In the contemporary world, data plays a critical role in the success of any business. Most businesses, therefore, value data more than money. Data helps companies better understand their customers and the services they require. It also assists businesses in coming up with decisions in a fast and effective manner.
Salesforce is a platform that brings together companies and their customers. The platform stores and protects data for companies without carrying any liability. Therefore, it is your responsibility to build a solid data protection foundation to shield you from data loss. Here are some of the ways to minimize data loss:
Be Cognizant of Potential Risks
The first step in protection against Salesforce data loss is understanding your company’s risk factors. To determine your risk factor, ask yourself these questions:
- Who can access your data?
- How many vendors do you have?
- Does your company have written security practices?
To effectively prevent data loss, get information on data threats and how you can safely handle your data. With this information, then you can come up with a plan to tackle those data loss risks. Many companies don’t have plans to tackle issues of data loss. Therefore, dealing with the realities of data loss will put you ahead of your competitors.
Create a Risk-Aware Culture
In many cases, the loss of data is due to human error. According to the cyber defense magazine, ninety-five percent of all data breaches are due to human error. Therefore, you must train your employees on data security risks and best practices. All employees should be aware of the various data security issues such as plugging in external USB sticks, clicking suspicious attachments, or updating mobile devices with the latest security patches.
With an increase in the number of employees working remotely, IT departments have little control over how employees use their devices. Raising awareness helps remind employees of actions they should take to safeguard data. Consider deploying a policy with zero-tolerance on employees careless about security. In addition, put in place cloud-based systems that automatically push security patches and updates to individual devices.
Secure Access via System Admins
System administrators protect data by monitoring and regulating data access and permissions. Cloud-based information systems allow you to manage data access and permissions without using technical skills. Therefore, it is easy to have your administrator safeguard data by using permissions.
Ensure all your Salesforce system administrators are certified. This increases their skills and knowledge of Salesforce best practices. If you have administrators with “Modify All Data” permissions, ensure they get a Salesforce admin advanced certification. Admins lacking adequate knowledge on Salesforce pose your company to higher risks of data loss.
Optimize the User Interface
Optimizing the user interface in your Salesforce organization contributes largely to data security. A well-built user interface helps improve overall productivity and performance. Additionally, it maintains data accuracy and minimizes the chances of accidental data loss.
You can improve your user interface by easing processes and actions taken by the user regularly. You can also minimize the amount of information available on each page. Keeping your Salesforce navigation simple reduces the risk of duplicate data, compromised data, and accidental deletions.
Have Safeguards and Passwords
One way of safeguarding data is by introducing a data security policy that encourages password hygiene. Password hygiene means having a strong and distinct password. In addition, you can enhance security through two-factor authentication. Finally, ensure you change your password every time you share it with someone.
One of the security challenges facing many businesses is employees using weak passwords. A survey by IT professionals shows that sixty-two percent of employees use weak passwords. To encourage the use of strong passwords, companies can introduce singe-sign on and password vaults that do away with the need to remember passwords.
Minimize System Administrators
People with more than one system administrator profile are at a higher risk of user-inflicted data loss. Having numerous system admin profiles makes your Salesforce prone to ungoverned modifications. Thus, effective management of Salesforce becomes a challenge.
If your Salesforce has more than five system administrator profiles, urgently review the roles and necessity of each. For the users who need admin permissions, consider leveraging the delegate admin options. You can also customize the profiles for the users to only access data crucial to them.
Put in Place a Backup and Recovery Strategy
In most organizations, data loss means massive losses in revenue. If you don’t have a data backup strategy, you expose your business to an enormous risk of data loss. Salesforce advocates for users to work with partner backup solutions to safeguard their data. Consider having a backup and recovery solution that can automatically backup your data.
Most data regulations require that you have immutable backups. Choose a data backup strategy that will allow you to recover data promptly in case of a technical incident. In addition, determine your recovery time objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO). RPO and RTO aid minimize the risk of user-inflicted data loss.
Minimize Use of “Modify All Data” Permission
Profiles with the “modify all data” permission pose a high risk of user-inflicted data loss. It is the most robust permission in Salesforce. This permission permits a user to access all data and amend or erase it. The best practice is to disallow all profiles from accessing the “modify all data” permission on your Salesforce.
Only administrators or high-end users should have access to the “modify all data” permission. Even allowing five profiles to access this permission puts your data at very high risk. For surety that no standard user has access to the “modify all data” permission, review all profiles. Ensure no ordinary user can access the modify metadata, customize the application, modify all data, or view and set up configuration permissions.
Let Us Support You
Many people depend on Salesforce each day as they upload, modify or erase data. You are exposed to the risk of data loss more than you can imagine. Nevertheless, don’t worry about getting a quick fix to safeguard your data. At Flosum, we offer solutions that automate data backups, compare and identify lost data, and fully or partially restore data. Ensure you contact us today to get a personalized plan from our team of experts.
