Salesforce recently announced the launch of Salesforce Data Mask to help in securing your sandbox data, due to be released in the forthcoming Spring release.

Data is an organisation’s most valuable asset, therefore, the need to protect it is fundamental. In addition, protecting the security of sensitive data has now become even more important with the new legislative requirements introduced in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe and the forthcoming California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Breaches of or non-compliance with GDPR legislation alone can result in a fine of 4% of annual global revenues, or $20 million, whichever is greater. And, in a world where cyber hacking is increasing, the detrimental effects to a company’s reputation can be devastating.

Without Salesforce Data Mask companies would have to build complex Apex code to ensure that after a sandbox is created or refreshed, any sensitive data would be identified and anonymised or deleted. For companies with large enough budgets and the skills to develop this code it was possible, however for smaller companies that may not be aware of the risk this could prove more difficult.

Ensuring your company complies with GDPR and CCPA legislation can be confusing because striking a balance between a system that is both compliant and doesn’t limit the operations of the company or restrict access to important data can be tricky.

Salesforce Data Masking has been developed to overcome these issues and provides 3 mechanisms to keep data secure:

1. Data can be anonymised: data is scrambled into unreadable data
2. Can be pseudonymised : Data is altered so that it is not related to the original data, however data remains in a readable format
3. Deleted:
4. If the data is not necessary to be used within the sandbox, deleting it can be the safest option. Data is also not retrievable from the recycle bin preventing any deleted data being used by mistake.

As a PDO specialist, Metacube can guide you through setting up Salesforce Data Mask to help you in securing your sandbox data and making your data more secure. To find out more about how Salesforce Data Mask can help you speak to us.