The recent ransomware attack in Indonesia has sent shockwaves throughout the region, underscoring the critical importance of securing critical data. 

The attack disrupted government services across more than 230 public agencies, including operations at major Indonesian airports.

Hackers demanded an $8 million ransom, which the Indonesian government refused to pay. And since the data center admitted that they almost never backup their data, recovery efforts have been slow, challenging, and in some cases impossible. “Mr Hinsa Siburian, chairman of Indonesia’s cyber-security agency known by its acronym BSSN, said 98 per cent of the data stored in the compromised data centre had not been backed up,” reported The Straits Times.

The impacts were significant. The attack caused widespread disruption, particularly in immigration services, leading to long queues at airports and other checkpoints.

Efforts to recover some data were unsuccessful. “Some agencies have also reported that data, including that of 800,000 prospective students who registered for a national university card, has been lost forever because of a lack of backups,” reported The Straits Times.

This incident serves as a stark reminder that it’s the organization’s responsibility to protect and secure their data – and that includes data stored in SaaS platforms like Salesforce.

Securing Salesforce data is a shared responsibility

SaaS applications including Salesforce have become the backbone of modern businesses, government agencies, and nonprofits. They offer a wide range of benefits from cost-efficiency to scalability. However, the reliance on cloud-based platforms has also created new security challenges.

Ransomware attacks are just one threat to SaaS data. Data loss can come from many sources including accidental deletion (the most common cause of data loss), malicious deletion, misconfigurations, service outages, inability to recover data after an update, and more.

If your organization’s data is lost or corrupted due to any of these or other causes, you are responsible for recovering from such a data disaster. That’s because while Salesforce and other SaaS programs are responsible for their platform, YOU are responsible for your data including how it’s secured.

The stakes are high. Data loss is expensive, with estimates that it costs organizations $1.8 billion to lose 10 million records (Source: Ponemon Institute “Cost of a Data Breach Report”). Damage to an organization’s reputation can be irreversible. Regulatory fines and penalties can be expensive and embarrassing.

However organizations can protect themselves against such threats.

Protecting and Securing Salesforce Data

First and foremost, organizations must have a backup and restore plan in place as part of their overall Disaster Recovery Plan. They must also be able to prove that this data can be recovered if disaster strikes.

Key things to think about when selecting a backup and restore vendor include:

• Coverage: Can I backup all the data, metadata, files that I need?
• Frequency and performance: Can I backup data as quickly as needed to meet the organization’s Recovery Time Objectives? Can I backup and restore Large Data Volumes?
• Complexity: Can I restore complex data models?
• Flexibility and customization: Can I restore my full dataset, or just roll back a simple change, and everything in between?
• Restore readiness: Can I prove that I can recover lost data?

Selecting the right vendor to backup and restore your Salesforce data can make all the difference between recovering quickly from a data disaster – or facing expensive, time-consuming and embarrassing consequences of one.

We’ve created this guide to help you evaluate backup and restore vendors for your Salesforce Org. Review it now to learn which questions to ask to ensure your solution meets the critical requirements of our organization.

Get the “Checklist: Salesforce Backup and Restore Vendor Capabilities” here now, or request a demo today to learn how Odaseva can protect and secure your Salesforce data.