All You Need to Know About Salesforce Data Risk Assessment

If you don’t want to self-inflict your Salesforce data, and that “if” is a very big one, then data risk assessment is your answer to overcome this scenario. Digital transformation may be a boon for all your business operations to carry out, but at the same time, your security is going to be out of the question. Exfiltration of sensitive data can happen anytime and hence it is foretold to devise a strategy to overcome this concern. Several compliance regulations state that a data security risk assessment should be included as a part of your data security strategy. 

Data risk assessment is the compass that guides us in safeguarding our most valuable data asset. 

What is data risk assessment?

During a cyber attack, the level of vulnerability your data faces is referred to as data risk assessment. In essence, it involves identifying both internal and external threats, assessing their potential impact on factors such as data availability, confidentiality, and integrity, and estimating the expenses associated with experiencing a cybersecurity incident. Armed with this knowledge, you can customize your cybersecurity measures and data protection controls to align with your organization’s specific risk tolerance.

At times it can be very confusing how to approach and overcome these risk element factors. It is time to act civil-like executives because every admin who wishes to protect his Salesforce data must know how to conduct a data risk assessment

The Infamous Risk Equation

Data Risk = Asset X Threat X Vulnerability

How to perform a security risk assessment

• Bring together all your data assets

Your data asset is not something you believe is valuable. Data assets are those that are very critical for your business. If you’re unsure about what constitutes mission-critical data, remember that any data absence leading to financial loss falls under this category Hence every forward-thinking company should be keen on carrying out this as their first and foremost step. 

Also read: 7 Critical Considerations To Employ in Your Salesforce Disaster Recovery Plan

• Determine the potential data loss incidents you are prone to

Data protection is always like walking through hidden traps. You never know what you might encounter. But since you are in touch with your Salesforce data for a long time and know every behavior of it, listing the threats is not a tough cookie. Most of the data loss incidents happen from natural disasters, human error, hardware malfunction, IT downtimes, and so on. 

• Assess the vulnerability

Once all your potential data loss threats have been listed, we can take the process to the next level. Vulnerabilities are points of weakness that can be exploited by threats to gain unauthorized access to your systems and data. Identifying vulnerabilities involves conducting audits, testing systems, and thorough reviews. Evaluate the level of risk based on the logical formula mentioned earlier and categorize it as critical, high, moderate, low, and very low. Afterward, devise appropriate solutions for high and moderate risks, outlining the estimated costs for each solution which is explained in detail in the next step.

• Deploy a risk management plan

Make a list of your threats, vulnerabilities, assets and consequences, risks, and solutions. By doing so, you can come to an understanding of which Salesforce data are at risk based on the scale of critical, high, moderate, low, and very low where the critical being the data that is most prone to threat and the low being the least prone to threat. This will give you a blueprint of what your risks are, and how critical they are, by paving you way for creating a strategy to overcome the same. 

• Take Action to Mitigate Risks

Once you have determined the Salesforce data at risk and identified potential vulnerabilities, it is important to examine the existing controls that are in place to address these vulnerabilities. These controls can take various forms, including physical measures like security guards, as well as virtual safeguards such as firewalls and auditing solutions. With this information at hand, you can then evaluate the probability and potential consequences of a security threat impacting your organization. While this assessment may involve some degree of estimation, it will be grounded in the comprehensive groundwork you have conducted thus far.

Embrace DataArchiva for Completing Your Data Risk Assessment

The easiest way to get a comprehensive view of your organization’s security posture is by backing up your Salesforce data with an admin-friendly application like DataArchiva After completing your assessment and if you are stumbling on what to do with the last step on how to take action on mitigating all the risks that you are prone to, DataArchiva is your answer. DataArchiva is an AppExchange application for your Salesforce that helps you backup and restore your Salesforce data to offsite storage and complete your data risk assessment the right way. 

Also read: Salesforce’s Survival Guide: Disaster Recovery vs. Business Continuity

DataArchiva stores your backup data in S3, SharePoint, or on-premises by taking advantage of external cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, Heroku, and GCP. If your mind is calling to know more about this product, we are dropping you a link here to vent out all your Salesforce data troubles to our product experts who can evaluate your problem professionally and give you the desired outcome.