Salesforce DevSecOps security tools are an essential aspect of properly securing your Salesforce environment and producing applications and updates that support your data security strategy.
Why It Matters: Traditionally, security considerations weren’t addressed until the last stages of the development pipeline, but this mindset is outdated. DevSecOps includes data security considerations throughout the dev pipeline from the earliest stages all the way to the end.
The importance of secure applications and updates has increased exponentially in recent years.
Additionally, the White House is stressing how critical it is that we as a nation follow proper data security measures to avoid breaches and data loss events.
DevSecOps security tools support data security while also speeding along development processes by automating time-consuming, manual tasks.
Here Are 8 Essential Salesforce Security Tools:
- Continuous Integration
- Continuous Delivery/Deployment
- Static Code Analysis
- Dashboards and Reports
- Data Backup
- Data Recovery
- Policy Scanner
- Flexible Hosting
1. Continuous Integration
Applications and updates can grow massive, often including thousands of lines of code. Incorporating the efforts of multiple developers is an essential way to delegate various aspects of the software development process and reduce time to market. Each developer works on their own section of the project until they are all combined to create the product as a whole.
Continuous integration is an automated process to incorporate the work of multiple developers into a single software release.
Multi-developer teams often run into problems such as code overwrites and incompatible code. The resulting errors can cause data security vulnerabilities, which is why DevSecOps security tools like continuous integration are essential to an optimized pipeline.
Instituting multiple layers of testing greatly increases the likelihood of catching errors before they make it to production. Increased rates of deployment success and better-functioning applications and updates translate to a higher ROI and a safer platform.
2. Continuous Delivery/Deployment
Integrating code written by multiple developers is only the first step in ensuring proper functionality of a new update to avoid creating Salesforce data security vulnerabilities. These features, configurations, and bug fixes must also be tested to make sure they don’t have a negative impact.
Continuous delivery and continuous deployment both refer to the process of getting all types of changes into production.
Additionally, continuous delivery and continuous deployment (CI/CD) both involve testing code integrations for proper functionality. However, there is a key difference—continuous delivery requires manual approval before deployment into production, while continuous deployment does not.
Choosing between continuous delivery and continuous deployment depends on your needs. Companies operating within regulated industries, for instance, may need the extra layer of approval for additional oversight.
However, other companies that prioritize speed and create small, incremental releases can fast-track production by utilizing continuous deployment.
3. Address Salesforce Metadata
As we’ve seen through technical debt, it’s in your best interests to find and fix coding errors as soon as possible. Not only does this shore up potential data security vulnerabilities before they can be exploited, but it also saves your company money.
Errors that aren’t found until the staging phase of DevOps can be up to 50 times more expensive to fix.
This becomes even more drastic if errors aren’t found until production, when they can be up to 150 times more expensive to fix.
These bugs and errors can be located immediately with the help of a Salesforce code scanner. This automated tool inspects every line of code the moment it is written to prevent any issues from snowballing to become large problems down the road.
Your ROI will thank you, and so will the data security department.
3. Address Salesforce Metadata
Your system data needs to be protected, but your data security strategy should go a step further. The protection of Salesforce metadata is not only addressed in a variety of data security regulations, but it is also required to properly protect the functionality of your system.
Every screen update or written line of code will create metadata.
These properties impact other fields and sections of a given update or application. Failure to properly care for these relationships slows development, breaks orgs, and has the potential to expose sensitive data.
Code scanning tools can also be used to address unique environment requirements to protect Salesforce metadata. This is a crucial aspect of data governance and can have an impact on your compliance with data security regulations.
4. Increased Release Velocity
Data security requires constant attention. Threats and bad actors are always evolving to find new ways to compromise your Salesforce environment. There are many ways to stay on top of these threats, and one of the most effective is to release frequent software updates to protect your system from emerging potential threats.
The ability to quickly and securely move an update through your Salesforce DevOps pipeline is essential to accomplishing this goal.
Automated code review processes speed along procedures that might have otherwise been performed manually. Automating these processes also increases the accuracy of these reviews, leading to a better, more secure final product.
Automated reviews with a Salesforce code scanner also frees up your team members to address more pressing matters, increasing productivity. You’ll be able to get your products to market faster without sacrificing quality.
5. Align with Various Security Standards
Compliance with various regulations will depend on your industry, location, and how you handle your sensitive system data. Individual research will be required to ensure your data governance strategy aligns will all applicable regulations, but there are updated standards in place that can be used as a guidepost to direct your data security methods.
CWO, OWASP, and SANS standards are all included in CodeScan’s Salesforce code scanner tool to helps your DevOps team maintain adherence to applicable data security regulations.
Failure to adhere to these regulations can leave a company open for fines and regulations, but that shouldn’t be the main driving factor for compliance. Maintaining proper levels of data security should always be your goal. Use these standards and regulations as a roadmap toward properly protecting not only your system data, but also the sensitive information of your team members and customers.
6. Integrate with Other DevSecOps Tools
Data security requires a multi-pronged approach. There are a variety of potential threats to your systems data—cybercriminals, system failures, team member errors—so it is essential to utilize every tool at your disposal.
A complete Salesforce DevSecOps pipeline will include a series of tools aimed at improving release velocity, quality, and data security. A Salesforce code scanner needs to be included in your arsenal of DevSecOps tools.
Code scanning tools can be implemented with a DevSecOps platform to supportsurrounding testing methods such asContinuous Integration and Continuous Delivery. IDE developer tools and vulnerability assessments further this effort to consistently develop clean code at a high speed to keep your system current and stable. Combining static code analysis with a Salesforce policy scanner automates the essential oversight needed to boost data security and support regulatory compliance.