Thwarting Cyber-attacks & Promoting Cybersecurity in Financial Sector: Role of Salesforce Data Backups

The banking & financial sector is extremely vulnerable to cyber-attacks because of the value of data it holds. Financial services providers such as banks, credit unions, credit card companies, & investment firms leverage the Salesforce cloud platform to work with the personally identifiable information (PII) of its clients & customers. It can include sensitive information such as home addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, email addresses, banking details, & income information.

According to recent cybersecurity statistics, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a 238% increase in the number of cyber-attacks against banks & other financial institutions. Hackers use the stolen financial data & banking credentials to siphon off millions of dollars. In fact, the 2019 Accenture report on the cost of cybercrime stated that for financial services, the average cost of cybercrime per company was a whopping $18.5 million.

Biggest Threats to Data in Financial Sector

Owing to digital transformation, the potential attack surface for financial institutions has only grown because of their growing digital footprint. As companies use more mobile apps, net banking services, & other online services, they are exposed to new threats & cyber-attackers even more. Though these digital banking solutions have enabled easier & better access to financial services, they have also created serious gaps in cybersecurity that hackers can exploit.

In order to ensure proper safety & data protection in Salesforce, cybersecurity & financial services must go hand in hand. An effective cybersecurity plan for the Salesforce system can be created only by identifying & analyzing the top threats to the data. Let’s briefly discuss some of those vectors:

Malware – Malware is one of the biggest threats to data in the financial enterprise’s Salesforce Org. In fact, malware is responsible for over 75% of data breaches in this sector. Given the sensitive nature of financial data, there can be severe consequences of being attacked by malwares.

Data manipulation – Many cybercriminals, instead of stealing the data, just manipulate it & make certain changes in the data stored in the primary data storage of Salesforce. Most of these changes go undetected because they look so legit but can wreck the system in the long run.

Third-party services – Sometimes even after the financial institution has impenetrable data security layers, its data is left at the mercy of hackers & criminals if the third-party systems it uses have vulnerabilities. These security issues can easily cascade down & ultimately affect the entire financial institution. 

Unencrypted data – When financial firms, usually small or regional entities, store their business data in an unencrypted form, it makes it easier for cybercriminals to exploit them. In turn, even if the hackers gain undue access to the data, if it is encrypted, it will be potentially useless for them.

Social engineering – Unlike conventional threats that exploit system vulnerabilities, social engineering attacks capitalize on human weaknesses. These include elaborated designed phishing scams that trick top officials & gain access to their login credentials, using which hackers can steal critical data or even encrypt data.

Why Financial Firms Need Data Backups

Important Aspect of a Strategic Business Plan – Considering the impact of losing data held in the Salesforce CRM, the effects can be detrimental to a financial institution. For this reason, data backups & disaster recovery plans are vital to the security & well-being of the system data. Making data backups an integral part of the overall business strategy goes a long way in ensuring business continuity in the financial sector.

Continued Protection for Data & Assets – Since the loss of business data directly results in loss of revenue, data backup is a cost-effective strategy that ensures that the firm’s assets are always secured. Because the security of data in Salesforce is imperative, it’s critical that financial firms devise the right kind of data backup strategies to maintain tight control & visibility over business-critical information.

Also Read: How a future-proof data backup strategy can help your business grow in Salesforce

Backup for Regulatory Reasons – The financial sector is a heavily regulated industry. As per the GDPR & SEC regulations, financial companies are required to keep certain data for a minimum of 7 years, failing to do so results in heavy fines. Comprehensive data backup strategies help financial institutions protect their data in the event of a security breach, data loss, natural disaster, or any other threat, thereby ensuring its continued availability for retention & regulatory compliance purposes.

Protection against Software & Hardware Outages – Power outages, software outages, & hardware problems happen from time to time, and banks & financial institutions need to make sure their Salesforce data is backed up in case of any of these events. If a software outage with data occurs and financial institutions don’t have the capability to roll back to previous versions of data history, it would cause severe compliance issues & result in heavy fines.

How DataArchiva Backup Helps Improve Data Security in Financial Sector Firms

Comprehensive data backup solutions not only can help financial companies bounce back from cyber-attacks, but they can also minimize the effect of data loss disasters & support business continuity. One such robust data backup solution that comes to the aid of financial institutions leveraging Salesforce is DataArchiva Backup. By intelligently backing up the critical data into secure AWS S3 servers & allowing it to be restored on-demand, this solution makes the entire process of data backup & recovery in Salesforce simple & hassle-free.

For your benefit, we have this amazing product datasheet that highlights all the important features & functionalities of the DataArchiva Backup solution. If you’re still left with some queries regarding the app, feel free to reach out to our experts & get your doubts cleared. 

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