A significant amount of business-critical data resides in the cloud-hosted Salesforce platform. Salesforce has put safeguards in place to prevent data loss or corruption; however, there is potential for data loss due to cyber attacks, accidental deletion, application outages, and lack of data retention policies. 35% of IT professionals identify SaaS service outages as one of the leading causes of data loss, while 34% attribute it to cyberattacks.
Security vulnerabilities in Apex code, commonly used to customize Salesforce instances, can lead to data loss. Misconfigurations of Salesforce tools and integrations, such as incorrect settings in data loaders, might lead to erroneous transfers or deletions of records. Salesforce data and metadata backup are essential as a mitigation solution for data loss, compliance with data regulations, and ensuring data security and reliability.
Automated Salesforce backup and restore solutions safeguard business data securely and efficiently, ensuring quick recovery with minimal downtime. While Salesforce native backup solutions offer automated backups, they have limitations. The availability of third-party Salesforce automated backups provides organizations complementary solutions for an efficient backup and restore process.
Let's look at how automated Salesforce backup and restore ensure that an organization's data is fully protected and can be quickly retrieved if anything goes wrong.
What Is Automated Salesforce Backup?
Automated Salesforce backup safeguards Salesforce data and metadata by creating regular, scheduled backups without manual intervention. It helps you protect critical business information stored in Salesforce against risks such as accidental deletion, corruption, system failures, or cyberattacks.
Salesforce automated data backups copy data and metadata, including standard and custom objects, attachments, files, chatter feeds, knowledge articles, and more. They enable organizations to restore data to a specific point in time to recover from accidental deletion or corruption. Besides, the backup systems monitor activities and detect anomalies such as deviations or unusual changes in records or objects for which alerts and notifications are sent to administrators for corrective actions.
Why Is Automated Salesforce Backup Important?
Accidental deletions, cyberattacks, or Salesforce outages can result in irreversible data loss without an automated backup. Salesforce automated backups ensure continuous data protection, quick recovery, and regulatory compliance, minimizing downtime and safeguarding business continuity in an increasingly data-driven environment.
Guard Against Salesforce Outages and ensure Business Continuity
Though Salesforce outages are rare, they can disrupt access to your data. Salesforce users faced service disruption on multiple Salesforce instances on November 15, 2024, due to a database maintenance change deleting objects required for application functionality.
Users encountered difficulties accessing critical data and services during the outage, causing significant business disruptions. Automatic data backup ensures data protection and enables quick restoration of vital data to maintain business continuity.
Compliance with Data Regulations
Government regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) require organizations to retain and protect customer and business data for a specified time period. Salesforce backup, along with its bust privacy and security protections, ensures organizations comply with regulations.
Protection Against Cyber Attacks
Cyber incidents, such as the 2023 MoveIt vulnerability and Log4j in the open-source world, have disrupted businesses worldwide. Data breaches have increased by 200% in the last decade, causing significant challenges to organizations globally. Though Salesforce has robust security, automatic data backup protects organizations against potential cyber-attacks and breaches and avoids punitive regulatory fines and actions.
How Automated Backup Works in Salesforce
Unlike traditional file-based backup and restore systems, Salesforce operates in a cloud environment where the organization cannot directly access the underlying database. Salesforce backup solutions function more like data import/export tools in which organizations access and manage data through APIs and specialized tools.
An organization's data retention policy determines the data to be included in the backup and the frequency, which can be monthly, weekly, daily, or hourly. Since most Salesforce data is stored in objects and their related records, they form the foundation of an organization's data backup policy. Salesforce data backups generate files of your organization's data in comma-separated values (CSV) format.
Salesforce Automated Backup Methods
There are two primary backup methods: Salesforce native and dedicated third-party backup solutions.
1. Salesforce Native Backup Solutions
- Paid Backup Solutions
Salesforces offers a comprehensive paid add-on backup solution, Salesforce Backup, which enables organizations to easily set up and configure their backup policy. The enterprise solutions provide automated backups, including metadata, and allow easier data restoration.
Salesforce data backups take place automatically once every 24 hours starting at 5:00 PM Central Time. Organizations can set a custom backup schedule by choosing a start time and preferred time zone to override the standard backup time. You can change your backup schedule at any time according to your requirements.
Additionally organizations can run Delta backup to capture only the new and changed data since their last backup. Delta backups are helpful before and after a major deployment.
- Basic Built-in Backup Solutions
Salesforce provides multiple basic built-in options for data backup and recovery.
- Data Export
Depending on their edition, organizations can schedule or manually generate data backup files weekly or monthly. In Professional and Developer Edition, you can generate backup files only every 29 days, while Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited Editions enable you to generate backup files every seven days. If you want to export all files in your Salesforce org, select the option to include images, documents, attachments, Salesforce Files, and Salesforce CRM Content document version. Within the exported data, include the type of data that you would like to include in your backup.
You can schedule backup files to generate automatically at weekly or monthly intervals.
You will receive an email that includes the link to download the backup files, which are available for 48 hours.
Salesforce.org exports the backup files into comma-separated values (CSV) files.
- Data Loader
It is a client application for bulk data import or export via API. It can be used to take a bulk backup of Salesforce records.
2. Salesforce Third-Party Backup Solutions
Third-party backup solutions offer organizations more flexibility, granularity, and automation than Salesforce's native backup options. The solutions' advanced features, like metadata backups, versioning, and point-in-time recovery, enable seamless restoration of both data and configurations.You can find third-party data backup solutions on Salesforce's integration marketplace, AppExchange.
Third-party data backup solutions like Flosum automate data backup and provide easy-to-use recovery tools that enable you to perform on-demand restoration anytime. The tool's automated backups regularly back up your data and provide seamless recovery options, including granular search capabilities and flexible restore points. Flosum comprehensively covers both data and metadata. It offers custom-designed backup services, ensuring your business data and metadata are secure and recoverable. Organizations can customize backup timing and frequency for all services across enterprises.
Flosum Automated Backup and Restore
In Flosum, organizations can take the backup in full, through a pre-defined template of critical or frequently amended data, or incrementally, limiting the backup to only include changes since the last backup or for archiving. You can also schedule it to run automatically at a frequency you decide.
Select the backup you want to restore from and then choose the type of restore you want to call. Basic restore allows you to retrieve large quantities of data by selecting the objects you need. You can disable any trigger, workflow, validation rules, or other automation.
You can be selective with restoration and include only specific fields or parameters. Flosum also enables you to compare backups to another backup or with the org. It shows the backup files that are different from the files in the source.
The enhanced intuitive user interface consolidates relevant functionality to reduce context switching when creating and managing backups, archives, and restores. You can also view when your Salesforce org is backed up through a timeline or operational view.
Conclusion
Your Salesforce data is constantly at risk, and you must have a comprehensive Salesforce backup strategy, including native Salesforce backup solutions complemented by third-party solutions. The native Salesforce backup solutions have technical limitations, and combining them with third-party solutions like Flosum helps you minimize risks and ensure business continuity.
Flosum offers Salesforce automated backups, data comparison, GDPR and CCPA compliance, full or partial restore options, data/metadata relationship maintenance, easy setup, and top-of-the-line support. Schedule a call to learn more.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why Is It Important To Have a Backup and Restore Solution?
A backup and restore solution safeguards data and prevents loss from human errors, cyberattacks, or system failures. It ensures business continuity by restoring lost data, maintaining compliance with regulatory requirements, and avoiding regulatory actions and fines.
Organizations risk operational disruptions, financial losses, and compromised customer trust without a reliable data backup and restore solution.
How Long Does This Process Take, and What Would the Impact Be on the Business?
The time to back up and restore Salesforce data varies based on volume and solution efficiency. Although backups can be completed in a shorter timeframe, full restores may take hours or days.
If the backup and restore time is not optimized, it can cause downtime, compliance risks, and business disruptions. A fast, reliable solution minimizes disruptions and ensures business continuity.
Can I Monitor and Audit Backup and Restore Activities?
Advanced solutions provide real-time alerts, audit logs, and detailed reports on backup frequency, changes, and restore actions. It helps organizations detect anomalies, ensure regulatory adherence, and verify data integrity for business continuity and security.
Are Specialized Salesforce Backup Solutions Essential, and What Are the Key Features They Offer?
Specialized Salesforce backup solutions complement Salesforce native backup solutions, which have limitations. Third-party backup solutions offer complete backup, including metadata and features like scheduled backups, point-in-time recovery, encryption, compliance support, and detailed audit logs. The automation reduces manual efforts and errors, accelerating the backup and restore process. They ensure business continuity by mitigating risks from data loss, cyber threats, or accidental deletions while maintaining regulatory compliance and operational efficiency.
