Database Security in Apex

Outside of Anonymous blocks, Apex always runs in a privileged, system context. This gives it access to read and write all data. It does not honor object-, field-, and record-level privileges of the user invoking the code. This works well for triggers, which operate at a low level and need full access to data.

Where full access is not appropriate, Apex provides the with sharing keyword. For example, custom user interfaces often require that access to data is limited by the privileges of the current user. Using with sharing, the sharing rules applying to the current user are evaluated against the data requested by queries and updated in DML operations. This option is discussed in detail in Chapter 6, “User Interfaces.”