Record-Level Security

In Force.com, individual data records within an object are secured through a combination of three concepts:

1. Record ownership—All records except those on the child side of a Master-Detail relationship have a single named owner. Record owners are individual users or groups of users. Ownership of a record can be transferred manually to another user or group.

2. User groups—Users can be organized into flat lists and placed in a hierarchy. Groups can contain individual users as well as other groups.

3. Sharing model—The sharing model consists of two parts: organization-wide defaults and sharing reasons. The organization-wide defaults can be configured to lock down all records by object, regardless of their owner. Sharing reasons selectively override the defaults to allow access based on record ownership or arbitrary criteria.

This section discusses each concept in more depth.