Salesforce Backup

Salesforce Backup definition

Salesforce backup and recovery offers automated data protection for content, files, objects, metadata relationships, and more living in Salesforce production organizations and sandbox environments. It offers customers better peace of mind safeguarding Salesforce Cloud data from deletion, corruption, ransomware, and internal attack.  With dedicated protection, Salesforce admins can fill native Salesforce data recovery gaps through robust tools and controls to securely protect and rapidly recover data with precision and scale.

What is the Salesforce Backup process, and how does it work?

As a SaaS application, Salesforce utilizes public cloud resources, including storage.  The Salesforce Cloud, which is built on AWS, relies on a shared responsibility model where Salesforce is responsible for the application availability and uptime, and the customer is responsible for protecting their own data living within the platform.  For customers faced with pressures to meet recovery SLAs, ensure compliance, and keep their valuable cloud data secure, compliant, and recoverable from today’s data loss threats, Salesforce customers must consider leveraging a dedicated backup and recovery solution.

Why is Salesforce Backup important?

Salesforce is a cornerstone for many businesses, housing critical IP, customer information, and business insights. Protecting and safeguarding this data is not only a critical driver of business success, but could cripple business operations if not properly protected. As a result, Cloud data must be preserved and rapidly recoverable to avoid costly downtime, outages, and data loss stemming from deletion, corruption, or malicious attack.

Salesforce has no backup service. The newly reinstated Salesforce Data Recovery service offers data recovery capabilities, but with a catch. Customers must pay $10k per data recovery request and can take up to two months to complete.  For Salesforce Cloud customers who need fast, effective, and nimble backup and recovery of production and sandbox environments, only a dedicated third party protection solution offers robust capabilities to recover cost-effectively and with scale. 

You are the custodian of your data. Many believe that providers of SaaS applications are responsible for backing up customers’ data. Many others believe that cloud service providers are responsible for both administering their tools and protecting the data created and stored within the cloud environments.  However, most cloud service providers (such as AWS, Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce) follow a ‘shared’ and ‘distributed’ responsibility model where customers are the custodians of their own data. Salesforce, which runs on AWS, inherits Amazon’s responsibility model – which clearly states AWS (and by virtue Salesforce) is responsible for the infrastructure and underlying services. Simultaneously, the customer is always responsible for protecting their data entering and leaving the application. In short, be proactive and protect your own data with a solution that covers backup and restore, archiving, data management and governance.

Bad actors are everywhere. Data theft and cybercrime are on a meteoric rise, increasing by 400% since the start of the pandemic.² But not all threats are external.  In fact, sixty-three percent (63%) of successful attacks come from internal sources. ³ The estimated cost of a data breach in the US increased 46% in 2020 compared to 2019, reaching an average cost of $8.64M. And while the impact of data breaches impacts the bottom line, it can extend far beyond the economic costs, resulting in a long tail impact on business continuity, operations, and public perception.

Accidents happen. In addition to the high risk of malicious attacks, data can be unintentionally deleted or lost.  Internal authorized users and admin errors led to 47%⁵ of SaaS data loss events. From routine updates to environments, to accidental user deletion, to data corruption stemming from third party AppExchange integrations and add-ons, unintentional deletion comes in many forms.  Salesforce and IT admins must assess and protect from both malicious and unintentional data loss events.

Considerations for Salesforce Backup

Digital data and SaaS applications are the drivers of modern business growth. Protecting critical applications such as Salesforce and their associated data is vital for business survival. Salesforce workloads are more than just data, they represent the heart of countless enterprises worldwide. If your Salesforce data is compromised, your business will be put on hold until you get that data back. In today’s world, it’s important that your backup and recovery solutions keep your data secure without straining or burdening IT resources and Salesforce Admins.  Key considerations include:

• Low-effort and hassle-free SaaS-based protection
• Preserving content, relationships, files, custom objects, profiles, metadata, and more
• Rapid data recovery with granular search and flexible, full-fidelity restore options
• Reducing risk with hardened security controls, air-gapped backups, and zero-trust user access and role-based privileges
• Creating significant operational efficiencies with automated operations and low-touch cloud resources deployment
•  Maintaining SLA compliance and meeting relevant regulatory compliance requirements
• Sandbox seeding capabilities, to provide additional benefits for dev test environments
  

Key Benefits of Salesforce Backup

• Ultimate Simplicity – SaaS-delivered solutions provide a seamless way to protect your Salesforce Cloud. With simple delivery and management, admins get straightforward and intuitive protection without the complexity. Admins no longer need to manage cumbersome exports, lengthy refresh periods, or partial/incomplete data restores. Backups are 100% automated and highly performant: providing customers with a single view to backup, recover, and manage production orgs and sandbox environments in unison.
• Inclusive Coverage – Salesforce has become more than just a sales contact tool or a customer relationship management (CRM) application. It is a business platform that has expanded to include almost all areas of customer and ecosystem management. Best-in-class solutions recognize this and provides dedicated protection across the Salesforce Cloud. With coverage across the Lightning Developer, Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited Editions, Salesforce backup solutions help backup data, restore records, and populate sandbox environments with ease.
• Broad Protection – Comprehensive backup enables pristine coverage of Salesforce data and context, including content, files, custom objects, profiles, hierarchal relationships, metadata, and more. This helps safeguard users, configurations, and settings while maintaining and preserving production and sandbox environment site structures. 
• Comprehensive Control – Salesforce and IT admins need granular search and flexible in-place/out-of-place recovery options to manage item, object or org-level restores with ease, speed, and precision. This enables organizations to seamlessly recover data back to specific points in time and ensure valuable information is always returned to the proper location. 
• Hardened Security – Industry-proven technologies leverage a multi-layered approach to security. Hardened security protocols, such as multifactor authentication, advanced data encryption, and zero-trust user access controls, prevent unwarranted access to systems and data. While isolated and virtually air-gapped backups ensure that data copies are immutable and safeguarded from malicious attack.
• Enhanced Productivity – Administrators, architects, and developers require tools that make their life easier. Whether granularly restoring records or protecting multiple production orgs, they need data protection that doesn’t feel like a full-time job, along with the confidence to know their data is always secure, available, and recoverable. Additionally, users need capabilities to support development and testing efforts. From seeding, to updating data, to preserving relationship integrity in sandbox environments, dedicated solutions can simplify and accelerate dev test and validation processes.
  

Common use bases for Salesforce Backup

Organizations of all sizes need cloud storage to ignite business growth and deliver a superior customer experience.

Ransomware protection. Metallic BaaS stores backup data copies in the cloud with air-gapped security that maintains a usable copy for rapid recovery and minimal disruption to operations.

Hybrid cloud adoption. Metallic Salesforce Backup protects all your vital data on-premises, in the cloud and when using SaaS applications from Salesforce.

Data compliance. Metallic and Azure help keep your data compliant with financial services regulations, including SOX, PCI DSS and SOC 2. They also help ensure that your data resources remain current and in line with prevailing regulatory requirements.

Does Metallic offer Salesforce Backup?

Yes! Metallic offers industry leading Salesforce data protection for comprehensive coverage across sandbox and product environments. Our award-winning SaaS data protection is built on industry-leading Commvault technologies and Microsoft Azure, delivering the best of comprehensive backup and recovery with ease and simplicity.

For more information on Metallic^® Salesforce Backup, visit https://metallic.io/salesforce-backup.

Sources

1. Raconteur. Data in a Day Infographic.
2. Entrepreneur April 2020. “FBI Sees Cybercrime Reports Increase Fourfold During COVID-19 Outbreak.”
3. https://purplesec.us/resources/cyber-security-statistics
4. Ponemon Institute 2020. “Cost of Data Breach Report 2014-2020.”
5. https://blog.cloudhq.net/1-out-of-3-companies-lose-data-in-saas/#:~:text=Data%20loss%20in%20SaaS&text=The%20vast%20majority%20of%20data,lost%20data%20as%20a%20result