Implementing Audit Trail for a Bank Using Salesforce and AWS

Audit trails are crucial for banking operations to ensure transparency, traceability, and compliance with financial regulations. In this case study, a Bank, aimed to implement an audit trail using Salesforce’s custom objects. The bank also wanted to make use of AWS for staging data storage and have the Audit system process this data for further reporting and analytics.

Problem Statement:

The Bank uses Salesforce extensively for its internal back-office operations and customer relationship management. The bank needed a robust mechanism to track changes made to critical data and transactions. They also wanted this audit data to be available in real-time for their Audit system to process, ensuring compliance and monitoring.

Solution:

Salesforce Custom Object for Audit Trail:

• A custom object named AuditTrail__c was created in Salesforce to record every critical transaction and change.
• Triggers and workflows were set up in Salesforce to capture any change in specified objects and fields and create a new record in AuditTrail__c.

Change Data Capture (CDC) in Salesforce:

• CDC was enabled for the AuditTrail__c object. This ensured that every create, update, delete, or undelete operation on the object generated a change event in Salesforce.
• These change events could then be consumed and acted upon in real-time.

AWS Integration:

• An AWS Lambda function was created which was responsible for listening to the CDC events from Salesforce.
• Once an event was detected, the Lambda function would process it and store the change data in an Amazon S3 bucket in JSON format.
• A new JSON file will be generated daily.

Audit System Integration:

• The Audit system was set up to routinely check the AWS S3 bucket for new audit data files.
• Once new data was identified, the system would pull the data, process it, and then push it to its database for further analytics and reporting.

Implementation Details:

• Salesforce’s platform events were used to capture CDC events related to AuditTrail__c.
• AWS’s SDK was used to integrate Salesforce with the Lambda function, allowing real-time data transfer.
• Amazon S3’s event notification feature was used to notify the Audit system of any new data available for processing.

Security & Compliance:

• Data encryption was ensured both at rest (in S3) and in transit using AWS’s security features.
• Salesforce’s robust security mechanisms ensured that the audit trail data was securely captured.
• Regular audits were conducted to ensure data integrity and compliance with financial regulations.

Monitoring & Alerts:

• Amazon CloudWatch was set up to monitor the entire data transfer and processing pipeline.
• Salesforce’s built-in monitoring tools were used to oversee the CDC process.
• Any anomalies or errors triggered instant alerts to the system administrators and relevant bank personnel.

Results:

• Real-time Audit Trail: The Bank was able to capture and process audit data in near real-time, ensuring that their system was always up-to-date.
• Increased Compliance: With every critical transaction being monitored and recorded, the bank ensured adherence to all financial regulations.
• Efficiency & Scalability: The combined power of Salesforce and AWS ensured that the solution was scalable, catering to the increasing volume of transactions as the bank grew.

Conclusion:

The Bank’s forward-thinking approach in integrating Salesforce with AWS allowed them to create a robust, real-time audit trail system. This not only ensured regulatory compliance but also equipped the bank with insights from audit data, enhancing transparency and trust with its stakeholders.