Organizations relying on Salesforce for critical business functions must be prepared to investigate and remediate security incidents swiftly.
By combining activity logs, permission analysis, and backup data, security teams can reconstruct events, assess impact, and strengthen resilience against future threats.
Leveraging Salesforce Audit Trails and Event Monitoring
Salesforce’s default Login History and Setup Audit Trail provide foundational visibility into user logins and configuration changes.
For enhanced forensic depth, enable Shield Event Monitoring, which offers three distinct log sources:
- Real Time Event Monitoring (RTEM) streams events such as API calls and report exports in near real time. Specialized Threat Detection events apply statistical and machine-learning algorithms to detect anomalous behavior.
- Event Log Objects (ELO) deliver low-latency logs accessible via the Salesforce Platform API.
- Event Log Files (ELF) export CSV files containing a broad set of events for retrospective analysis.
Practitioner Tip: Configure RTEM streaming to a central SIEM and store logs for at least six months.
Establish a routine monitoring strategy to build a baseline of “normal” activity, reducing false positives when anomalies occur.
Conducting an Initial Impact Assessment
Determining what a compromised user could access and did access requires analyzing the interplay of Profiles, Permission Sets, Sharing Rules, and Role Hierarchies.
Tools like Who Sees What (WsW) Explorer visualize object- and field-level permissions, highlighting sensitive fields in red.
When the principle of least privilege is enforced, the blast radius of an incident shrinks dramatically.
json{
"EventDate": "2025-07-16T11:12:13Z",
"ConnectedAppId": "01pfL000003z8x13",
"Query": "Select AccountNumber, Active__c FROM Account",
"Operation": "QueryAll",
"ApiType": "SOAP Partner",
"Client": "DataLoaderPartnerUI/",
"Records": "{\"totalSize\":16,\"done\":true,\"records\":[ ... ]}",
"RowsReturned": 16,
"SourceIp": "204.14.236.211",
"Username": "[email protected]"
}
This RTEM APIEventStream entry shows a DataLoader query extracting the AccountNumber and Active__c fields from 16 Account records.
Comparing this against backups pinpoints exactly which data items were exfiltrated.
Deep-Dive Analysis and Automated Response
When a detailed timeline is needed, pivot from aggregate dashboards in Analytics Studio to the raw ELO or RTEM streams to reconstruct each step of an attack.
Note that ELF’s ReportExport Events expose 16 fields, whereas ELO’s ReportEventLog yields 25, and RTEM’s ReportEventStream provides 37—selecting the richest source is crucial for completeness.
Once you identify malicious activity, automated remediation via Transaction Security Policies (TSP) can block threats in real time.
A sample policy might:
- Detect an unusual AuraRequest from a guest user portal.
- Block further file downloads.
- Trigger an MFA challenge and send a Slack alert.
Practitioner Tip: Design TSP rules around high-risk RTEM events—such as mass data downloads—and include automated workflows (e.g., case creation) to accelerate triage.
By proactively enabling logs, routinely analyzing permissions, and automating real-time responses, organizations can reduce incident dwell time, minimize data loss, and ensure rapid recovery of mission-critical Salesforce environments.
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