Salesforce Certified Associate Practice Exam

Which of the following is considered the second line of defense for security in Salesforce?

1. Record level security

2. Field level security

3. Profile level security

4. Permission sets

The correct answer is: Record level security

The second line of defense for security in Salesforce is focused on fine-tuning and controlling access to records within the platform. Record level security primarily deals with which users have visibility and access rights to specific records, such as accounts, contacts, and leads. It ensures that even if a user has the general permission to view a certain type of record, they might still be restricted from accessing individual records based on their role, sharing rules, or ownership. Implementing record-level security requires setting up sharing rules, role hierarchies, and organization-wide defaults (OWD). This layered approach adds a significant measure of protection, allowing Salesforce administrators to dictate who can see and manipulate specific data. Field-level security, on the other hand, controls access to individual fields within records but doesn't determine who can see or edit the record itself. Profile level security pertains to more general permissions associated with user roles, while permission sets extend user access without changing profiles but again do not specifically address record-level access. Thus, while all these options contribute to the overall security structure in Salesforce, record-level security distinctly represents the second tier in protecting sensitive data on a more granular level.