Is Salesforce PCI Compliant?

✨ Can You Store PCI Data in Salesforce?

Salesforce, as a leading cloud-based CRM platform, offers extensive data security measures, making it capable of storing Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) data under certain conditions.

Salesforce itself is not PCI DSS certified but enables its customers to use its environment in a way that can be PCI DSS compliant.

To store PCI data safely, customers must configure their Salesforce environment correctly by utilizing field-level encryption, setting up strict access controls, and regularly auditing access to sensitive data. Learn more about Salesforce's shared responsibility model.

✨Can PCI Data be Leaked from Salesforce?

Like any complex platform, Salesforce's security is partly dependent on how it is configured and used.

While Salesforce provides robust security features designed to prevent data leakage, such as advanced encryption, detailed audit trails, and comprehensive access controls, the risk of data leakage exists if these features are not properly implemented.

Common vulnerabilities include misconfigured permissions, inadequate user training, and flawed API integrations, which can potentially expose PCI data.

✨ What are the New PCI 4.0 Requirements for PCI Data in Salesforce?

PCI DSS 4.0 introduces stringent requirements, especially impacting the storage and management of PCI data on platforms like Salesforce. Here are the crucial updates and their implications for Salesforce users:

1. No Unauthorized Copy/Relocation of PAN

Requirement 3.4.2 aims to protect the Primary Account Number (PAN) from unauthorized copying or relocation across all platforms, including cloud-based services like Salesforce.

The mandate demands the implementation of stringent technical controls that allow only authorized personnel with documented approval and a legitimate business need to copy or relocate PAN.

This control is vital in cloud environments like Salesforce, where data is often more exposed to unauthorized access due to its remote and distributed nature.

2. PAN Must Be Unreadable

Requirement 3.5.1.1 emphasizes making PAN unreadable when stored, applicable to databases, files, and logs housed on platforms such as Salesforce.

The goal is to bolster data security through the use of keyed cryptographic hashes of the full PAN, underpinned by stringent key management practices as outlined in PCI DSS Requirements 3.6 and 3.7.

This measure ensures that PAN remains encrypted and indecipherable, thus securing it against unauthorized access and breaches, particularly in a cloud storage solution like Salesforce, where the scalability and accessibility of data storage can heighten vulnerability.

3. Incident Response for PAN Data Leaks

Requirement 12.10.7 requires proactive incident response plans to be in place for immediate activation upon the detection of PAN in any unauthorized location, including cloud platforms like Salesforce.

The objective is to swiftly address any data leaks by analyzing, retrieving, and securely deleting or relocating the PAN to a secure environment.

This requirement underlines the need for continuous monitoring and prompt response capabilities in Salesforce, where data dynamics can swiftly change, demanding agile and effective incident management strategies.

4. Protecting Payment Information in Salesforce

Organizations are advised against storing any cardholder data unless absolutely necessary. Essential steps to protecting PCI data include:

• Ensuring payment card terminals and other sensitive endpoint devices do not retain payment card data.
• Truncating or masking printed payment card information on receipts to safeguard the cardholder's information.
• Keeping servers and storage devices, particularly in environments like Salesforce, locked, secure, and access-controlled.
• Enforcing strict access controls to prevent unauthorized personnel from accessing stored cardholder data.

These practices collectively help secure sensitive cardholder information stored in cloud services like Salesforce, addressing both digital and physical security concerns.

To maintain compliance with PCI DSS 4.0, entities using Salesforce must thoroughly evaluate and possibly revamp their current configurations and operational procedures.

This entails regular audits of their Salesforce setups to ensure ongoing alignment with the stringent requirements of PCI DSS 4.0, especially focusing on encryption validation, access controls, and logging mechanisms.

✨ How Can Strac Enhance Data Security on Salesforce?

Strac stands out as a comprehensive data loss prevention (DLP) solution, offering robust features that safeguard sensitive information across Salesforce and other platforms. ‎

Here’s how Strac reinforces data security:

• Customizable Detection Capabilities: Strac supports detectors for sensitive data elements including PCI, HIPAA, GDPR, and more. It uniquely allows users to configure their own detectors, ensuring even sensitive data embedded in images or various document formats are securely managed. Explore Strac’s extensive catalog of sensitive data elements.
• Achieving Compliance with Ease: Strac’s DLP solution helps organizations achieve compliance with major standards like PCI, SOC 2, HIPAA, ISO-27001, CCPA, GDPR, and NIST, providing peace of mind and ease of management.
• Integration and Automation: Strac integrates seamlessly in under 10 minutes, offering immediate data protection such as live scanning and redaction in SaaS applications. This high level of integration and automation facilitates efficient and immediate protection of sensitive data.
• Advanced Accuracy in Detection and Redaction: Utilizing custom machine learning models, Strac ensures highly accurate detection of sensitive data, minimizing both false positives and false negatives, thus enhancing operational reliability. Learn more about Strac's Salesforce DLP solution.
• Comprehensive Coverage Across Environments: Strac’s solutions cover SaaS, Cloud, and endpoint devices, providing a unified data protection strategy that is both thorough and effective. Check the available Strac integrations.
• Support for Developers: Strac offers API access, allowing developers to create custom data detection and redaction solutions. Developers can find more resources in Strac’s Developer Documentation.
• Dynamic Data Redaction: Strac provides options to redact sensitive data inline, useful for documents and attachments containing personally identifiable information or other sensitive data.
• Flexible and Tailored Data Protection: The platform allows extensive customization, ensuring that data protection measures align with specific business requirements, crucial for maintaining security and functionality in dynamic business environments.

Strac’s DLP solutions extend beyond traditional data protection measures, ensuring continuous compliance and security in an increasingly complex digital landscape.

Schedule a free 30-minute demo for a practical demonstration of how Strac’s DLP solution can protect your Salesforce usage.

The Bottom Line

Salesforce PCI compliance is not one discipline. If you're evaluating the platform, Salesforce's infrastructure holds up fine. If you're like most companies — storing payment-adjacent data in cases, comments, custom fields, and exports built over years — your risk is far more mundane: cardholder data sitting somewhere nobody's watching, one Case comment at a time.

Secure the boundary where data lands in Salesforce, and most of the PCI problem you actually have goes away.

🌶️Spicy FAQs for Salesforce PCI Compliance

Is Salesforce PCI compliant?

Salesforce is not PCI DSS certified. It provides infrastructure capable of supporting PCI compliance, but the actual compliance — how cardholder data is stored, accessed, and protected inside your org — is your responsibility under Salesforce's shared responsibility model.

Can you store credit card numbers in Salesforce?

You can, but you shouldn't unless it's unavoidable. If you must, the PAN needs field-level encryption at minimum, tightly scoped access, and ideally tokenization so the full number never actually lives in Salesforce. The safest posture is keeping PAN out of Salesforce entirely and referencing a token instead.

Does Salesforce Shield Encryption make us PCI compliant?

No. Shield Encryption protects the specific fields you choose to encrypt. It does nothing for PAN typed into a Case comment, Chatter post, attachment, or a custom field nobody thought to encrypt. Encryption is one control among several PCI DSS 4.0.1 requires, not a compliance checkbox on its own.

What's new in PCI DSS 4.0.1 for Salesforce users?

Three requirements matter most: 3.4.2 restricts copying or relocating PAN to personnel with documented business need, 3.5.1.1 requires PAN be unreadable wherever it's stored, and 12.10.7 requires an incident response process for PAN found in an unauthorized location. All three assume continuous detection, not periodic audits.

How do I find cardholder data already sitting in our Salesforce org?

Enforce discovery at the data layer rather than relying on institutional memory. Scan existing fields, attachments, and Chatter history for patterns matching card numbers, and don't assume you know where it is — orgs are consistently surprised by what turns up in fields nobody remembers creating.