At the Intersection of Data and Privacy with Salesforce’s Marla Hay

So you want to build a giant enterprise platform. Great. 

You want mission critical and private data to flow between CRMs and other critical applications flawlessly, with no leaks, no breaches, and no compromises. 

You also want to build infinite user controls and optionality, and also smooth and seamless user identification to access these business apps. 

No pressure right?

Marla Hay is the Senior Director of Product, Security and Privacy at Salesforce and she knows how to balance critical security with smooth identity management. It’s actually one of the key reasons she’s in the field.

“We've seen an increased focus on data security and privacy over the last like 15 years. One of the things that makes me really excited, and one of the one of the reasons I loved and picked this area to work is that intersection of data security, privacy, and usability. That's a place where I think we've seen a lot of evolution.”

Data and privacy are two hot-button issues right now, but a company’s concerns over these two topics isn’t insular. The worry goes beyond the data on internal networks and into the idea of what’s happening to the information that gets sent out to other services as well. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Marla explains how Salesforce designs its products and services, including a detailed look at the feedback loops her team has in place to ensure product quality. Plus, Marla touches on the evolution of digital identities and how Salesforce is managing those permissions.

Main Takeaways

• Can I Get Access to That? Managing digital identities is a two-way street: employers must be able to make sure that the permissions they are granting to a group of employees are the appropriate permissions, but that they are securing those identities depending on where that data is going. On the other side is the employee, who is responsible for knowing where their permissions are being used and remaining conscious of the risks associated with sharing data.   
• Designed to Fail: Your customers are your biggest asset, so make sure you are constantly asking them what is working and what is not working with your products and services. When you are consistently communicating with your customers, gain an idea of big picture themes that are coming down the pipeline, but you are gaining ideas on how to fix thousands of problems, not just one.
• Intersection of Data and Privacy: Over the last 15 years, there has been an increased focus on data and privacy and how that data is managed on internal services, but also the group of products that a company’s data is being fed to.

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