Technical implementation guide: Securing Salesforce under DORA requirements

As financial institutions prepare for the EU's Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) enforcement in January 2025, IT teams face a complex challenge: ensuring their Salesforce implementations meet new technical requirements while maintaining operational efficiency.

The regulation's focus on ICT risk management demands a comprehensive technical approach beyond basic security measures. For organizations utilizing Salesforce as a critical business platform, this represents a fundamental shift in how system architecture and security must be approached.

Understanding the Technical Framework

DORA's technical requirements center around creating resilient, secure systems that can withstand modern cybersecurity threats while maintaining operational effectiveness. At its core, the regulation requires financial institutions to implement reliable, updated ICT systems with robust change management protocols and comprehensive testing capabilities.

This framework represents a significant shift in how financial institutions must approach their Salesforce implementations. Traditional CRM security and management approaches often fall short of DORA's stringent requirements, particularly in areas like system architecture and data protection. The regulation's emphasis on continuous monitoring and proactive risk management necessitates a more sophisticated system design and maintenance approach.

Navigating Implementation Challenges

The most significant technical hurdle in achieving DORA compliance lies in sandbox environment management. Financial institutions typically deal with complex Salesforce implementations involving intricate data models, Large Data Volumes (LDV), and numerous custom objects. Creating and maintaining test environments that accurately reflect these complexities while protecting sensitive data presents a unique challenge.

Consider a typical enterprise Salesforce implementation with millions of records and hundreds of custom objects. Traditional sandbox creation methods often need help maintaining referential integrity across objects while protecting sensitive data. This challenge is compounded when dealing with managed packages and third-party integrations, which must be thoroughly tested in these environments.

The complexity increases exponentially when considering the need to maintain multiple testing environments for development, quality assurance, user acceptance testing, and security validation. Each environment must maintain data integrity while adhering to strict security protocols.

Architecting Compliant Solutions

Successful DORA compliance requires a sophisticated approach to sandbox management and security implementation. Modern solutions leverage API-driven automation to create and maintain test environments that accurately reflect production complexities. This automation extends beyond simple data copying, including intelligent handling of relationships and dependencies.

Security architecture under DORA demands a multi-layered approach. Field-level encryption protects sensitive data while maintaining functionality, and comprehensive audit logging ensures transparency in all system interactions. Role-based access control systems must be granular enough to enforce least-privilege principles while remaining manageable at scale.

These security measures must be implemented without impeding system performance or user productivity. This often requires careful optimization of encryption algorithms and access control mechanisms to maintain system responsiveness under load.

Implementing Testing Protocols

DORA's emphasis on digital resilience testing requires a fundamental shift in how organizations approach quality assurance. Testing must go beyond primary functionality verification to include comprehensive performance testing under realistic loads. This means implementing automated testing frameworks that simulate real-world usage patterns while validating security controls.

Organizations must develop testing protocols that address both technical functionality and security requirements. These protocols should include automated regression testing to ensure changes don't compromise existing security measures and specific tests for data protection mechanisms and access controls.

Moreover, testing protocols must account for various failure scenarios and validate system recovery procedures. This includes testing backup and restore processes, failover mechanisms, and disaster recovery procedures under different stress conditions.

Managing Third-Party Integration Security

Article 28 of DORA places specific requirements on third-party integrations, necessitating a robust technical framework for vendor management. This framework must include encrypted data transmission, comprehensive API security protocols, and granular access controls. More importantly, continuous real-time monitoring systems are required to detect and respond to security events.

The challenge here lies in maintaining security without compromising functionality. Organizations must implement encryption and access controls that protect sensitive data while ensuring integrated systems continue to function effectively. This often requires custom development work to bridge security requirements with operational needs.

Security monitoring for third-party integrations must be particularly robust, as these connections often represent potential vulnerability points. Organizations must implement sophisticated monitoring systems that track data flow, detect anomalies, and trigger automated responses to possible security threats.

Building Future-Proof Infrastructure

Creating a DORA-compliant infrastructure requires thinking beyond immediate compliance needs. Organizations should implement scalable architectures that adapt to evolving requirements while maintaining security and performance. This includes deploying modular security systems that can be updated without major system overhauls and implementing continuous monitoring frameworks that provide real-time visibility into system health and security status.

The key to future-proofing lies in automation and scalability. Automated compliance checking systems can continuously verify security controls and system configurations against DORA requirements, while scalable architectures ensure systems can grow without compromising security or performance.

Infrastructure design must also consider the evolving nature of security threats and regulatory requirements. This means building systems with the flexibility to accommodate new security controls and compliance requirements as they emerge.

Conclusion

DORA compliance for Salesforce implementations represents a significant technical challenge that can be met through careful planning and modern architectural approaches. Organizations can create compliant systems that remain efficient and effective by focusing on automated environment management, comprehensive security controls, and scalable infrastructure design. The key lies in viewing DORA not as a set of restrictions but as a framework for building more resilient and secure systems. As financial institutions move toward the 2025 enforcement date, those that embrace this perspective will be best positioned to meet both current requirements and future challenges.

Olivier Michel is Compliance Officer, Odaseva.