The growing dependence on the cloud has increased the importance of data protection with proper backup and recovery systems in place. The need for data protection is not only to counter cyber threats, which are indeed the biggest concern but also to take care of many other scenarios that include human errors like overwriting or accidental data deletion while carrying out some operations. Despite the high assurance of technological protection built into the Salesforce systems for protecting data, it is often not enough to offer all-around protection to Salesforce data. It requires support from Salesforce data backup apps to make the process robust and almost foolproof.
Protecting data assets is a priority for businesses today because of the enormous data handling that the Salesforce applications demand. Even a moment’s inaccessibility to sensitive and vital data can stall business operations. Businesses must have a solid backup and recovery plan to avoid any disaster that threatens the existence of business, and Salesforce can support businesses to achieve their goals of data safety and data management.
Data recovery and accessibility
Developing a Salesforce Data Backup Strategy gives more strength to businesses that can better use data without fearing data loss. The backup scale is as crucial as accessibility because unless the backed-up data is easy to access, it will defeat the purpose of backing up data for maintaining business continuity. Backup and recovery go hand in hand, and enterprises must stay prepared for recovering data. Companies use the recovery readiness index as a benchmark to measure the effectiveness of the backup and recovery systems. Not only should the system allow instant data recovery, but at the same time ensure that it remains accessible.
Built-in data protection
Salesforce offers some protection to data by allowing the following activities to minimize the threat of data loss but cannot provide the kind of protection necessary for the entire data volume that organizations handle. The approach of Salesforce seems to be that of generating awareness among its users about data safety so that they can build upon the existing features to create a more robust backup and recovery system by using third-party solutions.
The built-in data protection offered by Salesforce includes –
- Weekly data export that does not cover the entire data sets and the interval of backup could result in losing a whole week’s data should something go wrong.
- To exercise the option of exporting data to a data warehouse, you must have API knowledge and need a script.
- Refreshing the Sandbox once in 30 days is another option for protecting data in Salesforce.
While all the above features are part of the Salesforce package, the scope of data protection is never adequate and satisfactory as per IT standards that call for much better solutions for which Salesforce depends on third-party apps.
You are the custodian of your data
The client customer relationship of SaaS services like Salesforce is like that between a landlord and tenant where the clients are like tenants that share the SaaS environment of the service provider. The tenants are the custodians of the data that they store with the service provider. It is similar to running your applications in your own data center. In such a situation, organizations that use Salesforce can create their backup app. Still, it would entail writing its application code or scripting a routine to use Salesforce API calls. However, it is not a feasible option for most users.
Instead, some additional SaaS applications like OwnBackup for Salesforce provide more comprehensive backup, archive data protection, and restoration service for Salesforce users. Some other Salesforce backup applications like Flosum’s backup, recovery, and archival services are available free along with CopyStorm, Reflection enterprise, Druva, and Spanning by Kaseya.
What prevents customers from using their backup service?
The elements of SaaS infrastructure are detrimental for allowing customers to use their backup service. Customers who use traditional backups that use relational databases need access to the underlying SaaS infrastructure, which is not possible. These backups need an agent on the machine, which is just not possible within the SaaS applications shared by many tenants. The customer can never have access to the infrastructure. Only Salesforce can run a backup agent on the Salesforce infrastructure. However, Salesforce does allow OwnBackup to access Salesforce infrastructure via API calls only to deliver the backup services.
Customers can view the data they input into Salesforce during the app operation. But this does not happen in the case of the Metadata used by Salesforce because it can access information only through API calls. A backup application needs to access this data for backing up and restoring customer data.
Backup silos for SaaS is a necessity
To protect Salesforce data, its users must use a dedicated backup silo together with backup software even when they use on-premise backup facilities. However, a single Salesforce backup app might not be enough for customers using multiple SaaS applications because each backup app specializes in one SaaS application.
Have a restore strategy in place
If the backup is at one end of the data security spectrum, data restoration is at the other end. For end-end coverage in data protection, it is vital to ensure that the app can address both aspects fully. Since data loss is unavoidable, it makes perfect sense to take measures in data recovery and restoration so that no disaster can impact the business. Think about a situation when you face data corruption or data loss. You stay unperturbed because of the assurance of the recovery system that works in tandem with the backup facility to fully restore the data at a click or by pressing a button.
It makes all the difference in the business outcome. Your team can quickly resolve a critical situation that the business is facing and drive it in the path of growth by fixing the problem instantly. The symphony of backup and recovery drives businesses towards success.
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