Salesforce Data Backup Best Practices: Your Go-to Guide

In the digital age, data is invaluable. For any Salesforce organization, your data is the lifeblood of your business operations, driving decisions, insights, and strategies.

But how prepared is your business for the unexpected? What if a hacker gains access to your Salesforce environment? Could your organization withstand the fallout of a significant data breach? 

Imagine the impact: millions of records lost, your company’s valuation plummeting by up to 75%, and long-term damage to your brand and operations. While Fortune 500 companies might have the resources to weather such storms, smaller businesses often lack the robust systems needed to recover from data loss without a solid backup strategy.

Whether due to a targeted hacker attack, an accidental human error, or unforeseen system failures, data loss can strike any organization. The reality is that no business is entirely immune to these risks. 

The key to survival and continuity lies in proactive measures—establishing a comprehensive data backup strategy to ensure that your organization can bounce back quickly and effectively, no matter the threat.

Here are some important things to ask yourself before creating a Salesforce data backup strategy:

• What data do I need to backup so it is available right away if an incident of data loss occurs?
• Where will I store the data records?
• How often will my data backup occur?
• What compliance requirements do I need to follow with my data backups?
• Who is responsible for ensuring the security, encryption, and success of these data backups?
• How often will I test my backups?

In this guide, we’ll walk you through essential backup best practices to protect your Salesforce data, safeguard your business’s future, and ensure that you’re prepared for any data-related challenges that come your way.

The Power of Remote Storage

Backing up your Salesforce data on-site alone can be risky. If a disaster or security breach affects your facility, the data stored there could be compromised as well, making your backup useless. 

To avoid this, it’s crucial to use remote storage for your backups. This means keeping copies of your data in a different physical location or the cloud.

In short, make sure your backups are both online and offline. This way, even if something happens to your main site, your data remains safe and secure.

Consider Retention Span

When planning a data backup strategy, it’s important to think about how long you’ll keep each backup. Storing all backups forever isn’t practical, so most solutions offer retention schedules. 

For example, you might keep hourly and daily backups for a week, weekly backups for a month, and monthly backups for several months or even years.

Make sure to also check your industry’s data retention requirements before deciding on a backup plan.

Schedule Frequent Backups

To keep your business running smoothly, it’s important to have recent data backups. After deciding how long to keep your backups, set a schedule for how often to back up your Salesforce data—this could be hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly, depending on your business needs. Automating backups is a good practice to avoid missing any. 

You can also choose between a full backup or an incremental backup based on what works best for your business.

Always Encrypt Backups

If your Salesforce data backups are not properly encrypted, they could easily be compromised if the data is stolen, misplaced, or jeopardized in some way. 

For this reason, encrypting the data backups is one of the most important data backup best practices. 

Not only does it add an extra layer of security to the entire process, but it also guarantees users peace of mind that the Salesforce data is secure in the event that the backup has to be used for disaster recovery.

Determine and Comply with Retention Requirements

When planning data backups, it’s crucial to know the retention requirements your Salesforce organization must follow, especially based on your industry. 

With data privacy laws like GDPR and HIPAA, businesses need to understand what data must be backed up, how long it should be kept, and when it needs to be deleted. Make sure to comply with these rules, especially when handling sensitive data like health information or payment card details.

Follow the 3-2-1 Rule

Perhaps the most popular best practice for Salesforce data backup is the 3-2-1 backup rule. According to this rule, relying upon a single backup source is not sufficient. 

Instead, organizations should store their backups in more than one storage location for added security. To be more specific, it says to keep 3 copies of the data on 2 different storage mediums with 1 off-site storage solution. 

Using the 3-2-1 backup strategy ensures that the data is always backed up and available for recovery no matter the situation.

Optimize Your Data Backup Strategy with DataArchiva!

Maximize your data protection and compliance with DataArchiva’s powerful backup solutions. Easily automate backups, set custom retention schedules, and ensure your sensitive data stays secure and compliant with industry regulations like GDPR and HIPAA. 

Whether you need full or incremental backups, DataArchiva offers flexible options tailored to your business needs. Start optimizing your Salesforce data management today and safeguard your business for tomorrow!

Are you curious to know how DataArchiva’s backup app can contribute to your Salesforce data protection goals? Schedule a demo with one of our data experts today.

Admin

DataArchiva is an enterprise data management application built for Salesforce that offers complete data management solutions including archive, backup, and seeding.