By Dave Horton, CISSP, VP, Solutions Engineering at Odaseva
The importance of Salesforce data cannot be overstated, particularly within the enterprise environment. As enterprises ramp up adoption of Salesforce for critical processes, the data stored on the platform grows in volume, complexity, and importance. But have you ever considered what would happen if that data was compromised, lost, or accidentally modified or deleted? It’s a nightmare scenario that no organization wants to face. That’s why backing up your Salesforce data is crucial, and why the backup should be off-site as well as independent.
Separating your primary data and backup data onto different platforms helps mitigate risks related to data loss, platform outages, security, compliance, and vendor dependency, providing a more robust and reliable backup and recovery strategy for your Salesforce data. Let’s see how:
Potential risk: If the primary data and backup data are stored on the same platform, they are susceptible to the same risks and vulnerabilities. Any incident or event that affects the primary data, such as accidental deletion, corruption, or a cyber attack, can potentially impact the backup data as well.
Solution: By storing backups on a separate platform, for example having your production data stored on Salesforce but your backups stored with Odaseva, the risk of simultaneous data loss is minimized, as the backups are insulated from the issues affecting the primary data.
Potential risk: Although Salesforce system outages and issues regarding data corruption are rare, they can happen; incidents like Permaggedon or disruptions to the NA14 instance serve as reminders that such events can occur. So if your Salesforce platform experiences downtime or service disruptions, it could affect both the primary data and the backups stored on Salesforce.
Solution: Having backups on a different platform ensures that your Salesforce data remains accessible and available even if there are disruptions or outages on the primary data. This helps maintain business continuity, productivity, and the ability to serve customers in such situations.
Potential risk: When organizations store primary data and backups on the same platform, they cannot take advantage of the enhanced security and compliance measures that independent backup platforms offer, making their Salesforce data vulnerable to unauthorized access and breaches.
Solution: Independent backup platforms have their own security protocols, access controls, encryption methods, and compliance certifications, that provide an additional layer of protection for the backup data. Separating the backup data from the primary data platform helps mitigate the risk of unauthorized access, data breaches, or compliance violations that could impact both datasets simultaneously.
Potential risk: From a procurement perspective, it can be attractive to have less vendors on the books, however in the case of Salesforce, if the primary data and backup data are managed by the same vendor, organizations may face vendor dependency issues. Vendor dependency is particularly difficult when it comes to negotiating contracts, switching vendors, or terminating services with the primary data vendor.
Solution: Backup solutions that have invested heavily in building scalable and redundant infrastructure across multiple stacks in the ecosystem like Salesforce, AWS, Azure, will benefit from a multiplier of SLA uptimes. There is an additional benefit for having separate primary and backup data with different vendors/systems, in that it becomes much easier to build isolation or separation of duty principles within your organization. Ensuring that no one person has too much power is an administrative control used to prevent fraud, sabotage, theft and misuse of information.
With Odaseva, not only does the customer have a separate login to access their backup data, but they also retain complete ownership and control of their data at all times. Odaseva has over 10 years of experience supporting the most scalable and security conscious Salesforce Orgs in the world. Designed and built by leading Salesforce CTAs, Odaseva has a multitude of tools in its arsenal to keep your Salesforce backup data protected. So when looking for a solution for data protection, these four components should be critical goals:
Odaseva enables regular and reliable backups of your critical Salesforce data. By having consistent and up-to-date backups, you have a safety net to recover from data loss, accidental deletions, or system failures. Odaseva helps you in creating and implementing disaster recovery plans for Salesforce. With a well-designed disaster recovery plan, you can mitigate the impact of unforeseen events and ensure continuous access to your Salesforce data.
When it comes to Salesforce backup and restore, scalability and performance are crucial aspects that play a significant role in ensuring the effectiveness and efficiency of the process.
Odaseva is designed to handle large volumes of Salesforce data efficiently. It offers scalable infrastructure and optimized backup processes, ensuring that backups are performed within acceptable time frames and without impacting your Salesforce performance.
Odaseva helps you comply with regulations by providing features and functionalities that support data governance, retention policies, and data privacy requirements. Odaseva offers long-term data preservation capabilities, allowing you to securely store archived data for extended periods. This is particularly important for industries with specific regulatory requirements. Odaseva also incorporates robust data privacy and protection measures to help you comply with regulations like GDPR.
Backing up Salesforce should complement your existing security controls, not create vulnerabilities. Odaseva’s no-view approach to data backup ensures that users and vendors of the platform cannot access clear text data without the encryption key, providing an additional layer of security. By allowing customers to retain complete ownership and control of their data, including the encryption keys, Odaseva ensures that unauthorized individuals or malicious actors cannot view sensitive data, even if they gain access to the platform, setting them apart from other vendors that may not offer the same level of protection against vendor database administrators or support personnel.
Get a glimpse into why Odaseva is the leading Enterprise Data Protection Platform in our customer stories here.
For more information and to watch a demo, visit Odaseva’s Backup and Restore page here.
Data Protection
Data Security
Data Archiving
Data Compliance
Data Platform
