My name is Jim, and I am a hacker.

I have spent much of my career breaking into systems that claimed to be secure. Now I teach young people about my craft. One question I am often asked is if I have ever come across a system I couldn’t hack. The simple answer is that no system is impervious to encroachment. However, some systems pay more attention to providing a secure environment than others.

Is the web secure enough to put your business on it? It depends largely on which platform you use. Here are four reasons why Salesforce would be a good choice for securing your business.

1) Salesforce standards are equivalent to industry standards.Because of the type of business Salesforce does, they are required to carry security for online transactions equivalent to most banks and financial institutions. The requirements are only slightly less stringent than those in HIPAA (health) and FERPA (education).According to the Salesforce developers website, “Salesforce.com’s services are certified as compliant with some of the most rigorous, industry-accepted security, privacy, and reliability standards.”

2) Salesforce treats encryption as an effective defense.All data on most SaaS sites are encrypted in transit, but some sites encrypt at rest. If your data is just sitting on the server, it is encrypted to avoid data loss to hackers. As encryption tends to create a signature, this data can be more easily regenerated. At rest, encryption is 256 bit, in transit is industry standard at 2048 bit encryption over 256 bits.

3) Salesforce specializes in providing a secure platform.As a rule, web services cost the company less than setting up an internal server over the long run, so for most companies this makes sense to go in that direction as a networking model. Because of this, hackers tend to focus more on the provider than the companies. One of the advantages of the Salesforce SaaS model in reference to security is the fact that it is all they do. The company would have to meet the same security requirements for a homegrown solution (software and hardware) with a similar budget. The advantage of selecting a SaaS company like Salesforce is that all they do is handle software and security, and they have the single resource for multiple companies.

4) Salesforce provides prolonged support.There are some disadvantages to using a SaaS system. For example, you have no control over the design, and, you have few choices with some services as to what will run, among other things. With Salesforce, you have the advantage in that you will not have to upgrade the server when it gets old, you won’t have to maintain the software, and you can hire people who have already been trained on the system. This will allow you to hire a partially trained staff and also allow for a reduction in the IT staff requirements.Salesforce.com’s Success Community is unbeatable in sharing information about securing systems and taking preventative measures in securing your business website. Questions are addressed by experts in the Salesforce system who share firsthand knowledge of the system and its evolving functions, and can provide in-depth information on how the Salesforce.com platform can support an innovative, customized, efficient and secure setting for your business.

No computer system is foolproof. But by adhering to the highest industry security standards, innovating encryption practices, specializing in expansive security measures, and providing extended system support, Salesforce is setting its sights on becoming the closest thing to being foolproof you will find. And, that’s no joke.