+1-480-241-8198
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+91 9811400594The Salesforce security audit checklist ensures two things: one, your customer data and business critical information stays protected. Second, it prepares you against any slips in security or compliance risks, fortifying your security posture. Salesforce may secure the infrastructure underneath your org. The responsibility for access rules, configurations, and data visibility rests with your team. Every control that defines who can view or act on data must be reviewed and governed internally.
So, it makes sense to conduct a Salesforce security review before renewal. It’s the one point in the year when you’re closely monitoring the account. Also, Salesforce keeps bringing new updates or features that can introduce changes in your security settings or how it affects data exposure, and it’s hard to notice at first. Therefore, a follow-up Salesforce profile security check can catch any gaps and fill them before any risks or harm occurs to your company’s data. In this blog, we’ll help you prepare a solid Salesforce access review checklist.
Why Conduct a Salesforce Security Review Before Renewal?
Renewal offers a checkpoint to assess not just one but review the security and integrity of your entire infrastructure. Budgets get scrutinized, licenses get recounted, and how securely the data moves and get stored, is also evaluated. Here’s what that review tends to turn up
- Fewer opportunities for data to be misused or breached
- Unused licenses that have been quietly adding to costs
- Well-defined audit trails for any compliance review
- Old misconfigurations caught before carrying into another license year
- Documented metrics to track future review outcomes
Salesforce Security Audit Checklist: 12 Steps for Renewal Readiness
Phase 1: Identity and Governance Management
1: Salesforce Profile Security Review
Many organizations continue to depend on legacy, broad profiles that give excessive privileges beyond the roles may need. Start with reviewing each profile to ensure it provides only the necessary access for the role and remove extra permissions. Where possible, shift role‑specific access decisions from profiles to permission only. It enforces essential‑only permissions, refines ongoing changes, and overall governance.
2: Conduct a Salesforce Permission Set Audit
The review takes time, but it prevents uncontrolled privileges. Without it, organizations often end up with multiple users holding admin rights that have no clear business reason. Document each permission set, confirm the need, and remove anything unnecessary, keeping access accountable and reducing hidden risks.
3: Deactivate Dormant Users and Cleanse Licenses
Login history reports will show which accounts are no longer in use. These accounts represent both security exposure and an unnecessary licensing cost. They should be frozen or deactivated, and the resulting license count should be reconciled against the employees actually working within the system.
Phase 2: Data Visibility and Sharing Rules
4: Review Organization-Wide Defaults (OWDs)
Organization-wide defaults ensure record visibility across the org. Get this wrong and every other control you put in place afterward is working against a poor foundation. Set these to the most restrictive level your business can reasonably operate with. ‘Private’ wherever sensitivity demands it, and ‘Public Read/Write’ only where there’s a clear reason for it.
5: Inspect Role Hierarchies and Sharing Rules
Role hierarchies and sharing rules exist specifically to extend access beyond those defaults, which is precisely why periodic review matters. An outdated rule can, over time, give visibility to agents with no legitimate reason to hold it. Each rule should be examined carefully to confirm if the access it provides still matches the current requirements. If not, then the access is no longer justified, remove or revise the rule to restore essential‑only permissions.
6: Audit Field-Level Security (FLS)
Object-level access alone doesn’t help you get complete control. Field-level security governs whether particular fields: Social Security numbers, compensation figures, banking information, remain visible to a given role. independent of broader object permissions. These fields should be restricted to the roles that require them, rather than left visible by default convention.
Halfway through — and this is where most orgs find their first surprise.
Over-permissioned profiles and stale sharing rules are the two findings we hit most often. Have a certified architect pressure-test yours with a Salesforce security review before the renewal paperwork lands.
Phase 3: Authentication and Platform Controls
7: Use Multi‑Step Login Security
It’s a basic requirement, though a policy on paper does not guarantee enforcement in practice. Every login should be confirmed to pass through two‑step verification without exception. Any legacy authentication path that might bypass it should be identified and closed to maintain consistent protection across all user accounts.
8: Review Network Settings and IP Restrictions
Define trusted IP ranges for login access and session settings that determine where access to the org is even possible. Logins should be restricted to trusted company networks or an approved VPN. Session timeout settings also needed particular attention, since an unattended device left logged in is a more common point of entry than many organizations assume.
9: Initiate Salesforce’s Native Health Tool
Salesforce provides an integrated Health Check function that scores your org against a recognized baseline and flags the weak points automatically. It’s worth running as a final pass, since it reveals what a manual review may miss. It’s also a quick way to confirm your meeting security best practices across the board.
Phase 4: Integrations and External Access
10: Audit Connected Apps and API Access
APIs can stay in the apps or platforms way beyond the purpose they were ingested in the first place. Go through every connected app that has API access to your org and pull OAuth tokens for anything abandoned, deprecated, or no longer serving an actual business need.
11: Inspect Public Sites and Communities
For organizations running Experience Cloud sites, guest user access requires close examination. It should be confirmed that guest profiles cannot reach internal objects or records under any circumstances. It’s an often-overlooked exposure but quite simpler to correct once identified. Remove unnecessary permissions and restrict guest access to only what is explicitly intended for public use.
12: Validate Backup and Recovery Protocols
Confirm that automated backups covering both data and metadata are running and completing successfully, particularly ahead of any major system update. Only tested recovery plans provide assurance of risk control. Therefore, regularly perform restoration checks to verify that backups work as expected and are reliable during an actual incident.
Key Takeaways from Salesforce Security Audit Checklist
The Salesforce security audit checklist helps businesses close the most common security, permissions, and compliance gaps before renewal and add resilience across both data and metadata. However, for a successful Salesforce security review before renewal, embed these checks into a recurring schedule, not a one‑time exercise. Hopefully this blog has given you a Salesforce access review checklist, letting you deliver compliance, transparency, and gain long‑term protection against unexpected exposures.
If the entire process seems complex, you can seek support from a Salesforce Security services provider, as their experts would manage the entire Salesforce profile security check process while you focus on critical business operations.
Walk into your renewal knowing exactly what your org exposes.
Girikon is a certified Salesforce consulting partner. Our security team runs all 12 checks against your org, scores the findings by risk, and gives you a remediation plan your admins can action — plus the audit trail your compliance reviewer will ask for.
- Profile, permission set & license cleanup
- OWD, role hierarchy & FLS review
- MFA, IP range & Health Check remediation
- Connected app, guest user & backup validation
Renewal date approaching? Call +1‑480‑241‑8198 (USA)
About Author
Anjali is a technical content writer and strategist with 9 years of experience, bringing expertise in creation and strategy for IT services, software development, and Salesforce consulting companies. She excels at developing SEO-driven storytelling and technical narratives, and in crafting marketing assets that boost visibility, accelerate sales, and deliver measurable business growth.
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