The Dangers of Not Using a Salesforce Backup
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If your company uses Salesforce, then you know how critical that data is. It contains all the information on your customers, including orders, contact history, sales agreements and more.
Losing that data, even for a single customer, would be a nightmare. And a large-scale data loss? That could easily cause a monumental disruption to your operations.
In this post, we look at the most common causes of data loss in Salesforce (it happens way more often than you might think) to underscore why an independent Salesforce backup solution is so critical.
4 out of 5 companies lose SaaS data
Don't get us wrong – SaaS is great. Applications like Salesforce allow companies to run their businesses in the cloud without the need to build expensive in-house applications. Data can be accessed from anywhere, and since it's not stored on-premise, it's not as vulnerable to physical disasters at your location, like fire or flooding.
Simply put, SaaS applications are a fast, efficient and secure way to process important tasks, such as customer relationship management.
But that doesn't mean SaaS is invulnerable either. 80% of companies say they have experienced SaaS data loss in apps like Salesforce, for a multitude of reasons, as we outline below.
One example of a Salesforce scare
Let's look at one of the most common data-loss scenarios in Salesforce.
Bill, your sales manager, has just discovered something amazing that will make his team 400% more efficient. It's a third-party app called EveryDarnThing, which allows him to connect Salesforce to virtually any other API and thus nearly any other SaaS application.
Bill's team uses a whole bunch of different apps, so EveryDarnThing will sync everything together and save boatloads of time. Brilliant!
But Bill doesn't consult with IT about this integration. And so in the process, he messes things up—badly. He misconfigures the integration, which creates a huge mess in Salesforce. Data is overwritten; fields are incorrectly mapped; and some data is just plain gone.
It's a costly disaster that takes months to fully recover from.
Can't Salesforce save you?
This is one of the most common misconceptions about Salesforce backup. Many users mistakenly believe one of three things (if not all three):
1) That Salesforce itself is a form of "backup" since the data is being stored in the cloud.
2) That the built-in Salesforce backup option will provide a quick, seamless recovery if data is lost.
3) That Salesforce has your back, no matter what.
Let's dig a little deeper into how both of these misconceptions are problematic.
Misconception #1: The cloud = backup
It's true that storing data in the cloud provides a layer of protection against threats to your on-site servers. Furthermore, generally speaking, a cloud data backup solution can be a good way to store your backups off-premise for added protection.
But Salesforce itself is not a form of backup simply because the data is in the cloud.
Keep in mind that data is usually generated in Salesforce, not copied there. In other words, things like customer data usually reside only in Salesforce and nowhere else. There's no other copy. So if something happens to that SaaS data, it's gone.
Misconception #2: Salesforce has a backup option
It's true that you can export backup data from Salesforce, but these backups are very limited.
For one, even if you're scheduling weekly or monthly backups, you're still leaving a lot of room for data loss. For example, if your weekly backup is scheduled for Friday, but you experience data loss on Thursday, you still lose nearly a week's worth of data.
But the bigger problem is the export itself. There's no one-click recovery option that seamlessly restores all your data back into Salesforce. Instead, you're left with a massive CSV file that needs to be painstakingly reimported back into the application. Even with the Salesforce data loader and API tools, this process is still very manual and time-intensive.
Salesforce exports are a good last-resort option, but they should not be used as a primary backup solution.
Misconception #3: Salesforce always has your back
Nobody is questioning the integrity of Salesforce's own infrastructure or security measures. If, somehow, Salesforce's servers suddenly failed and your data was lost, the company would likely still be able to retrieve that data from its own internal backups.
But the same cannot be said for mishaps that occur on the user end.
With the exception of the manual exports mentioned above, Salesforce may not be able to restore your data when it's been lost due to user error (the #1 cause of SaaS data loss). You can try using the Salesforce Data Recovery Service, but that could run you at least $10,000, and even then it could take up to 6 weeks to get your data back.
So, how exactly do these user errors happen, and what do they look like?
We illustrated one common example above—data being accidentally overwritten during misconfigured integrations. Here are some other common scenarios.
47% of SaaS data loss is caused by accidental deletion
In a survey by Aberdeen Group, nearly half of respondents said they experienced data loss in their SaaS applications because employees accidentally deleted data.
Accidental deletion is the top cause of lost SaaS data. In Salesforce, that translates into deleted customer records, billing data, communications – you name it.
A common reason for the deletion is that users believe the data is no longer needed. In other cases, people literally just hit the wrong buttons (this is particularly true with inexperienced users who aren't properly trained or aren't careful using the mobile app). Some deleted data can be recovered from the Salesforce Recycle Bin, but after 90 days, it's gone for good.
Maliciously deleted data
A whole other type of data deletion in Salesforce isn't accidental at all. It's on purpose.
Nobody likes to think their own employees are capable of vindictively erasing Salesforce data in an attempt to hurt the company. But this happens more than you might think.
7% of survey respondents said they lost SaaS data because of users maliciously deleting it. A common example is an employee who has been terminated from the company and then proceeds to empty not only his desk but also his digital footprint at the company. Somebody with admin access in Salesforce can do a lot of damage in a short amount of time. And if there's no backup, deleted data might not be recoverable.
Botched migrations, mis-mapped fields, lost attachments – oh my!
Lost data in Salesforce can take many other forms.
Generally, any kind of data migration can get you into trouble if you're not careful. Examples include importing data from another application, adding existing users' data to your organization, migrating data from another organization and so on.
What can go wrong with these migrations?
· Fields get incorrectly mapped, resulting in wrong data in the wrong places
· Critical data gets overwritten or corrupted
· Some data doesn't migrate at all, leaving you with bad data
· Data simply goes missing: Salesforce objects, file attachments, etc. Maybe it's not erased, but it's not where it should be and nobody knows where it went
It can be a time-consuming mess to make sense of these botched migrations, let alone get everything back to normal. Remember: it's not just the data that you're migrating that gets messed up. When data is overwritten, for example, you stand to lose a lot of existing data too. So it's not like you can simply try the migration again to fix your mistakes. You'll need to restore the old data first. And without a backup, that process will be long and tedious.
Salesforce Backup with Backupify
Backupify from Datto is a cloud-to-cloud Salesforce backup solution that backs up your Salesforce data daily and stores it in Datto's own secure cloud.
We like Backupify because it's automatic. Backups happen every day, and they include all your Salesforce data (including metadata):
· Standard Salesforce objects (accounts, leads, contacts, opportunities, etc.)
· Custom Salesforce objects
· Files (attachments, documents, etc.)
· Chatter messages
· Apex code
Backups can also be performed manually at any time, which is ideal for when migrations are about to take place or before other apps are integrated. So if anything goes wrong during those processes, you can restore everything back to the way it was.
Full data restoration
A quick and seamless data restoration is another reason why Backupify is a much safer bet than Salesforce's own backup export capabilities.
With Backupify, you can restore exactly what you need to, whether it's an entire backup or individual objects, with just a few clicks. The data is fully restored back in the application, so you don't have to deal with messy CSV exports or a manual, destructive restore process.
Find lost data quickly
Backupify has robust search capabilities, which let you quickly find the specific data you need. It only takes a few seconds to find highly specific data within your backups, like individual objects or files.
Even better, you don't need to be connected to Salesforce to access that data. Your backups are stored independently in Datto's secure datacenters. This means that even if Salesforce is down, you can still access your Salesforce data within Backupify's independent interface.