment procedures with additional review gates to ensure that only code that has been properly reviewed makes it into production environments.

3.   Use trusted malware mitigation tools

As malicious actors and hackers attempt to exploit web apps and applications, technology brings us new ways to secure our systems and data. One way here is to use a trusted tool to scan and mitigate malware before it does any damage. One such tool is EzProtect, the only virus scanning application for Salesforce that supports scanning of static resources in Salesforce.

To learn more about scanning threats, learn about EzProtect, which is one such tool designed by experienced Salesforce professionals to scan threats like ransomware, virus, malware, etc., embedded in an open-source code. EzProtect is the state-of-the-art solution to enable cybersecurity in your company for your Salesforce environments, enabling developers to access open-source code while being able to detect and remove vulnerabilities from Salesforce.

If you are concerned about your data being exposed or unsafe, Book a FREE Salesforce security assessment, to see if you are at risk.

The Risks of a Salesforce Security Breach, and How to Avoid One

Today, many organizations live and breathe Salesforce, and its popularity has skyrocketed more than ever. Higher revenue, better customer satisfaction, and business growth elevate the demand for salesforce more and more. However, with its myriad advantages, the platform also has some serious security concerns that need addressing.

In 2021 alone, over 22 million records were exposed. No doubt, Salesforce comes with various control sets to protect the data stored in Org. But there are still certain errors and vulnerabilities that put sensitive information at risk. Therefore, every organization’s priority should be ensuring Salesforce's security remains intact. Now you may wonder: what are the risks of a Salesforce security breach? In this blog, you will get to know all the details, but first, let’s understand the Salesforce data security model.

What is the Model of Salesforce Data Security?

Be it personal records or Org data, Salesforce has its own model for safeguarding all that information. There are three layers of security through which the tool looks after your organization’s data.

1. Object-Level-Security:

   Salesforce by default uses a pessimistic approach when it comes to data security. It verifies whether the user has permission to view that particular type of object, and then it allows access. For managing object-level security, it uses permission sets, two types of configurations, and profiles.

2. Field-Level-Security:

   Even if a person can access objects, he or she still has to get access to individual fields. For example, administrators have the power to give read or write permission to a user, and they can also remove all access from that field.

3. Record-Level-Security:

   This type of security deals with record sharing and controls users' access to records. There are sharing rules, role hierarchy, manual sharing, and organization-wide sharing defaults to decide who can have access to the record.

Even though Salesforce offers a top-notch model to protect the data, there are certain aspects of its environment that threat actors can exploit.

Top Risks Associated with a Salesforce Security Breach

Like any other tool, Salesforce also has some blind spots that can pose a major hazard to your organization. Here are some of the security risks of a Salesforce security breach. 

1. Authorization Vulnerabilities:

As Salesforce is a multi-user environment, access control or authorization becomes a big part of the security. When used correctly, each person can access only those functions and resources that are designated to them. Unfortunately, implementing the following authorization schemas will leave your application exposed to threats.

• If a single user gives access to multiple users

• If developers have less understanding of platform operations and access controls.

• When developers lack awareness of input manipulation, hackers use exploit them

2. Connection with APIs:

APIs create interactions between different software and are used to improve the overall experience between disconnected systems. Salesforce uses APIs to enhance the user experience, but unsecure third-party apps expose users to a variety of threats. Some of them include:

• Code Injections: Attackers put a malicious code in between the API codes to extract information from Salesforce Org.

• DDoS Attacks: Here, multiple systems perform a DDoS attack on a single system, causing the system to slow down or shut down.

• Replay Attacks: In this attack, the threat actor makes a user request to get information about authorized credentials.

• Exposed cardholder data: With debugging tools, attackers can get the information of the cardholder, thus leaving it unsecure.

• URI keys having important data: Some APIs also give a URI with an access key, but the details of the URI include passwords, system logs, and many other confidential data.

Integrating with an unsecured API can create compliance problems and result in data breaches.

3. Insider Threats:

When it comes to insider threats, any Salesforce user could be one. However, it depends on the roles and the access levels they have to extract information. Most companies today allow users to access Salesforce on personal devices, which leads to more risks. Certain insider threats to look out for are:

• Ex-employees who know all essential information of the organization.

• Users who commit errors due to negligence put data at risk.

• Insiders who intentionally disclose data to hamper the organization’s reputation.

• Some users who have more rights than they need can create security threats by making configuration modifications.

4. Increased Data Exposure:

In number of ways a user can access the data of Salesforce and it is a necessity now to control those who have the power to get your Org data. With expansion of a company, evolves the data pool and keeping it secure becomes difficult. Providing improper permissions to users leads to overexposure of data, thus making them vulnerable to attacks. If you are someone who doesn’t update third-party applications more often, then that also exposes your data to new threats.

5. Risks of Coding Errors:

New application and update creation on Salesforce does produce numerous opportunities for your organization. However, a single code error may create a huge security risk. During the development process, each security issue should be checked, and the quality of codes also needs proper scrutiny so that no one can exploit the data stored in them.

Ways to Assess Salesforce Data Security Risks

Data security risks in Salesforce are quite unavoidable but knowing where the vulnerabilities may lie is a great way to overcome the danger. Take a look at these points to assess the risks present in your Salesforce environment.

• Find out Who has Access to Information: You may think of cybercriminals whenever the topic of data security comes up. But sometimes, insider threats are the worst ones. Employees often unintentionally expose your data to risk through mistakes like accidental deletion or incorrect access methods. Therefore, control the permission settings and give access to only those who directly require it.

• Categorize the types of data: First, start with separating the different types of data that have chances of exploitation. All information is important but certain data hold more importance that you would never want to be compromised. So, evaluate all data sets and group them on the basis of their sensitivity.

• Identify Potential Vulnerabilities: Hackers often go to the login screens to enter your system. Therefore, use strong passwords and multi-factor authentication to enhance security.

• Monitor Reporting Procedures: Documenting everything to know the potential threats that could create a bigger issue. Track access logs and login history to learn whether it is used by any unauthorized person.

• Consider Backup Options: It is always better to prepare for a data loss, and installing a backup system is the best way to do so. Whether it's a natural disaster or a system failure, you'll need a backup to recover your data.

• Prioritize Security Scanner: No matter how many rules you follow to protect your system, there are still some vulnerabilities that can put it in danger. Hence, prioritize using a security scanner like EzProtect that scans for viruses and safeguards your business from huge losses.

Wrapping Up

Salesforce is one of the biggest CRM platforms, but it also poses data security risks. Although it is increasing the security effort, the risks of new vulnerabilities still put your system in danger. The perfect way to mitigate these risks is by opting for a complete cybersecurity solution that prevents damage and saves you millions.

If you are concerned about your data being exposed or unsafe, Book a FREE Salesforce security assessment, to see if you are at risk.

Come visit our site today, if you would like to learn more about EzProtect, and how we can help protect you.

Cyberattacks are becoming rampant day by day and the data breach cases have escalated over 15 million in the 3rd quarter of 2022 alone. These statistics are not only shocking but also a big threat to the confidentiality of any organization’s data. As a Salesforce Instance carries all kinds of sensitive information about your organization, customers, and partners. Any vulnerability in the system can put your data and files in danger. Therefore, it is high time to invest in a Security Health Check.

Like your regular body checkups, Salesforce also needs to stay efficient and perform at its best. With a Security Health Check, you can know the health score of your Salesforce Org The better the score, the lower the risk of security concerns. But what exactly is Security Health Check and how to perform it on Salesforce Instance? Learn all the details about it by diving deeper into this blog.

What is a Security Health Check and Do You Need It?

From easy customization to countless third-party apps, Salesforce offers many things that an organization depends on. But with all facilities, the spectrum of security control also widens. Fortunately, Salesforce has come up with a native solution called Health Check, which keeps the security of your Org intact.

In simple words, a Health Check identifies all vulnerabilities of your Salesforce Instance and analyzes the efficacy of the system. It rates the overall health of your Org and provides score from 0 to 100. Moreover, it will give you recommendations to enhance your score. However, if you think your Instance doesn’t need a security check, here are some scenarios when going for a Health Check becomes necessary.

• Long-term Gap after Salesforce Implementation: If your Salesforce has been implemented over the past six months or your business has already evolved a lot, then you need a security check.

• Changing Security Needs: There is no denying that organizations change with time. Likewise, security needs change too. By fixing the vulnerabilities in the security settings, you will lower the risk of a breach.

• Having Complex Data: Be it marketing or sales, most organizations use Salesforce as their go-to tool. But as they grow, the complexity of the data shoots up, as do the chances of error. With a regular security health check, you can eradicate the possibilities of vulnerability.

• Low Operating Efficiency: Not getting the results from Salesforce as you expected? Then, you should evaluate whether you are leveraging the capabilities of Salesforce correctly. Every now and then, Salesforce releases new features, and a complete health check will ensure all functionalities remain up-to-date. It is best if you do a security health check every three to four months.

• Data leaks in your Salesforce Digital Experiences: Poor coding practices, and/or improperly configured settings could lead to opening your Salesforce Digital Experiences to attacks.

Matt Meyers, a Salesforce CTA from EzProtect will be demonstrating in a session at Cactusforce exactly how an attacker could hack a Salesforce.digital experience to steal customer data 

Benefits of Performing a Security Health Check for Salesforce Instance

It is imperative that your business growth aligns with the Salesforce Org and the data stored in it. Salesforce administrators have to make sure the complexity in settings should not give room for errors or challenges. This is where periodic Health Checks act as a helping hand.

More benefits of doing security Health Check of Salesforce Instance include:

• The overall security of your Instance starts improving with Health Check. You can identify which settings are necessary and make changes quickly.

• With the report of Health Check, pinpointing the vulnerabilities is easier.

• It keeps the custom applications safe by securing the Org on which the app runs.

• Regular security checking helps streamlining new technology deployments.

• Health Check boosts the system efficiency, thus increasing the ROI.

• Productivity and the user adoption rate increases largely with security checks.

Methods to Perform a Security Health Check for Salesforce Instance

When it comes to the Health Check tool, Salesforce gives administrators complete control. They can analyze the health of their Salesforce instance by simply scanning the security settings. After finding out all the vulnerabilities and risks, they can resolve all the issues in just one go. Want to know more about it? Keep reading to learn the easy steps for performing a Salesforce Instance security Health Check.

Step 1: Create a Custom Baseline

You may already find various risk level recommendations in the Salesforce Baseline Standard option. But if you want to create a new customized baseline for a security check, the solution allows up to five baselines. For any industry that is highly regulated, meeting the compliance requirement is a must, and here, a custom baseline helps you a lot.

Follow the process to create a customized baseline

1. The first step begins with exporting the baseline. Go to the Baseline Controls menu and click on the Export Baseline option.

2. The administrators now have to use the text editor for editing the XML file. In this process, they can make adjustments in the category of risks to customize the scoring pattern. However, you cannot modify certain restricted value options.

Also, keep in mind not to delete or add risk categories, quotation marks, or names, as these can result in the import failing.

1. After saving the file, you have to import it, and the guidelines to import Baseline are similar to the export ones. But here you have to click on the Import Baseline.

2. A dialog box pops up on the screen after importing the file, and here you have to name the baseline. It allows special characters and spaces as well.

3. Now provide an API name for the baseline, but it should not have special characters or spaces, and your custom baseline is ready.

4. If you set your new Baseline as default, the Baseline will appear in the dropdown menu after the completion of import stage.

Step 2: Run the Health Check Scan

Now that you have opted for the custom baseline, go to the Salesforce Org and log in. Then, click on the setup menu in the Security Settings and there you search for Quick Find box. Once you get the box, choose Health Check. In every section, you can find an Edit link that allows you to make changes in the settings and set it to the standard value.

Step 3: Know the Score and Status

After running the Health Check, a health score is produced on the screen, which provides recommendations about the Instance’s vulnerabilities. It showcases the score on the basis of percentage. If the score is

• Less than 55 percent: Very Poor

• Between 55 and 59 percent: Poor

• Between 70 and 79 percent: Good

• Between 80 and 90 percent: Very Good

• From 90 to 100 percent: Excellent

The baseline also provides certain values describing the amount of risks your system possesses. It has four categories representing High, Low, and Medium risk as well as Informational Security Settings.

Step 4: Flags and Recommendations to Look for

Along with the categories of risk, it shows Critical, Complaint, and Warning signals to prioritize items that need to be fixed first. If there is any violation of restrictions, the tool will display a high-risk vulnerability flag. Hence, you will look into the risk quickly and mitigate it. Some other flags that the Health Check app may include are:

• Setting the complexity of the password

• Clickjack protection

• Forced logout after session timeout

You can also see some recommendations like Session Settings, Password Policies, and Network Access.

Step 5: Fixing Risks

Once you run the Health Check scan, all your issues come up on the screen. You just need to click the "Fix Risk" option to modify all the settings to the suggested value. However, do not change all settings at once as you may accidentally delete important ones. First, test it in the sandbox and then make changes individually.

Best Practices to Improve Salesforce Instance Data Security

1. Turn On the Private Button for External Access: Keep the default settings restrictive and provide access to the necessary ones.

2. Data Backup is a must: A backup of the system’s data helps in restoring all important information in case of an attack. This also prevents financial loss when there is downtime.

3. Go for the File Upload and Download feature: Salesforce has designed an amazing security setting called File Upload and Download, which restricts the user’s access to upload or download risky files.

4. Try Salesforce Sandbox: For verifying untested codes and experimenting with various variables, Sandbox is the right environment.

5. Choose XSS and Clickjack Protection: Enabling Cross-Site Scripting or XSS and Clickjack protection prevents users from accessing malicious scripts or links.

6. Update Your System to the Latest Version: Every technology evolves, and so does Salesforce. With regular updates, the chances of attack from new malware or threats diminish.

A security health check is not something to be taken lightly. The main goal of performing a health check more often is to identify risks in Salesforce Instance and resolve them faster. Everyone wants a high ROI, and it is only possible with a highly efficient system, which a Health Check can provide. In short, follow best practices and fix the gaps or vulnerabilities in your Salesforce Instance to get the best results.

Salesforce doesn’t scan files uploaded for viruses. Even with all the proactive protections that Health Check provides, you are still open to attack if you allow users to upload files in Salesforce.

Salesforce Digital Experiences are especially vulnerable since most times, user whom you do not trust or control their devices are free to upload files. Those files are then passed along to your internal teams and, at times even worse, your customers and partner.

EzProtect helps to close the gap, giving you peace of mind that you are protected from viruses and other threats in Salesforce.

If you are concerned about your data being exposed or unsafe, Book a FREE Salesforce security assessment, to see if you are at risk, or better yet, come visit us at our booth at Cactusforce.

If you are a Salesforce user, you would know that is a valuable business tool. What you may not know is Salesforce is storing gigabytes over gigabytes of private data of your users, customers, and partners. As exciting as it sounds, it could be dreadful when a single data breach can threaten the reputation of your business.

Did you know that 60% of all small business go out of business after just a single attack, and in the US a single attack on average, costs a large enterprise over 9 million, and that doesn’t even include the cost to repair your reputation after an attack.

With the dawn of remote work, there has been a significant increase in companies using Salesforce to enable business mobility. But with more and more Salesforce adoption, there’s also a need for adopting cybersecurity measures to ensure the utmost data security.

The speed at which Salesforce is being adopted comes along with companies overlooking the safe utilization of CRM. They tend to overlook the facts associated with Salesforce security, keeping their data exposed to vulnerabilities. 

Salesforce is an inviting target for hackers, and while the platform is reasonably secure, making it robust depends upon the internal efforts taken by each company. Still, organizations usually miss out on giving attention to this aspect.

Mistakes that could Threaten your Data in Salesforce

If you are a Salesforce user, data security is something you should always be thinking about. But are you making the necessary efforts to protect yourself and your company? If you just said yes, maybe you’d should read through the points mentioned below to check if you are actually doing it right.

1.   Depending Entirely on Salesforce for Security

Experienced security professionals do not entirely depend on Salesforce to protect their data. What’s required here is to understand that maintaining data security in Salesforce is a shared responsibility.

According to the 2020 State of Salesforce Security Report, research conducted by OwnBackup states that companies sometimes create vulnerabilities while developing customized applications through unique use cases. This is something Salesforce itself will not be able to protect completely.

2.   Not Classifying Data

Salesforce users should know that not all data is the same, so different attempts must be made to secure data at different levels. Users overlook classifying their data, thus failing to evaluate what data is essential to protect. Companies must have explicit and real-time knowledge about the data they maintain in their Salesforce org. 

Not classifying data would lead users to implement numerous random protective measures that might not even target the security of the data, which was at high risk. Blindly adding measures would create a mess without delivering the expected security.

Salesforce offers data classification features that help you to classify and secure your more sensitive data.

3.   Misconfigured APIs

Some of the security issues in Salesforce originate because of Salesforce API misconfiguration. Even though it’s quite relevant to maintain a keen eye on the data coming in and out of Salesforce, users still tend to miss out on paying attention to the APIs.

According to research by SANS Institute, attacks due to APIs are increasing, which is why companies are worried about data being exposed due to API configuration mistakes.  

4.   Not Broadening your Security Effort

Many Salesforce security issues in companies are faced as people cannot take ownership of the security at their firm. Organizations fail to emphasize building security awareness among the internal teams and implementing a standard Salesforce usage policy to ensure all employees are using the platform safely.

Not only this, but there has also been a lack of effort to enable visibility of the risk exposure of SaaS applications, as companies fail to integrate their CRM with their monitoring and response plans. That’s mainly because users are not making the most of Salesforce Shield and the different logging capabilities brought up by Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), which can help to enhance Salesforce data security.

All these points might have made you wonder if your data is actually secure in Salesforce. You may be overlooking these points, which could put your sensitive Salesforce records at risk. With all the work on the plate, it’s quite easy to miss out on additional measures you could take to secure your data in Salesforce.

So, while you are focused on developing and customizing Salesforce solutions or using them to manage your operations, it’s essential to stop for a while and access the data security to take the needed steps before something goes wrong.

Salesforce Data Security Best Practices You Can Follow

So far, we’ve realized that Salesforce has some issues when it comes to cybersecurity, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything about it.

While Salesforce is making continuous attempts to make the platform secure for its users, we can also follow some best practices to ensure data security. So, let’s look at some best practices you can follow to enhance Salesforce security.

1.   Enable Multi-Factor Authentication

According to research, 90% of data breaches are phishing attacks, making it essential for companies to protect their data against third parties. Even if you ensure proper training of your employees to follow a standard usage approach, it is the human tendency to make mistakes. This is where Multi-factor Authentication can be helpful.

Enabling MFA within the organization can secure you from such attacks, as even if the attacker has the username and password, it will not matter. The person can get into Salesforce org without confirming the identity with authentication through a mobile phone or any security key.

2.   Tackle User-Introduced Weakness

It is essential to secure the last layer, which is user-facing. This includes having insecure settings of the org or having weak passwords. Although these points don’t seem very prominent, they require much attention when ensuring complete data security.

What’s needed here is to set up a strong password policy in the organization. It will enable your employees to set passwords that can’t be easily guessed or cracked.

Salesforce recommends the following points as minimum strong password policies:

●      The password must include 3 of the following: uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters.

●      The password must have a minimum length of 12 characters.

●      The user should set the password history as ‘24 passwords remembered’.

●      Set passwords will expire at least every 90 days.

You can ensure additional security policies too that you want to be followed in your firm to better last-layer protection.

3.   Conduct Salesforce Security Health Check

When you want to keep your Salesforce org shielded from attacks, it is essential to identify loose ends and fix problems immediately. That’s something Salesforce Health Check makes possible.

Salesforce provides a recommended baseline standard to ensure your Salesforce org is secured from potential threats. Your health check score will denote how secure your org is. It will also help you identify areas where security can be at risk, so you can pay attention before anything goes sideways.

4.   Set Privileged-Based Access

Salesforce allows you to set privileged-based access so that authorized people would have permission to access the Salesforce environment.

Salesforce simplified maintaining security by setting up a data security model, breaking it down into four layers through which administrators could set rules and access levels for the different users accessing the org.

5.   Focus on Data Storage and Backup

Salesforce, as a CRM, is quite vulnerable to ransomware attacks. This makes it imperative to maintain regular backups of your data. Maintaining a backup will give you the peace of mind of having complete data with you, even if you face any attack.

Storing data and maintaining regular backups will also preserve your company from any financial loss that might incur due to downtime or extortion. Even during a critical ransomware attack, having a backup maintained will save you from huge losses.

6.   Install EzProtect

Despite all your efforts, you won’t be able to determine when a virus or malicious content enters Salesforce. This is because Salesforce does not scan files uploaded to Salesforce for viruses. To ensure you are protected, all you need is just one tool that could help you catch the virus before any harm is done.

With EzProtect, you can scan files for threats like malware, virus, or ransomware in your system, and block users from accessing any of these files, until they are determined to be safe, thus keeping your Salesforce org safe from cyberattacks.

Wrapping Up

For all the companies using Salesforce, one thing that definitely matters is to ensure complete data security. Still, despite it, they fail to focus on several aspects that could help protect their data. It’s a fact that despite every attempt made by Salesforce to enhance data security, you can’t sit relaxed until you make the needed attempts at your end.

All the steps mentioned above will help you set up a secure foundation for your Salesforce data, saving you from data exposure.

If you are concerned about your data being exposed or unsafe, Book a FREE Salesforce security assessment, to see if you are at risk, or better yet, come visit us at our booth at Cactusforce.

Managing Salesforce security is quite similar to driving a car. Just like there are blind spots that you have to identify while driving, the same goes for Salesforce. Driving safely requires you to pay attention to those blind spots. Similarly, there could be blind spots in your Salesforce as well, which, if not paid attention to, might cause data leaks that can threaten your sensitive information.

Salesforce communities, or what is now called Salesforce Digital Experiences these days is something any Salesforce user would be aware of. It’s one of those features that is highly appreciated for the ease of bringing the entire Salesforce community of customers and partners together.

But as you’re asking questions and sharing data with your customers and partners, do you believe it is safe? Does your data remain within that community, or are there any unknown holes that may cause your data to leak? Something to think about, right?

What Exactly Is the Issue?

Many companies store very sensitive information on Salesforce, and I’m sure you realize what that would mean if your sensitive data was leaked to the public internet. But what exactly could cause data to be leaked? The answer is misconfigured Salesforce Community or Digital Experiences.

Research says that a misconfigured Salesforce Community could cause your sensitive data on Salesforce to leak to anyone using the internet. This misconfiguration could allow any anonymous, or even authenticated user to access sensitive details that they normally should not be able to access such as support cases, employee details, and customer lists, or even worse health care or financial information.

Salesforce is a very powerful and customizable platform. Therein lies the problem. It is too easy to accidentally expose data to attackers without even knowing it.

“With great power, comes great responsibility”

How are Attackers Exploiting Salesforce Digital Experiences?

A misconfiguration of security in Salesforce Digital Experiences provides attackers with a hole to easily gather sensitive data, which can be inappropriately used for running spear-phishing campaigns at a minimum.

But if you consider the worst-case scenario, this kind of misconfiguration can lead to attackers exploiting weak configuration settings to get access to sensitive business data.

Once an attacker finds a site that they can exploit, they will spend a considerable amount of time gaining forensics about the site. These forensics could be used to perform a multitude of attacks against your Salesforce Digital Experience site, and potentially even gain full access to query, or even update or delete any data in your Salesforce org.

Customers use Salesforce Digital Experiences for business cases such as customer service, subscription management, Covid tracking / healthcare, and loan origination or other financial service handling. Being internet-facing, these sites can be accessed at any time and from any place. Salesforce Digital Experiences are also indexed by Google, making it easy to find, not just by partners and customers, but also by hackers who always keep looking for vulnerable sites.

Salesforce Digital Experiences run on Salesforce Lightning, which is composed of a large number of client-side facing APIs that cannot be disabled. This enables developers to assemble web pages quickly using a drag and drop builder. Most people don’t know that all Lightning Experience pages render every page on load using these client-side APIs. This means that every component, every layout, all the data, and even custom apex code methods are all accessed through these client-side facing APIs.

But…if an unauthenticated user, or even an authenticated user has access to data or to perform actions you normally would not want them to do, they can use these aura APIs to query data, create, update, delete records, or even take advantage of exposed custom apex code to steal sensitive data, or even inject viruses, or other malicious code into Salesforce.

The worst part is there is no way to disable access to these APIs. Even with the “API Enabled” feature disabled, attackers can still access these APIs. This is because this is core to the Lightning Experience in Salesforce. Furthermore, these APIs offer similar capabilities that you get from Salesforce’s Rest or Soap APIs.

These APIs are mostly harmless provided that the user doesn’t have access to operations or data that they normally should not.

What makes the situation more critical is finding vulnerable Salesforce Digital Experience sites for an attack is just a Google search away as there is a specific search in Google you can use that will return pages upon pages of Salesforce Digital Experience sites. An attacker can figure out many avenues to acquire details about such sites and get access through an unauthenticated guest or even as an authenticated user on sites that offer a self-registration option.

Also, if an attacker has more advanced knowledge, he might attack the community's vulnerable custom and third-party components, such as passing parameters to exposed apex methods to take advantage of poorly designed methods that could allow the attacker to retrieve sensitive information or execute malicious operations.

To understand this better, Matt Meyers,

a Salesforce CTA and Managing Partner for EzProtect, will demonstrate how an attacker could hack a Salesforce digital experience to steal customer data in a session at Cactusforce.

How Is Salesforce Trying to Improve Security for Digital Experiences?

Salesforce is making several changes to guide users to avoid such critical configuration mistakes in Digital Experiences. Salesforce has already removed the ability for guest users of the Digital Experiences to access excessive information. They have also made some changes to make sure that the critical security settings are secure by default. For example, guest user by default cannot own records, and guest users cannot upload files.

There are a few updates that Salesforce brought with its Winter ‘21 release to secure communities for users. Some of these updates included:

●      Reduce object permissions for guest users: The feature will disable different object permissions for guest users like Edit, Delete, View All Data, and Modify All Data.

●      Enhanced security for managed topic images: Before Winter ‘21, Salesforce Digital Experiences tended to store the managed topic images as documents, which were accessible to all, even if the site was private. But with the update, images began to be stored as private.

●      Disabled setting to let guest users see other members: Earlier, the feature for admins to enable guest users to have visibility of other users revealed their PII information. Later with the update, this setting was turned off by default.    

Salesforce is making several attempts to guide users to avoid such critical configuration mistakes in Digital Experiences.. Salesforce has already removed the ability for guest users of the Digital Experiences to access excessive information. They have also made some changes to make sure that the critical security settings are secure by default. For example, guest user by default cannot own records, and guest users cannot upload files.

There are a few updates that Salesforce brought with its Winter ‘21 release to secure communities for users. Some of these updates included:

●      Reduce object permissions for guest users: The feature will disable different object permissions for guest users like Edit, Delete, View All Data, and Modify All Data.

●      Enhanced security for managed topic images: Before Winter ‘21, Salesforce Digital Experiences tended to store the managed topic images as documents, which were accessible to all, even if the site was private. But with the update, images began to be stored as private.

●      Disabled setting to let guest users see other members: Earlier, the feature for admins to enable guest users to have visibility of other users revealed their PII information. Later with the update, this setting was turned off by default.    

What Can You Do To Avoid Attacks On Salesforce Digital Experiences?

Reading about such attacks might make you feel overwhelmed and worried the next time you access Digital Experiences. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Although it’s quite challenging to make Salesforce completely secure for your data, there are a few steps that you can take to keep your communities guarded.

By now, I hope you understand that the more access you give to anonymous guest users and even authenticated users, the more the chances of such attacks will be. So, the key here is to be constantly reviewing and auditing your user permissions, and especially your guest user permissions.

Let’s take a leap here to get onto some points that could be helpful for you to make your Digital Experiences more secure and prevent attacks by unauthorized users.

1.   Set permissions for the guest user profile

One thing that you might have extracted from this post is that you should provide your guest users with access to a minimum amount of data when interacting through the community. So, in order to keep your Digital Experience secure, you need to modify the permissions for the guest user.. Change your settings related to access, and you can also manage field-level security for controlling user access at a granular level.

2.   Enable secure access to the guest user record

You have to secure the default access setting for guest users. Look for Sharing Settings in the Setup and then find Secure guest user record access. Make sure the setting it’s checked. With the release of Summer ‘20, Salesforce even disabled the setting to grant users permission to View All Users.

3.   Disable API access

We’ve seen above that an API-led misconfiguration can open a back door for attacks into the Salesforce community. So, it’s essential to disable API access to avoid such attacks. Check that the “API enabled” is unchecked. Also, make sure to disable the “Access Activities” too. (But remember that even with “API enabled” setting is disabled, the Lightning APIs are still accessible.)

You should also continuously monitor sharing roles and permissions for guest and community users. Along with this, make sure that you are keeping track of what records your external users are owning, and what are the security implications of them owning specific records.

4.   Set a default owner for records by guest users

Navigate to the Administration workspace using the site builder. Set up a default owner for records created by guest users under Preferences, and turn off settings to let guest users view the site members.

Wrapping Up

Turning off access for guest users is a decision that might be different for different companies. Sometimes you cannot avoid collaborating in a community, and cannot completely cut off your guest users. But you can be a little more careful of any data you are accessing and sharing to your external users.

Even Salesforce preaches a ‘shared responsibility’ model when it comes to using the CRM and the data safely. Although Salesforce is making more and more efforts with each release to make the CRM more secure and convenient for users, it’s also up to you to follow all security guidelines and implement needed settings for better data security.

Following the basic security guidelines by Salesforce would also help you to be aware of some best practices to keep your Salesforce org secure. Additionally, the points we’ve covered above can help to keep those back doors closed that an unauthorized user with malicious intent can exploit.

If you are concerned about your data being exposed or unsafe, Book a FREE Salesforce security assessment, to see if you are at risk, or better yet, come visit us at our booth at Cactusforce.

We first announced Provar Manager, the latest addition to our ever-growing line of testing products, in June. Since then, we have received outstanding feedback and are looking forward to introducing more ways to help teams at every stage of their quality journey.

Still new to Provar Manager? We have the rundown for you! Whether you’re part of a QA team integrating test automation and project planning, defect tracking, and DevOps tools, or are an individual or small team building out organization and structure within your testing process, Provar Manager is the answer to organizing, analyzing, and optimizing your Salesforce testing activities.

The 100% Salesforce-native Provar Manager includes:

• Test planning, design, and documentation

• End-to-end test management

• Holistic manual, automated, unit, and exploratory test result reporting

• DevOps-ready integration

• Defect management

• Reporting and analytics

• The ability to import industry standard test results

• A free trial and test drive

• Free online training

Let’s get into the overview, shall we?

What are Provar Manager’s Key Features?

Among its many capabilities, Provar Manager has three key features geared toward streamlining your testing processes:

Organize

Get your testing under control with a framework for organizing, documenting, storing, and reporting on everything about your tests. Get rid of spreadsheets and build a foundation for integration, automation, analysis, and optimization.

Analyze

Collect, report, visualize and analyze all data related to any test, execution, defect and test resource. Gain actionable insights and improve visibility of test metrics and release quality.

Optimize

Fine tune your entire testing process with a central hub for testing execution, reporting, and analysis, and manage your release risk. Get the information you need to assess candidate release risk, resources required, and change impact.

Who is Provar Manager For?

Wondering if Provar Manager is for you and your team? Here’s a deep-dive into the roles that will get the most from this product.

Testers

• Looking for more flexibility and extensibility

• Seeking speed and automation

• Wanting more connectivity

• Searching for a better way to manage tests

DevOps Engineers

• Using Salesforce-native release management tools

• Who want to include QA testing and reporting in their CI/CD pipelines

• Seeking integrated QA

Business Analysts

• Identifying as a “citizen tester”

• Looking for a platform that is simple to use and understand

• Wanting easy access to, better visibility for, and streamlined communication around reporting and analytics

Developers

• Who only test Apex or LWCs

• Who wonder if changes will break declarative or UI components

• Seeking a faster feedback loop

Admins

• Serving as a do-it-all one-person QA team

• Managing users, integrations, and reporting

• Looking for ad hoc testing optimization

• Mitigating release risk and resource management

Stakeholders

• Who don’t yet have visibility or metrics on QA

• With low confidence that releases won’t break elements in production

• Who want to keep users happy

• Looking for better visibility and increased confidence

What Does Provar Manager Currently Integrate With?

Currently, we integrate with Provar Automation, any Salesforce Org, Jira, Flosum, and Salesforce DevOps Center. You can also upload results using standard file formats such as JUnit and TestNG. Keep checking back to watch the growing list, or reach out today to discuss suggested integrations!

As you’re reading this blog, it is possible that a hacker might be trying to steal the sensitive information on the Salesforce org of your business, planning to encrypt it to threaten you to leak the data unless you pay a hefty ransom. 

Imagine the drastic hit that your sales will take if you can’t access your opportunities, accounts, contacts, campaigns, and more! You’ll feel just like a hostage, worrying about the devastating loss that the company will face, both in terms of reputation and revenue.

According to Symantec, 2015 was a year of nine mega-breaches that led to the loss of half a billion personal records. We always talk about technology improving constantly, then why are businesses still vulnerable to such cyber attacks? Is it the responsibility of businesses to look for ways to prevent their data as hackers are trying more and more to breach the security barriers? Or should we rely on Salesforce to provide more reliable ways to secure data?

The Back Door for Cyberattacks

It’s no news that Salesforce is the #1 CRM globally used by businesses across multiple industry sectors. The CRM has millions of users, integrated through a platform or “community”, interacting with each other to address different business areas like marketing, sales, and customer service. 

Despite being such a popular and trusted CRM, Salesforce does NOT offer its users prevention from scanning attachments, files, or document uploads for malicious content or viruses. 

And that’s not by any mistake. In fact, it’s an intentional design made by Salesforce as no virus-infected code gets executed on the system, just remains stored on the database, waiting for someone to download and execute. 

Salesforce simply relies on its partners to fill in the gaps in terms of functionalities or security. 

Scanning of malicious content is not a core competency of Salesforce, creating world class business solutions is, thus Salesforce chose to focus on creating more business value for their customers than diverting resources to create and support a malicious file scanning solution.

You can not trust Salesforce blindly with full data recovery, not just for scanning viruses. Although Salesforce retired its previous backup settings in 2020 and reintroduced the data recovery features in March 2021, you can only use it as a last resort measure. 

The current Salesforce data recovery service does not offer complete data backup and recovery assistance. This service has many limitations that are to be considered, according to Security Boulevard. Some of these limitations are:

• Salesforce doesn’t guarantee successfully restoring 100% of your data.

• The files that you receive after the recovery process will not include metadata.

• The process of recovering the data can take approximately 6-8 weeks.

• You’ll get the retrieved data in the form of CSV files, which you must manually upload back to Salesforce.

• This data recovery service will cost you $10,000.

So, in short, a manual, time-taking, and costly process, that doesn’t even guarantee full recovery. That’s not what we call reassuring.

The Threat of Cyber Attacks on Salesforce

Sadly, cyberattacks are becoming a more and more common thing. Since the pandemic hit, there has been a 600% increase in cybercrime cases, affecting businesses from nearly every industry sector. And the consequences of these cyberattacks could be severe, ranging from losing sensitive business data to crippling the entire business architecture. 

Not just the loss of data, but cyberattacks also lead to a significant financial impact, causing yearly damages that could sum up to billions. In 2022, the average cost of a single data breach reached a record high of $4.35 million according to IBM.

A CRM platform like Salesforce has millions of users working with high-quality and verified data, including financial information, business details, and other sensitive information. That’s something that makes Salesforce a magnet for hackers. As a business gets hacked, there are always chances that the data held by it will leak, which will not just erode customers’ trust but also cause a loss of millions to the company. 

Cyberattacks on Salesforce can occur due to different threat vectors that you might access on a daily basis. Some of the most vectors are:

• Emails: You might have integrated your Salesforce account with your email management application for better productivity and case management, but you never know when you will end up downloading an attachment within Salesforce that contains any malware.

• Digital Experiences (Communities): It’s common for Salesforce users to share files over Digital Experiences, but if a user’s desktop scanner is not up-to-date, they might upload virus-affected articles, manuals, applications, etc. Sensitive Salesforce data may become accessible to anyone online due to a misconfigured Salesforce Digital Experience site. Objects containing sensitive data, such as customer lists, support cases, and employee email addresses, can be queried by anonymous users.

Learn more about Misconfigured Salesforce Digital Experiences for Recon and Data Theft. 

• Live Chat: Users uploading files on chat in real time can also be a gateway for malicious attacks. 

• API Integration: You can also get a virus to the system while uploading files to Salesforce via external or partner sites. 

• Email-to-Case: Even if you add a random scanner to your email, that might not be as effective as you think. 

• Insecure Coding Techniques: Since object and field level checks are insufficient to prevent SOQL injection, a different approach to SOQL query security is required. A vulnerability subtype known as "blind SOQL injection" allows information contained in a record to be discovered, usually through a veiled signal in the query result.

A Salesforce CTA, Matt Meyers from EzProtect will be demonstrating in a session at CactusForce exactly how an attacker could hack a Salesforce digital experience to steal customer data, you can join this session to learn more about the security in Salesforce.

Salesforce’s Take on Cybersecurity

It is believed that a majority of cases of cyberattacks have happened since the pandemic hit. But even before the quarantines and COVID-19 lockdowns, employees have been bringing their laptops home and working on external networks over the weekend. From using a compromised home network to attackers accessing recycled passwords, numerous reasons could have been causing cyberattacks.

Greg Poirier, an expert in business security technology and Founder of Salesforce Partner CloudKettle, said, “That security issue is not new. What is new is that the volume of attacks and resources, and efforts going into security attacks on at-home employees has increased significantly. What’s happening is people are working way harder in the last year to exploit it. And that’s what makes it more important.”

Considering the situation of increasing cyberattacks, Salesforce also made it mandatory for all customers to use Multi-Factor Authentication to access different Salesforce products, starting from February 1, 2022.

Any CISO will tell you that there is more need to focus on enterprise security than ever, and sometimes businesses fail to prioritize MFA. As the digital world is becoming more connected and complex, no company can risk missing out on MFA and other essential security measures to safeguard data. 

Over the last few years, it has been witnessed that many companies, mainly large enterprises, have been using “connected” multi-cloud-based solutions to offer you a unified view across different segments of the business. Because of this shift, cybercriminals have started using a new attack vector, data warehouses. Due to this shift, organizations are actively increasing their security protocols and solutions, like Salesforce Shield and Mulesoft’s API Manager, which could protect their data from some common attacks.

What You Can Do To Secure Your Data

Everything we’ve covered so far brings us to the question, what can be done to secure our data?

When your sensitive business data is at risk, you just can’t risk missing out on anything. Although you never know when things could take a nasty turn for you in terms of cybersecurity, it is always essential to be ready on your part. 

So, let’s talk about some measures you can take to increase the security of your data on Salesforce.

1. Event Monitoring

You can activate an automatic system in your Salesforce org that will notify you about risky actions like insecure settings or weak passwords. If anything like this goes wrong, Salesforce will notify you and your cybersecurity personnel to fix the problem as soon as possible. 

1. Authentication

Salesforce offers a helpful authentication feature that can be useful. Whenever a user adds his credentials for the login, Salesforce creates a session cookie for it. Salesforce uses an encoded session ID instead of storing the credential information. So, if anyone tries to hack cookies from the browser, they won’t be able to get access to the authentication data of the user.

1. Virus Scanning Tools

As we know, Salesforce doesn’t scan any document you upload for viruses or malicious content; you need an additional tool that will help you scan the files you upload to your org. EzProtect is a reliable tool that will scan your files for malware, viruses, ransomware, or any other threats that can be embedded in the code and can’t be easily detected by random desktop scanners. 

Learn more about the facts you must do now to protect your salesforce data from hackers.

Salesforce has been transformative for your business, but you can only keep making the most of it as long as it’s secure. So, take your first step towards securing your Salesforce data using EzProtect to scan your files for malicious content or threats. 

Want to know more about our solution? Check out our website and learn how EzProtect is just the right tool for you.

Ready to talk? Book a FREE Salesforce security assessment to see if you are at risk, or better yet, come visit us at our booth at Cactusforce.

*This is part two of a two-part series that takes a deeper dive into choosing the right test automation solution for your team’s needs. Part one focused on what you should look for in the technology itself, while part two focuses on looking beyond the technology and evaluating the vendor’s business model.

We want to help you cut through the noise on the test automation market to ensure you choose the quality partner that fits your organization. There are other factors to consider outside the technology; the guide below will provide clarity on what to look for in a vendor’s business model, and what questions to ask to ensure you select the right solution for your team’s needs.

Key Considerations

The key considerations for evaluating a testing solution vendor, beyond its technological capabilities, fall into these categories: 

Now, let’s break this down in a little more detail.

Support

It is imperative that your test automation solution vendor offers ongoing support across a number of verticals. The more willing a vendor is to help their customers in the long haul, the stronger the relationship will become and the more satisfaction and trust you can have in the product.

Here are some questions you can ask to determine the level of ongoing support your team will get:

• After the initial setup consultation, how do you provide continued support to your customers?

• What is your customer retention rate? Do you think your level of support plays into this?

• Do you have an easily accessible online help center, or an area on your website with frequently asked questions? Do you offer a community forum for your customers to ask questions and receive support?

• What happens if I have a question specific to my company’s workflow? How quickly will I be able to connect with an expert from your team? Are you available 24/5 to accommodate my full team’s needs (if global)?

• Are you attending any upcoming trade shows or conferences in my area?

Training

Next we’ll talk about training. A good vendor will prioritize continued education, such as readily accessible courses that users can take on their own time to brush up their skills, as well as continued training through webinars, instructional blog posts, and white papers that take a deep dive into real use cases.

Here are some questions to ask when evaluating how your vendor goes about training:

• Do you have a library of training courses I/my team members can take at our leisure to expand on our product knowledge? What are some of your current course topics? Do you have any courses that will soon be released? How often do you release new courses? Are you available to provide on-site training, and will you provide our partner ecosystem the same level of training and support?

• Do you offer free webinars for customers? What about free webinars for folks outside of your customer base? What are some topics you have covered in the past? Do you have any upcoming webinars that might be relevant to my team’s needs?

• Do you have a blog? How frequently does your company post on its blog? What topics have you covered recently? Do you publish contributions from various members of your team/departments so we can get a wide range of perspectives?

• Do you have a library of white papers available upon request for me/my team members to browse?

Customer Success

Finally, you’ll want to evaluate your test automation solution vendor for its customer success level. A good vendor will have an arsenal of customer success stories for every use case, and they will be happy to share them. Spend plenty of time researching reviews from reputable industry sites, peers, and analysts, and ask the vendor if they can connect you with past and current customers.

Here are some questions you can ask to supplement your research:

• Do you have customer case studies or success stories available for me/my team members to review? Do you have any from my specific industry, or that are using your product in a similar way to how we would be using it?

• When I was researching your company, I noticed that there was negative feedback published on [site] regarding [topic]. Can you speak to this feedback, such as ways your company has improved this area of business? What is your process for receiving feedback and integrating suggestions into future updates?

• Do you have any reviews you could provide from reputable industry review sites, peers, and/or analysts?

• Would any of your existing or past customers in a similar industry, or who have used your product in a similar capacity, be willing to speak with me/my team members and answer a few questions?

* This is part one of a two-part series that takes a deep dive into choosing the right test automation solution for your team’s needs. Part One focuses on what you should look for in the technology itself, while Part Two will focus on looking beyond the technology and evaluating the vendor’s business model.

The guide below will provide clarity on what to look for, as well as what questions to ask to ensure you select the right solution for your team’s needs. We will start by discussing the technology, of course.

The key considerations for a product evaluation of a Salesforce-specific testing solution fall into four categories: 

Let’s break this down in a little more detail.

Test Resilience or Fragility

Salesforce automatically updates its platform multiple times per year, which can cause automated tests to break unless the testing system was designed to operate with Salesforce. And when tests break, you’re in trouble.

Here are some questions you can ask to decide if a test automation solution has the test resilience or fragility you need:

• Can a test created for Visualforce run without modification under Aura (Classic and Lightning)?

• If Salesforce makes a change to the way a page is rendered (changes to the HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc.), will a test continue to work without modification?

• If we make a change to a Salesforce layout, will a test created for the previous page layout work without modification?

• If Salesforce changes an API used in a test, will it continue to work without modification?

Polymorphism and Reusability

The technology that makes tests resilient also enables polymorphism, where a single test can run across numerous contexts, and reusability, which reduces the number of tests you need to create and maintain. Reusable polymorphic tests make for a higher quality solution that evolves more quickly and easily.

Here are some questions you can ask to gauge a test automation solution’s polymorphism and reusability:

• Can I create a single test and run the test for several different user profiles or page layouts without modification or creating additional tests?

• Will a test that I create in English run without modification and without creating duplicate tests in another language like French or Japanese?

• Can a single test run without modification or creation of additional tests across PC, Mac, and mobile users on several different browsers?

• Can a test be used to validate field visibility and accessibility based on user permissions for several profiles/permission sets without modification and without creating additional tests?

• Can a test created in the development environment run without modification and without creating additional tests in the validation or production environments?

Ease of Use and Learning

Ease of use and learning is another big factor to consider in your evaluation. Many Salesforce users are considered “citizen developers,” meaning they may not be experts in programming languages and frameworks. It’s essential that your test automation solution is usable by your entire team so you can deploy your tests with confidence.

Here are some questions you can ask to see if a test automation solution champions ease of use and learning:

• Are test steps added from a Salesforce screen (“right-click to add test step”)? Can you build your test in one location without having to toggle back and forth between multiple platforms or screens?

• Can I add a test step and see the results before adding the next step? Can I step back to remove a prior step? Can I pause and resume a test as I run it?

• If I select a button in the Salesforce user interface and right-click to add a test step, does the test step automatically default to click? Does it default to “set” for an input field? What other default actions should we capture? Does your approach automatically detect the locators, such as elements you want to test, before you test, or do I have to label these elements? When running a test script, do you see the test pass/fail in real time, or do you need to fix it and run it over again to confirm the issue is resolved?

Testing Adjacent Systems

Finally, when it comes to the technology itself, it’s essential that you evaluate a test automation solution’s ability to test adjacent systems. Every Salesforce platform connects to other enterprise systems and custom integration points, so it’s important that your testing solution works well with other systems so that you can test your workflows end-to-end.

Here are some questions that’ll help you evaluate whether your test automation solution is ideal for testing adjacent systems:

• Can I test that a triggered email was sent? Can I test email to case flow?

• Can I verify that a Salesforce action triggered a connected action in an external system, such as creating an invoice in an ERP? Can I verify that an action on our website created the correct records/activities in Salesforce?

• Can I test that an external API has been called from a Salesforce customization?

Salesforce’s success with its “clicks not code” low-code development platform has empowered development teams and enabled Salesforce customers to stay ahead of the competition. As the pace and volume of feature and application delivery increases, it’s essential that testing keeps up.

In the midst of this low-code revolution, here are 5 things enterprise IT organizations should know about Salesforce test automation so they can help development and test teams rapidly deliver quality software.

1. Reducing test maintenance is key to managing Salesforce release schedules 

One of the biggest influences on testing strategy is Salesforce’s release cycles. Salesforce delivers three main releases each year, plus time-based features and weekly patches – and your organization will include them whether you’re ready or not. Depending on what changed, you’re going to need to run anything from simple smoke tests to full regressions. And, if your test automation is flaky, be forewarned that test maintenance can add significant overhead and time to an already tight release cycle. The trick to finding big reductions in maintenance is working with a test automation vendor that can future-proof your Salesforce test automation, delivering release-to-release test compatibility. Remember, every minute spent maintaining a test is a minute not spent on testing, and a delay in getting to a confident decision for the new release.

2. How to build ultra-resilient tests for Salesforce

Here’s one of the key challenges to Salesforce test automation in a nutshell: Salesforce regularly makes changes to how a page is rendered, which directly affects the HTML, CSS, Javascript, and DOM that most test automation tools rely on to build tests. Translated: traditional tests tend to be fragile in the face of Salesforce changes.

The good news: there is another way. Salesforce uses metadata to define the form and structure of its page – page layouts, objects, and field definitions. Metadata changes much less often than the rendered page source, which means tests based on metadata are much more resilient. How testing solutions use Salesforces metadata to build tests is a fundamental engineering choice that affects not only maintenance, but successful adoption by a key testing demographic in the low-code world.

3. How citizen testers are key to accelerating test automation

One of the biggest benefits of the low-code revolution is the tremendous expansion of potential coders and testers. Enter the citizen tester, who might be a user, a business analyst, or subject matter expert. The common characteristic of citizen testers is they are not test coding experts. Citizen testers are on the rise to fill workforce gaps and need tools geared toward their success. That means a short learning curve (days not months), intuitive test building (clicks not code), highly automated ultra-reliable test creation, built-in reusability, and scalability. These tools should cater to the citizen tester while at the same time speed up test building and maintenance for the code-savvy test engineer (the same way low-code development empowered more developers and made application development faster for pro coders).

4. How to make quality visibility a strategic advantage

Without testing and a clear picture of quality, low-code development platforms can enable risk creation (untested business critical software) at a prodigious rate. QA teams need a test management platform that will help them collect, organize, and analyze data throughout the software development lifecycle, add detail and speed to feedback loops, and create a shared view of quality across the business – a “quality hub.” A Salesforce quality hub should support multiple user types and easy customization and integration, and should also take advantage of Salesforce applications and infrastructure. The outcome of a well-executed Salesforce quality hub is organization-wide quality visibility and teams that can rapidly and confidently make decisions for every release, drive continuous improvement, and keep customers happy.

5. What to look for in a Salesforce testing provider

With numerous providers on the market, it can be difficult to identify the testing solution that best meets your team’s needs. Here are some key Salesforce testing features to help narrow the field:

1. Keep up with release velocity in a low-code Salesforce world.

2. Minimize test maintenance to manage three big yearly releases, date-triggered features, and weekly patches.

3. Don’t rely on the DOM. Tests built on something Salesforce regularly changes are bound to be fragile and require lots of maintenance.

4. Empower the citizen tester.

5. Look past simple test management and build a Salesforce quality hub.

Salesforce is a strategic platform for creating and running business-critical applications. Testing tools should be chosen accordingly.

To Wrap Up

Enterprise IT organizations must have a good handle on these five topics to help development and QA teams deliver quality Salesforce releases and apps at speed. Identifying software quality as a strategic advantage, teams can select tooling, build infrastructure, and develop processes to support that goal. The journey won’t be simple or short. Being mindful of the nuances of Salesforce testing and the requirements of citizen testers will pay big dividends. And, Salesforce and its ecosystem offers an amazing breadth and depth of community, training, consulting, and vendor solutions to help any team succeed.

Interested in learning more about how Provar can help elevate your team’s quality journey? Schedule a demo today.

Often, when it comes to implementing changes in Salesforce, it isn’t until you have to make one that you discover breakdowns and bottlenecks that keeps your team from performing optimally. Prodly AppOps is all about enabling you through an easy-to-use UI that is built to empower admins and keep your team supported by sound governance, effective change management, and give you the data that helps you use your resources wisely.

Here are just a few of the benefits of employing AppOps to create a proactive team:

#1: Improved change management

From applying a governance framework to set strategic objectives for your instance to optimizing the change request and delivery process, AppOps supports you in improving your workflows based on reliable data. Starting with your strategic approach to change management, AppOps seeks to simplify the process of change with a bias towards declarative changes that keeps admins in the driver’s seat of handling appropriate requests. 

#2: Time savings

Frequent silos and exhausted project timelines cost your team more than just money and productivity. AppOps closes the gap in your governance strategy by automating the deployment process for your Salesforce administrators. This can save hours or even days of time wasted during the release cycle. Do your team the favor of harnessing an agile approach to Salesforce changes with AppOps.

#3: Improved quality assurance

Are you set up to handle quality assurance properly? How about handling automatic regression testing and rollbacks seamlessly? When you’re working with change requests from your users, you need a tool that’s going to support your team in ensuring that every request is fulfilled properly, from intake to completion. 

#4: Reliable auditability

Auditability is perhaps the most important part of working with customer requests and maintaining the health of your Salesforce org. Without it, it would be difficult to track whether a process is working effectively, whether resources are being used to the best of their ability or if there needs to be a complete system overhaul. AppOps Release gives you the ability to track every change so you can go back and see exactly who changed what and when. AppOps places the auditing process at the crux of how you control and manage your change workflows.

#5: Sandbox optimization

Is your company using your Salesforce sandboxes to its full capacity? Most companies aren’t. With AppOps you can refresh painlessly and seamlessly keep your sandboxes in sync with production. You can also reduce the frequency and impact of bugs and errors in your production orgs. AppOps gives you the power to use your sandboxes effectively as well as create a reliable connection between your data and your team.

#6: Reduced data errors

The frustration of duplicate data and missing object relationships when manually deploying Salesforce records between orgs is immeasurable against the satisfaction of working with AppOps. AppOps is unique in being able to provide this level of reliability, efficiency and flexibility. This is a tool that’s designed with all of the possibilities, for your team in mind, with the reliability and data-based efficiency known for results. 

#7: Increased throughput of changes

As your team’s usage of Salesforce grows, so should your tools for managing those changes. The low-code shift has given business analysts, project managers, and business operations managers the power to drive changes and improve processes right alongside Salesforce administrators and developers. The clicks-not-code approach of AppOps means increasing the velocity and pace of releases. With AppOps, anyone on the team can be a part of the change management process while still following best practices for governance. 

#8: Happier users

The point of strategic governance is to bring a more quality product to your end user. Implementing AppOps means that your end user gets changes faster. Your Salesforce admins will have much less busy work and move through their project timelines more efficiently. Your developers will also appreciate being more challenged with projects that fall within their skill set. AppOps is all about ensuring deployments that occur correctly every time, while allowing your team to optimize building, testing, and delivering the next release.

#9: Problems are handled more proactively

Instead of being a reactive team, AppOps empowers you to move toward proactive methodologies that help you eliminate wasteful processes and optimize those that work well. Doing the work in the beginning helps to reduce the chances of silos and bottlenecks that could have been avoided with proper planning, and by automating repetitive tasks in the release process. 

#10: Eliminate ineffective silos

Without software to support, track, and monitor the status and progress of customer requests and other projects your team handles, it is common for there to be serious breakdowns in communication. This leads to silos and backups that leaves your team loaded with unfinished projects and saddles efficiency. AppOps gives everyone the ability to safely make Salesforce improvements within the defined change processes. Treat your team to the next level of change management, the low-code option that empowers admins and strengthens IT team’s strategic leadership.

Managing low-code platforms with low-code tools is the trend for IT teams looking to increase efficiency and deliver quality changes to end users faster. The foundation of your Salesforce change management strategy should be backed by a tool that addresses each project independently to assess the path through production. Interested in taking Prodly AppOps for a test drive? Schedule a demo today.

All editions offer a comprehensive and rich feature set, built for just the right use case scenario within Salesforce. Identify the features that work best for your business.

Many AppExchange apps (and regular ol’ computer programs) offer several editions or tiers geared toward different use cases and feature-sets. Sometimes, you’re given a trial period for their “top-of-the-line” edition to give you an opportunity to try everything out in hopes you’ll find some can’t-live-without features. It’s a nice way to segment offerings because, after all, not all users require all the features available within an application and there’s nothing worse than paying for stuff you don’t use. A lot of times, the base or free edition does more than enough. So, when should you consider an upgrade? Well, the answer is simple: if the current edition, as implemented, satisfies all of your organization’s wants and needs - don’t upgrade. But, if you are looking for more features and functionality, then it’s worth assessing your options.

Today, we will take a look at a Salesforce document generating app called Mambo Merge. Similar applications can be found within the AppExchange such as Conga or S-docs, each one providing options based on their use case scenarios and feature sets. While some offer a base or free edition, others do not. In this post, we’ll help you differentiate between the options available and choose the right edition for your business!

We’ll start by illustrating the features and functionality within the free edition of Mambo Merge and then assessing the benefits of upgrading to a standard or pro edition license. And we’ll do this by answering just a simple few questions.

What Documents Do I Need to Generate and Where Do They Need to be Saved?

If you are working in an environment where all you need to do is generate Word documents to download and save on your PC, at the simple push of a button, then the free edition is exactly what you’re looking for! With limited object and field access restrictions, the ability to install instances of Mambo Merge within standard or custom object pages and create a simple merge button is available at no cost to you. The best part about all of our editions is they are 100% native and secure.

Need to generate more than one type of document? For example, Microsoft Word for quotes and contracts, Excel for orders and invoices, Powerpoint for presentations or thank you cards, Landing pages for websites or something in between. In that case, one of the paid editions will suit you better. They’re also perfect if you need to save documents directly to specific records within Salesforce or the FILES tab or even create custom names for each file generated.

And, if you’re seeking even more functionality, like generating PDF files or merging images directly into documents, then our super-powered pro edition will do the job. Once you have identified the type of documents you need then we can proceed to tackle the next question.

Methods of Generating Documents?

As mentioned previously, a simple, single-use, merge button is available within our free edition. This can be created for each instance installed within an object page. Once you need to create a custom set of buttons or would like to have a drop down list, then our standard edition kicks into high gear. With the option to set configurations for buttons, drop-down lists, and the ability to quickly map documents to each.

Do you need to create documents for various records and then combine them into one large document (we call this “Bulk Document Generation'')? Or would you like to go ahead and create a separate document for each record and save them individually (we call this “Batch Document Generation”)? Either can be supported using our pro edition which has a built-in API that allows developers to tell Mambo Merge what to do after a document has been generated. Our team has built Github repositories with instructions on how to implement such features within your own org. And, if it feels overwhelming one of our admins will be glad to assist with the set up.

Want to use Process Builder, CPQ, NPSP or Other Apps to work with Mambo Merge? Not a problem; the built-in API allows developers to tell Mambo Merge what to do after a document has been generated. Perhaps you need to generate a mass mail merge to send out documents directly to clients at the push of a button, no worries our pro edition can easily be customized to suit your needs so you’ll have your letters, addressed envelopes, and any other documents you need all with one click. 

What Should My Documents Look Like (and Contain)?

Once you have decided what type of documents you need to generate, where they need to be stored, and by what methods they need to be generated, we can tackle our final question: What should each document look like once it is generated and what data needs to be present? Sometimes this is the hardest question to answer.

Each document serves a purpose, so it's important to have a firm grasp of what you expect your output to look like and what data it should contain. With Salesforce standard objects and fields have built-in relationships that build the foundation of how they interact with each other.

Because of that, the placement of the Mambo Merge instance will define what fields and objects it can interact with by default. Our free edition can only interact with a predefined set of objects and fields populated within the template builder - a handy built-in tool to help identify the merge field names to use within documents to retrieve the data pertaining to that field.

Mambo Merge has no magical understanding of the relationship between custom objects or fields, though. Hence, our standard and pro editions enable you to define those existing (and new) relationships to help Mambo Merge identify how a field or set of fields is related to an Object or set of Objects. This plays a key role, especially if your output needs to grab data from all over your org, not just the page its being generated from. Also if you need to access fields outside an object not built within Salesforce you can use a relationship to fetch that data for each document too!

Knowing what data is needed for each object helps shape the way it should look once it is generated. Now that we have answered all the questions above, let us summarize to help put things into perspective.

Choose the Right Edition?

Here is a quick summary along with up to date pricing information of the features and options available for each edition of Mambo Merge. Remember your answers to the questions above to better help assess the edition that best suits your needs.

As always, if you have ideas for additional functionality you’d like to see rolled out in the future, or want some help configuring and customizing your Salesforce org to make your users’ happier and more effective, drop us a line! We’re always happy to help.

Until next time. We’ll see you in the cloud.