LIGHTNING APPS

Creating apps can now be easy, fun, and straightforward. With Lightning Apps, users can easily construct applications, dashboards, marketing plans, etc. These apps are built on the Salesforce Lightning platform, using technologies like Lightning Web Component. Moreover, the mobile-friendly quality of these apps makes them more accessible. It can be used on laptops, desktops, tablets, etc. Lightning Apps on Salesforce can help businesses collect data, organize, display, and ensure privacy. It also includes Salesforce Lightning Experience, allowing users to focus on sale leads, deals, and the right audience. 

A few advantages of Lightning Apps include:

1. The ability to tailor the pages according to the needs and requirements.
2. It can help reduce spreadsheets into a single app, practical scheduling, and tracking
3. Can ensure the privacy of the data and information of customers
4. It also helps personalize sales leads, marketing campaigns, and email marketing.
5. Provide users with attractive dashboards, reports, and market analytics.
6. It enables you to customize your applications according to your requirements
7. You can also add different utility items to your Lightning Apps. 

These are just a few advantages of Lightning Apps. It can help transform a business entirely. It also allows users to be more creative with just a few simple clicks. Lightning Apps are effective because they allow users to switch between different applications, keeping everything under the control of your fingertips. 

Creating a Lightning App:

To create a Lightning App using Lightning App Manager in Salesforce, you have to follow the following steps:

1. Go to App Manager in Salesforce 
2. Click on the New Lightning App option on the right corner 
3. A pop-up will appear with different options, such as app name, logo, color, and description. 
4. You can fill up every opportunity according to your needs.
5. Add utility items, navigation items, and user profiles. 
6. Finally, your App will be visible to you on App Launcher. 

Lightning External Apps

Moreover, these Lightning Apps can be connected to Salesforce Lightning External Apps. It links internal Salesforce information to external apps to make businesses expand and more accessible to people. It helps connect brokers, dealers, and partners, making it easy for them to work together. These external apps can be used outside the salesforce environment, therefore more prone to malware attacks. Since External Apps are directly connected with Salesforce Lightning Apps, with all the data linked between them, it is also essential to secure those external Apps. 

Security of Lightning Apps

Now you must be wondering about the vulnerability of Lightning Apps. Keeping these apps secured is very important since they can contain vital data. For example

1. It has all the contact details of customers, as well as the financial data. It is because such information can cause fraud and identity theft, destroying the company’s name.  
2. Unsecure Lightning Apps of businesses can be hacked, sending inappropriate emails, messages, and displays to customers and employees. 
3. If the Lightning Apps are not adequately secured, the information can be readily available to everybody, which can breach customers’ trust. 
4. The security of these applications is also essential to keep in check the continuous flow of work, employees connected, and customers happy. 
5. Unsecured lightning Apps can result in unauthorized funds transfers and unusual changes to reports and analytics. 

What is CSRF?

Cross-site Request Forgery is malware. Web security susceptibility makes users perform actions they do not aim to achieve. It is also known as a “one-click attack” since the attacker behaves like a website or web application user. In this way, the attack can get hold of all your essential details and act like you, as an authentic user, resulting in crucial data transfer, money transfer, identity theft, etc.

Let’s look at it with an example. For an instant, you use an online banking site, and the CSRF token generated is sent to the browser and saved as a cookie. Now you are also a regular visitor to another location on the browser, which is of book reading. While visiting the book reading website, you came across a link about a new book. However, that link contains malicious code that you are unknown to. And once you click that link, it instructs your browser to send a request to your banking site. That request can be anything- from transferring money to obtaining your data. And the banking site accepts it thinking it’s you since the CSRF token is yours. Money, however, is now transferred to the attack account.

CSRF Token and Its Importance for Lightning Apps

Since Salesforce offers customer relationship management with several other essential features and services, and because all the services provided are necessary for businesses, keeping them secure is also very important. Especially if we talk about Lightning Apps, it is because Lightning Apps contain data, essential reports, marketing ideas, and financial data. And any hard can result in damaging client relationships, unauthorized fund transfers, password changes, and a lot more. 

Salesforce enhances the security of these Lightning Apps by using CSRF Token. CSRF Token, however, helps protect your website or web applications from a malicious attack. It does that by generating a random and unique CSRF Token. These randomly generated synchronized tokens are long, complex sets of different characters. These tokens are also not saved in any cookie or client data, which makes them more secure and attack-proof. These tokens are hidden in HTML form or HTTP headers, and the server accepts only those tokens associated with the user’s session and used only in the related context. If the code does not match, the potential action gets rejected. The security enhancement for CSRF Token also improves the handling of expired and wrong tokens. In this way, all the essential documents and information can be protected. 

However, these updates must still be released and postponed until Winter 24. 

Conclusion:

Security Enhancements for Lightning Apps through CSRF Tokens make them more secure for businesses and customers and less prone to attacks and fraud. Through it, users can be more productive and creative without worrying about malware. Also, these enhancements can be applied to all salesforce mobile apps and Lightning Experience except Lightning Out Apps. Lastly, these security upgrades make Salesforce a better place for new ideas. According to you, are these upgrades strong enough?