More about Salesforce Sandboxes and Development on Lightening Platform

Category : Guest Post

If you are a beginner in Salesforce or a pro who wants to explore more features of these ever-involving platforms, it essential to know the updates and get used to it to reap out of the best from Salesforce development. Thing is not only easier, but also effective for those who know in-depth about the Salesforce editions and various concepts of each.

Most of the time, it may not be the technology, but the jargon terms that may be confusing to you. In this series of articles, we will discuss the Salesforce terminology, and here we will discuss in more detail about the Salesforce Editions and Salesforce Sandboxes.

Different editions

For those who are planning to adopt Salesforce, it is important to choose the right edition. There is a custom set of features in each edition, and various industries can choose the apt solution based on their requirements. Now, there are about seven editions available as below.

  • Personal Edition, Enterprise Edition, Contact Manager Edition, Developer Edition, Group Edition, Professional Edition, and Unlimited Edition.

For the users new to Salesforce, it is critical to choose the most appropriate edition with the most needed features in order to perform well. You can check the title to see which version is open for you.

The users of Flosum.com Salesforce applications can identify a custom set of features that the users can choose for their organizational production box, and sandboxes are copies of this production box to perform the coding and testing of Salesforce apps.

Checking for the version

Here are two quick methods to check for the Salesforce version you are using.

  1. Simply bring the mouse over to the browser window of the Salesforce tab. The edition will be displayed as a popup.
  2. Access the Setup Page by going to Salesforce settings, which will show the version. To do this, go to the homepage of the Administrator Account > go to User Name > click on Setup.

Sandboxes

Choosing an edition is important and so as knowing the features of Salesforce and using them appropriately. One of the top features every Salesforce users must know is ‘Salesforce Sandboxes,’ which let the users to custom create multiple copies of your application in different settings for different purposes. Sandboxes can be used for developing, training, and testing the technical modules. Even though it is possible otherwise, with the use of Sandboxes, there is no compromise made on the live data or application of your production orgs. These true copies are called sandboxes, which stay identical to the production org. As of late, there are 4 types of sandboxes. These are:

  1. Developer sandbox

This is an ideal sandbox configuration, which is meant for testing and coding Salesforce applications. There is a limit for data and storage capacity, both to 200 MG.

  1. Developer Pro

This is the unique sandbox that allows customized configurations of coding and testing for a wide range of purposes. This sandbox is ideal for individual developers. It also has bigger data as 1 GB and an additional 1 GB storage too. This also seems like Developer sandbox; however, the Pro version has higher at the limit and also more storage.

  1. Group Edition

As the name suggests, Group Edition Sandboxes serve a higher purpose of grouping the development and testing in a team development environment.

  1. Full Sandbox

This is actually the true copy of a development environment that consists of all the data and application schema. It contains the same data limit and storage as like production sandbox.

  1. Partial Copy

Partial Copy means it contains the same schema as of production box with all the dashboards, objects, documents, reports, etc. The limit for it is of 5 GB data, and it also offers 5 GB storage space. A partial copy is also meant for occasional uses like business or technical needs. As it revolves around data subsets and schema, it may need a standard sandbox template that can outline the data sets.

Any users can create sandboxes for copying metadata or to do testing of the orgs. It is possible to create Sandboxes for both Classic and Lightning versions of the Salesforce suite. As done by Flosum.com, this same feature is applicable for Unlimited, Professional, Performance, Database.com, and Enterprise editions too.

Salesforce Lightning Platform

The primary need for any online business or individual promoter is to have a good website. When it comes to establishing a business over the web, there is intense competition and higher-level challenges. Salesforce offers many customized options to create websites and run them effectively. You can see many Force.com sites available on the internet lately. With the Salesforce site development approach, there is no need for the users to bother about running data centers or host servers. With this, the need to maintain many software applications also gets eradicated. You may also find that building Force.com is much easier and faster in terms of cost, and it can also cut the cost to half than conventional software development practices.

Force.com website building

Some of the basic areas to keep an eye on building websites on the Force.com platform are as below.

  • Always ensure that you publish only finished content while making it available on a public domain.
  • Before publishing, you need to test your new site for all users and functional aspects. Even if you find the website performing well for a set of users, it may not be so for another set. Make sure that your website is tested for all available browsers and offer a unique experience among various platforms.
  • On the other hand, Force.com comes with many limitations too. Ensure that you are knowledgeable about these limitations to make sure that the user experience is not complicated. You may also refer to the Salesforce trailheads and user policies to gain more info.
  • Also, consider the influencer design models, which can be so effective in multiple database management. You need to ensure the retrieval of proper information. Here, the key is proper designing of the schema and careful querying.

By leveraging all these benefits, the Salesforce Lightning Platform could be your ideal one-stop-shop partner for all sorts of developmental needs.

Article Written by:
Sujain Thomas

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The Next Step in Google Account Security Settings

Hi Guys,

As you may be aware that October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM). In this year 2019, NCSAM is emphasizing on personal accountability and stress the importance of taking proactive steps to enhance cybersecurity at home and in the workplace. As a contribution to this initiative, I would like to share few focus areas you would be required to check in your Google Account after performing basic security settings (such as updating recovery phone number and recovery email).

Before reading below you have to understand what Google Account is. It is a user account with a username and password you used to access consumer products like Gmail, AdSense, YouTube, Docs etc. Alternatively, if you have any of these products, you have a Google account.

1. Third-party apps with Google Account access

You would have gone through situations like “Sign-in with Google Account” for quick sign up for any third-party apps or websites. It’s here Apps with access to your account page where you see all such apps and websites you did sign up in this way. Basically, in this process, you are sharing some sort of your account information and permissions such as:

  • See basic profile information
  • Modify account information
  • Edit, upload & create content in your Google Account

It is possible for these apps to have full access to your account. But don’t worry, these third-party apps can’t change your password, delete your account, or use Google Pay to send, request and receive money. But it could impersonate you if any malicious apps have access to your account by modifying your account information. So, revoke their access if you think any app or website is suspicious.

Read more here – Third-party sites & apps with access to your account

2. Devices that have used your account

It’s here Your devices page you see all such devices that is currently accessing your account and used to access your account. If you find any device you no longer use, use the sign out option to revoke their access. Incase, if you find any unknown device accessing your account, immediately use the sign out option for that device and change password. There is a high chance that someone got your password. Also do not forget to recheck recovery option, the hacker might have changed that too.

Read more here – See devices that have used your account

3. Less secure app access

If you use email clients like Outlook, Thunderbird etc. this option would have turned on. If this option is turned on, you are less secure and it can make hackers to get in to your account easily. You can find this setting at Less secure app access page.

Less secure apps basically mean the apps that use insecure communication protocol (OAuth) for authentication and authorization. It is always recommended to use latest apps which support latest OAuth 2.0 and turn off “less secure app access” option

4. Password manager

You can see the passwords that you save in your Google account here. The Password Checkup tool help you to check the security of your passwords. The Password Checkup tool generate 3 types of report indicating:

  • Whether your password is compromised or not by checking list of data breach information directories
  • Whether your passwords are reused or not
  • Whether your password is weak or not

Reference Links:

Article Written by:
Gem George


Top Benefits of Security Awareness in Your Business

Category : Guest Post

The security-training awareness program is the lifeline of your business. That is because data theft, online frauds, and pilferage of funds are common nowadays. Therefore, sans any training and awareness programs, your staff could end up committing serious blunders, especially when it comes to business transactions and dealings on the internet. These training sessions help in influencing staff behavior, reduce financial threats, and ensure conformity. Yes, there are many benefits of implementing security awareness programs in your organization.

When it comes to security compliance in companies nowadays, the rules, guidelines, and regulations are complicated than ever. That is because businesses produce loads of data, around 2.5 quintillion bytes of information per day. Now, that is not a small figure. Again, there are a growing number of internet hackers, who use sophisticated methods to steal personal and financial data of businesses and customers. You all have heard about ransomware attack and the damage it did to companies worldwide. All these aspects dictate the requirement for security training and awareness in companies, big and small. There is a significant difference between ransomware threats and general security issues. 

According to an article published on https://www.huffingtonpost.ca, about 50 percent of cyber hackers prey on small-sized companies with less than 250 staff in their payroll. Therefore, there is no belittling the perquisites of security awareness training. Here are the top benefits of the same:

Preventing security threats

The obvious benefit is the prevention of security threats to your company. Though it may sound too understandable, you cannot ignore the importance of the same. Then, it is not possible to quantify how many breaches you can prevent when you have an awareness program in place; the process comes with its benefits.

Businesses often run a controlled trial and error test in which the total number of staff is divided into two key groups. One is the control group and the other is the test group. The test group is provided training on security software but not the control group. Once that is completed, the two groups are compared.

There are problems and challenges but that does not imply advanced security awareness training cannot shower benefits. You can gauge the occurrence and prevention of breaches and threats before and after an awareness program. These initiatives matter a lot in modern business operations to prevent financial frauds and security threats.

It is true that the cost of security breaches is more, but you need to take measures to prevent the same in the future. To be candid, awareness-training programs are comparatively less expensive than outsourcing the entire IT security responsibilities to another external team. If you have an in-house IT department with trained security experts, there is nothing like it. Prevention of frauds is imperative for websites like NationaldebtRelief.com to offer loans to their customers. It will help in protecting their data as well as the data of the borrowers to take out consolidated loans.

Making technological methods more powerful than ever

When it comes to technological methods, they are robust ways to avert security threats and breaches. However, technological resistances call for more input from the users. You need to turn on firewalls, acknowledge security warnings, and make upgrades related to software applications.

No company can operate without technological tools and applications if they want to prevent cyber attacks from damaging their computer systems and stealing confidential data. Therefore, you need security training to fulfill the goals of technological defense tools.

Cyber hackers today do not use technology to infiltrate PCs or tamper with data; they target people within the organization, who have easy access to a company’s protected networks. That is why you need security awareness programs in your organization to motivate people to protect the company’s digital assets and data from fraudsters. It acts as a morale booster for your staff.

Develops a healthy company culture

Your company should have a culture of information safety and security across all departments. It is also the holy grail of chief information security officers. In addition, the culture is not that hard to nurture and maintain in an organization. It is one of the best ways to instill a sense of data security in the company, thus heading in the right direction.

Modern security awareness programs understand the significance of safe company culture and take the right steps to prevent online threats, password leaks, customer data theft, business funds pilferage, and things like that. These things matter in protecting your business from hackers and online threats. Once the training programs are implemented, it is necessary to monitor the success and failure of the same. It’s done over the years.

Monitoring the cultural indicators, advanced-security training platforms assist security experts in the company to keep watch, maintain, and build a culture of organizational security, making their staff proactive in detecting security breaches and threats.

Training means communication and imparting knowledge, which is essential in the prevention of security breaches in your company. It is more important to focus on the cultural foundations of the organization. With regular training, your staff cultivates better habits and habits become second nature in no time.

You can also take your awareness programs to the next level with the use of regular security mails, compliance booklets, and posters to retain the security culture of your organization.

Winning customer confidence

Security awareness programs help to build customer trust. Yes, they realize that your business cares about data security and protects their confidential information. Companies that do not have security awareness measures in place, often lose the confidence of their clients. It is not any fiction, but fact.

With awareness programs, you can win more contracts with new clients and retain the existing ones. Studies show that customers value companies that have succeeded in achieving a documented cyber security standard and quality. Therefore, security awareness programs matter to clients and companies too due to increased incidents of cyber security threats and breaches.

Conclusion

Now that you know about the benefits of security awareness programs, implement the same to protect your business and client data.

Article Written by:
Isabella Rossellini