Building Security Into Every Step of the Salesforce Development Lifecycle

Salesforce development teams face a critical vulnerability related to the platform's System Mode. This architectural design allows custom code to bypass all three security layers (object-level, field-level, and record-level permissions) unless developers manually implement security checks.

This article provides a framework for integrating security controls at every stage of the Salesforce development lifecycle. Organizations that embed security throughout development workflows rather than treating it as a final checkpoint reduce both breach risk and remediation costs.

Data breach costs average $4.88 million globally and $10.78 million in the United States, according to IBM's 2025 Cost of a Data Breach Report. These financial impacts demonstrate why security cannot be an afterthought in Salesforce development.

Organizations must implement automated security controls, comprehensive audit trails, and policy-based deployment gates throughout the Salesforce development lifecycle to address platform limitations and meet regulatory compliance requirements.

Why Standard Salesforce Security Controls Create Deployment Gaps

Three architectural characteristics create security exposure in Salesforce development workflows. These design decisions affect how organizations deploy code, track changes, and protect encrypted data. Understanding these specific limitations explains why organizations need compensating controls beyond native Salesforce capabilities. The following sections examine each architectural gap and its security implications for enterprise deployments.

Apex Code Executes Without Automatic Security Enforcement

According to official Salesforce documentation, operations run in two modes: User Mode enforces data security while System Mode does not. Custom Apex code running in System Mode bypasses object-level security, field-level security, and record-level security unless developers explicitly check permissions in their code.

This design requires developers to manually implement security checks. A single oversight during code review allows unauthorized data access in production.

The architecture places security enforcement responsibility on individual developers rather than being platform-enforced, creating potential for security gaps. Organizations managing dozens of developers across multiple Salesforce instances cannot rely on manual security implementation as their primary control.

Deployment Activities Lack Comprehensive Audit Coverage

Event Monitoring tracks logins, API calls, and URI events. The official Event Log File documentation lists available event types, which do not include change set deployments, sandbox refreshes, or developer metadata modifications. These deployment activities occur without audit trail generation.

Organizations subject to compliance requirements must demonstrate who deployed what changes and when. Native audit capabilities leave a documentation gap that auditors identify during compliance reviews.

Event log files are generated once every 24 hours and are accessible for only 30 days, limiting both real-time detection and long-term compliance reporting.

Shield Platform Encryption Cannot Be Used in Sharing Rules, Opportunity Searches, or External Lookups

Salesforce Shield provides field-level encryption but with documented constraints. According to official Salesforce documentation, Shield Platform Encryption has three critical operational restrictions. Encrypted fields cannot support criteria-based access controls, similar opportunities searches, or external lookup relationships. This forces organizations to choose alternative access control architectures, creating compromises between field-level encryption implementation and dynamic access control capabilities on the same data objects.

Regulatory Frameworks Require Development Lifecycle Security Controls

Compliance requirements extend beyond access controls to encompass the entire development process. Major regulatory frameworks establish specific technical safeguards affecting how organizations build, test, and deploy Salesforce configurations. The following requirements demonstrate why development lifecycle security is mandatory, not optional, for regulated organizations.

NIST SP 800-218

This standard defines secure software development requirements applicable to metadata-driven platforms like Salesforce. Practice PW.7.2 requires code review for all new and significantly modified software elements prior to production, using static analysis tools and manual processes. Task PS.3.1 requires securely archiving and/or securely disposing of the software, documentation, build tools, source code, and other relevant information in accordance with organizational policies and procedures. NIST SP 800-204D Section 5.1.2 mandates automated security checks on all artifacts during pull requests.

Healthcare and privacy regulations establish similar development controls:

HIPAA

This regulation establishes mandatory technical safeguards for electronic protected health information: • Record and examine activity in systems containing ePHI (45 CFR § 164.312(b)) • Implement regular audit log review and integrity controls protecting ePHI from improper alteration • Retain all documentation for six years from creation or when last in effect

GDPR Article 25(1)

This article requires data protection by design and by default: • Implement technical measures both at the time of determining processing means and during processing itself • Document design decisions demonstrating data protection from requirement gathering rather than retrofitted • Regularly test and evaluate security measures before production deployment (Article 32(1)(d))

SOX Section 404

This section requires annual management assessments of internal control effectiveness over financial reporting, including Salesforce instances processing financial data. Section 404(b) mandates independent auditor attestation evaluating IT general controls: change management, access controls, and segregation of duties. Organizations need version control, deployment documentation, and audit trails with seven-year retention to meet SOX compliance requirements.

Essential Capabilities for Development Lifecycle Security

Effective security architecture for Salesforce development requires capabilities that address both technical vulnerabilities and regulatory requirements without disrupting development velocity. The following capabilities form the foundation of comprehensive development lifecycle security, each addressing specific gaps created by Salesforce platform limitations. Organizations implementing these controls can maintain compliance while enabling development teams to deploy changes safely.

Automated Security Scanning Within CI/CD Pipelines

Organizations need tools that scan Apex code for security violations, validate permission set configurations, and identify sharing rule gaps. These checks should execute automatically during pull request validation, catching security issues during development rather than in production. Integration with developer workflows ensures security gates do not become bottlenecks requiring manual intervention.

Comprehensive Audit Trails for Deployment Activities

Organizations should implement unified audit infrastructure capturing who deployed changes, what metadata was modified, when deployment occurred, and which approval gates were satisfied. Audit capabilities must extend beyond native Event Monitoring to include metadata deployments, change set operations, and sandbox refresh activities. The system should generate immutable logs that auditors can query to reconstruct complete deployment history for any configuration element.

Policy-Based Deployment Controls With Approval Gates

Organizations managing multiple development teams across sandbox, staging, and production environments need controls that enforce security policies consistently. Policy-based deployment controls define which changes require security review, whose approval is mandatory for production deployment, and what testing must be completed before release. These controls should validate that developers cannot deploy their own code to production, ensuring segregation of duties. Automated enforcement prevents human error while maintaining audit documentation.

Version Control and Rollback Capabilities

When security issues reach production, organizations need rapid remediation. Version control for all Salesforce metadata enables teams to identify exactly what changed between working and problematic states. Rollback capabilities allow reverting to known-good configurations without manual reconstruction, supporting organizational requirements for incident response and change management validation.

How Purpose-Built DevSecOps Platforms Address These Requirements

The previous section outlined four essential capabilities organizations need for development lifecycle security. Native Salesforce deployment tools have documented limitations that create security gaps in enterprise environments, making it difficult to implement these capabilities with built-in tools alone. Purpose-built DevSecOps platforms bridge this gap by integrating real-time deployment monitoring, automated security scanning, comprehensive audit trails, and policy enforcement into unified workflows. The following sections detail how these platforms deliver each capability.

Automated Deployment Pipelines

Flosum provides automated deployment pipelines and policy-based deployment controls that work together to enforce security requirements throughout the release process. Organizations implementing automated enforcement eliminate the manual oversight gaps that allow configuration errors to reach production.

Rapid Remediation and Rollback

Rapid remediation capabilities become essential when security issues reach production. Version control for Salesforce metadata enables teams to identify exactly what changed between working and problematic states. Rollback capabilities allow reverting to known-good configurations without manual reconstruction.

Comprehensive Audit Trails

Comprehensive audit trails extending beyond native Event Monitoring limitations enable long-term compliance reporting. These immutable audit records capture deployment activities, metadata changes, and approval gates satisfied during each release.

Policy-Based Deployment Controls

Policy-based deployment controls address segregation of duties requirements. These controls prevent developers from deploying their own code without approval, satisfying audit requirements. This automation eliminates the manual oversight gaps that allow misconfiguration-related security failures to reach production environments.

Integrated CI/CD Workflows

The platform integrates CI/CD workflows within Salesforce environments, providing security validation gates at each stage. Real-time policy enforcement validates that changes comply with organizational security standards before reaching production.

Implementing Security Throughout Your Development Lifecycle

The security gaps in Salesforce's native architecture aren't going away—but your exposure to them doesn't have to grow. Every deployment without automated security scanning, every metadata change without an audit trail, and every production push without policy enforcement represents compounding risk that regulators and attackers alike will eventually exploit.

The organizations that thrive in this environment aren't the ones with the largest security teams. They're the ones that have embedded security into their development workflows so completely that protection happens automatically, compliance documentation generates itself, and developers ship faster because they're not waiting on manual reviews.

The question isn't whether your Salesforce development lifecycle needs stronger security controls—it's how quickly you can implement them before your next audit finding or security incident forces your hand.

Request a demo with Flosum to see how automated deployment pipelines and policy-based controls can transform security from a bottleneck into a competitive advantage.