Question

Difficulty: HardSession Settings and Password Policies

A compliance audit at a healthcare company requires that users with the 'Patient Support Representative' role adhere to a 15-minute inactivity session timeout and a 30-day password expiration policy. The default organization-wide settings are configured for a 2-hour session timeout and a 90-day password expiration. An administrator attempts to enforce these restrictive security limits by creating a new Permission Set to avoid proliferating custom profiles, but discovers that session timeout and password policy configurations are unavailable within the Permission Set interface. How should the administrator properly enforce these specific security requirements for the Patient Support team?

  1. Configure the 15-minute session timeout and 30-day password expiration policies directly within the custom Profile assigned to the Patient Support team.Answer
  2. B
    Create a Permission Set containing the 15-minute session timeout and 30-day password expiration, then assign it to all Patient Support team members.
  3. C
    Add the Patient Support team's network IP ranges to the Organization-Wide Network Access settings to enforce restrictive session and password policies.
  4. D
    Bundle custom security extension rules inside a Permission Set Group and assign it to the Patient Support team to override global organization defaults.

Answer

Configure the 15-minute session timeout and 30-day password expiration policies directly within the custom Profile assigned to the Patient Support team.
In Salesforce, Password Policies and Session Settings are established at the Organization-Wide level and can be selectively overridden on individual Profiles. Because Permission Sets and Permission Set Groups cannot store or enforce session inactivity timeouts or password expiration rules, modifying the custom Profile assigned to the user group is the correct and only way to enforce stricter requirements for specific users.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze where Session Settings and Password Policies are stored and overridden in Salesforce.
Identify that global defaults exist under Session Settings and Password Policies in Setup, and can only be overridden on individual Profiles.
Salesforce security architecture limits session duration and password expiration controls to Org-Wide defaults and Profile-level settings.
2
Evaluate the feasibility of using Permission Sets or Permission Set Groups for session and password management.
Recognize that Permission Sets and Permission Set Groups cannot manage session timeout values or password complexity/expiration policies.
Permission Sets are designed for additive functional access (fields, objects, permissions), not administrative governance policies like session duration.
3
Determine the proper administrative action to satisfy the compliance requirement.
Edit the custom Profile assigned to the target user group and adjust the Profile's Password Policies and Session Settings sections.
Profile-level configurations override Organization-Wide defaults for all users assigned to that specific profile.

Key Concept

Profile-Level Overrides for Session Settings and Password Policies
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