Salesforce is a cornerstone of enterprise operations, central to customer relationship management (CRM), sales automation, and critical business processes. However, its complex identity management, user access controls, extensive third-party integrations, and intricate sharing configurations make it a prime target for security threats. Typically managed by RevOps or Sales team admins, IT and security teams struggle to maintain visibility into misconfigurations, over-permissioned accounts, and external data exposure. Valence Security delivers a proactive approach to securing Salesforce, offering deep visibility, risk prioritization, and comprehensive remediation capabilities to reduce risks without disrupting business operations.
Challenges of Salesforce Security
Salesforce's robust functionality makes it a powerful tool but also expands the attack surface. Organizations must navigate complex permission structures, secure integrations, and prevent data exposure. Key security challenges include:
Misconfigurations and Excessive Permissions
Salesforce's flexible configuration options enable organizations to tailor the platform to their needs, but they also introduce security risks. Configuration drift—where settings change over time due to manual adjustments, updates, or inconsistencies—can lead to unintended exposures. Keeping configurations in alignment with security best practices requires continuous monitoring and correction to prevent accidental data leaks and unauthorized access.
Identity and Access Management Risks
The intricate permission model, including permission sets and permission set groups, can create hidden pathways for excessive access. As teams expand, accounts accumulate, and permissions evolve, identity sprawl occurs—making it difficult to track who has access to what. Attackers can exploit this complexity by leveraging dormant or overprivileged accounts, weak authentication policies, or shadow IAM risks—where local Salesforce accounts exist outside of identity provider (IdP) management. Without strong governance, identity risks can provide an entry point for unauthorized users. Establishing least privilege principles, enforcing MFA, and continuously monitoring access rights are crucial to mitigating these risks and preventing privilege escalation attacks.
Third-Party Integrations and Non-Human Identity Risks
Salesforce environments worldwide are connected to millions of AppExchange and non-marketplace services via OAuth tokens, API keys, and service accounts. These non-human identities (NHIs) significantly expand the attack surface, often without security teams’ oversight. This can create significant supply chain risks, particularly when OAuth integrations are granted excessive permissions or remain active long after they are needed. Excessive or mismanaged permissions within these integrations can create high-risk access paths. Admin-approved integrations often inherit elevated privileges, making them potential points of exploitation. Additionally, inactive OAuth connections retain data access, posing a risk of unauthorized data extraction. Without proper oversight, organizations may struggle to enforce least privilege principles across their entire Salesforce ecosystem.
Data Exposure Risks
With Salesforce storing vast amounts of customer and business data and providing extensive collaboration features, such as Chatter and shared files, it can inadvertently expose sensitive information: misconfigured sharing settings, such as public access to records, improperly configured Community Sites, or over-shared reports, can lead to unintended data exposure. Organizations must continuously monitor and remediate these risks before they lead to security incidents. Files shared via open links, inherited sharing rules, and other misconfigurations can expose sensitive information to unauthorized parties, making proactive security measures essential.
Real-World Example: Salesforce Misconfigurations Leading to Data Exposure
Numerous misconfigured Salesforce Community websites allowed unauthenticated users to access private records. In one example, Vermont and Washington D.C. government sites leaked sensitive information, including names, SSNs, and bank account details, due to improper guest user access settings. Similarly, the Irish Health Service Executive’s (HSE) COVID-19 vaccination portal, built on Salesforce Health Cloud, exposed personal data of over 1 million residents due to improper access controls. These cases highlight the need for continuous monitoring and automated remediation to prevent data exposure and unauthorized access.
How Valence Security Helps Protect Your Salesforce Environment
Valence empowers security teams with the tools to identify, remediate, and continuously manage risks in Salesforce, ensuring a secure environment without disrupting business operations.
SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM)
Valence utilizes SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) capabilities to provide deep visibility into Salesforce security configurations and user access:
- Identify overprivileged user accounts, inactive accounts, and shadow IAM risks
- Audit and monitor Salesforce settings to detect misconfigurations and security gaps
Map findings to security frameworks like NIST and ISO 27001 for compliance
Non-Human Identity (NHI) Risk Management
Valence helps organizations manage and secure non-human identities in Salesforce by:
- Providing a full inventory of SaaS-to-SaaS integrations, OAuth tokens, and service accounts
- Identifying inactive or dormant integrations for removal
- Ensuring all NHIs adhere to the principle of least privilege
SaaS Risk Remediation
Through a "Remediation by Choice" framework, Valence enables security teams to:
- Perform one-click fixes directly from the Valence platform or guided steps within Salesforce
- Apply customizable automated workflows to enforce security policies at scale
- Engage business users via Slack, Teams, or email to contextualize and address risks
SaaS Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR)
Valence secures Salesforce by detecting and responding to identity threats:
- Monitor and analyze user and NHI activities to detect suspicious behaviors.
- Identify privilege escalations, ‘mass download’ attempts, and risky org-wide integrations
- Protect against account takeovers and other threats
