When Trusted Files Deserve a Second Look

Why File Trust Assumptions Matter in Salesforce Workflows

Most organizations think about security primarily in terms of access. Considerable effort goes into defining who can log in, which roles can view or change data, and how systems are protected from intrusion. That focus is necessary, but it leaves an important assumption largely unexamined: once a file is accepted into a trusted system, it is generally treated as trustworthy by default.

In modern business platforms like Salesforce, that assumption matters more than it used to. Files are no longer peripheral artifacts attached “for reference.” They increasingly function as evidence, justification, and direct inputs into decisions that carry operational, financial, and regulatory consequences.

Steganography, Without the Academic Detour

Steganography is the practice of embedding data within otherwise valid files so that it is not visible to the user. Unlike encryption, which deliberately obscures content, steganography is designed to be unobtrusive. The file still opens normally, appears unchanged, and behaves exactly as expected.

In enterprise environments, this embedding most often occurs in common file formats rather than exotic ones. Images, scanned documents, PDFs, media files, and Office documents all serve as containers that can hold additional embedded data. These formats are not unusual or suspicious; they are foundational to everyday business workflows.

The enterprise concern is not steganography as a technique. It is the possibility that files may contain additional embedded data that is never examined during normal ingestion, review, or reuse.

Why This Has Become Relevant Now

For many years, enterprise security attention focused on executables, scripts, and network traffic. Visual and document-based files were largely treated as benign after basic validation and malware scanning. That model reflected the realities of the time.

Over the last several years, however, techniques for embedding data inside valid files have advanced significantly. It is now possible for files to carry additional data without changing how they render, without interrupting workflows, and without triggering traditional alerts. This activity does not resemble the kinds of failures organizations are accustomed to detecting.

As a result, this class of risk often goes unnoticed. It does not present itself as a breach, does not break systems, and does not announce its presence. When questions do arise, they tend to surface late, after files have already been shared, reused, or relied upon across teams and processes.

This relative novelty is one reason the topic is not yet widely discussed. Many organizations simply have not had reason to look here, particularly when nothing appears to be malfunctioning.

A Governance and Evidence Integrity Issue

It is tempting to frame this topic as a cybersecurity problem, but that framing is incomplete. At its core, this is a governance and integrity issue regarding evidence.

Across industries, files increasingly support and shape business outcomes. They underpin claims, appeals, disputes, investigations, partner coordination, field service documentation, product catalogs, and audit processes. Once accepted into a system of record, these files become durable inputs into decisions.

When questions arise later about what a file contained, how it was handled, or whether it should have been treated differently, organizations can face operational rework, compliance challenges, and disputes over responsibility and timing. These outcomes are rarely dramatic in isolation, but they can accumulate into meaningful business and continuity risks.

Some organizations with higher maturity quietly address this exposure today through specialized tooling or targeted review processes. Most do not, often because responsibility spans operations, IT, security, and compliance rather than sitting clearly in one place.

Salesforce and the Nature of File Trust

Salesforce performs exceptionally well in the areas for which it was designed. It enforces access controls, protects records, and provides a robust framework for managing users, roles, and permissions across complex organizations.

What Salesforce does not do, by design, is deeply examine the internal structure of visual and document-based files once those files are trusted and attached to records. Trust is established at the user and access level, not at the file-content level.

This is not a weakness in the platform. It reflects a deliberate and reasonable design choice. However, as files move across workflows, teams, and organizational boundaries, that distinction becomes increasingly important.

Where This Appears in Practice

Although regulated industries feel this most acutely, the issue is not confined to them. Healthcare and financial services provide clear examples of situations in which files become part of the formal record, but similar patterns also appear in commercial environments.

Field service organizations routinely exchange documentation with contracted repair partners. Retail and consumer goods companies distribute product catalogs and digital assets through ERP, PIM, and Salesforce integrations. Affiliates, distributors, and vendors contribute files that directly influence downstream actions.

In each case, the common factor is not regulation. It relies on files as decision inputs within trusted systems.

How Ravenpath Helps

At Ravenpath Consulting, our focus is not on turning Salesforce into a security platform or introducing friction into established workflows. Our focus is on helping organizations make trust explicit where it already exists.

We work with teams to identify file-heavy Salesforce workflows, understand where trust assumptions are embedded, and introduce visibility at the points where files become actionable. That visibility allows organizations to respond proportionately and intentionally, rather than uniformly or reactively.

Detection alone is not the goal. The real value comes from how insight is incorporated into business processes using Salesforce-native tools such as policy configuration, Flow, and automation. This ensures that decisions about files are made in context, aligned with business priorities, and recorded in the operational record.

The detection capability stems from our partnership with WetStone Labs, whose technology specializes in identifying unexpected embedded data in images and document-based files. Ravenpath’s role is to ensure this information is usable within Salesforce rather than remaining isolated as a technical signal.

From Insight to Offering

Together with WetStone Labs, we package this approach as an offering we call Trusted File Intake for Salesforce.

The offering is designed to help organizations:

• Understand where file trust assumptions exist today

• Introduce visibility without disrupting normal operations

• Apply Salesforce-native policy and automation to handle files appropriately

• Scale the approach across both regulated and commercial workflows

It is intentionally structured to start small, integrate cleanly, and expand as needed.

Learn More

We have published a short overview of our joint offering with WetStone Labs that outlines this approach in more detail:

Trusted File Intake for Salesforce

Visibility into visual and document-based files used in business workflows

Ravenpath and Wetstone Collaboration.pdf

Download PDF • 210KB

If you would like to explore how this applies within your Salesforce environment, we welcome that conversation.