Today, privacy is top of mind for many, both personally and professionally. As the number of cyberattacks and data breaches continues to rise, with a 68% increase in data breaches from 2020 to 2021 and another 14% increase from 2021 to 2022, people want to know their information is safe and secure.
Because CRMs like Salesforce are often a treasure trove of personal and sensitive information – from client contact information to financial records – businesses using these platforms must take precautions to secure their customers’ information and ensure they meet global privacy and security regulations like General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
Organizations can secure their data and meet compliance requirements by adopting a compliant data protection strategy.
How to Stay Compliant with Salesforce Data Protection
A compliant data protection strategy protects both your content and the data within that content. It prioritizes privacy and confidentiality in addition to backup and recovery. It ensures you hold on to the data you need – nothing more, nothing less – and enables you to validate this fact.
If you’re just getting started, this can feel challenging. Adopting compliant data protection is a complete mindset shift from traditional backup methods, as the demand for more privacy makes it insufficient to simply have a redundant copy of your important information sitting in a cloud somewhere.
Fortunately, you are not facing these challenges alone. A good backup provider should not only offer a solution that streamlines or automates these challenges, but also expertise in any rules you face that will help you navigate the regulatory waters.
Top 3 Compliance Concerns for Salesforce Data
Let’s look at three of the top concerns for organizations adopting compliant data protection and how a good backup provider can help you address them.
1. Understanding Where Your Data Lives
Whether facing data sovereignty or data residency regulations, it’s never been more crucial to know exactly where your data lives.
You may be used to backing up your data onto servers in your office, and now you need to coordinate data in multiple data centers around the world.
This can easily be accomplished if you find a backup provider that can customize where your data is stored. Whether you have your own containers already or need someone to manage what data can be stored where, a backup provider that offers compliant data protection should have capabilities that meet your needs.
For example, AvePoint Cloud Backup is built on Azure, meaning the entirety of Azure’s global data centers are at your disposal and you can dictate exactly where specific data is stored. Beyond helping you meet data sovereignty requirements, this can also enhance your business continuity. After all, many disaster recovery experts recommend businesses store their backups in a location independent of their production org.
For those who already have storage they like, such as Amazon S3, Dropbox, or your own Blob Storage, you can bring your own storage and still benefit from AvePoint’s expertise.
2. Retaining Only What You Need
Some regulations dictate a certain timeframe that you can hold on to data. For example, one of the seven principles of GDPR is storage limitations, stating you should only hold on to personal data “for as long as you need it.” This means you must delete a customer’s credit card or social security number after using it for its intended purpose.
On the surface, this may seem like an easy, manual process, but it can get difficult quickly as you scale your operations and processes become more complex. What’s more, you need to not only sponge that information from your production org, but also from any backups or sandboxes; if you’re performing multiple backups a day, this can get out of control quickly.
The best solution is to invest in a backup provider that automates data cleanup. For example, AvePoint Cloud Backup has an entire module dedicated to data cleanup. Within the solution, you can identify what pieces in the record you want to cleanse – such as a customer’s address – and then apply it against the records and the backup sets, ensuring you are purging data from both the production org and backups. The solution also allows you to run reports as a reassurance that the information is deleted, validating the fact that your org is compliant.
This can be helpful in other situations as well, such as if other regulations like the Right to be Forgotten apply to you, as this also requires you to have a method to delete personal information if requested.
3. Responding to Data Inquiries
Both GDPR and CCPA as well as the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) gives consumers the right to request copies of any personal information that an organization may have, giving individuals transparency and full control over their own data.
For example, GDPR’s right to data portability requires organizations to deliver any personal data upon request in a “structured, commonly used and machine-readable format.” A FOIA request allows the public to request access to records from any federal agency.
Cloud Backup offers search and export functions that simplify information-gathering requests such as GDPR, CCPA, and FOI. Using the solution, you can search by keyword or upload a CSV file to identify records from the backup data and export reports to respond to the data inquiries. Then, should the individual request it, you can easily purge individual fields or entire records with Cloud Backup’s data cleanup module.
Bonus: For any US federal agencies looking to streamline FOIA requests and for more compliant data protection, Cloud Backup is the only FedRAMP-authorized backup solution for Salesforce.
Building a Proactive Compliant Data Protection Approach
While properly managing your Salesforce data is critical for compliant data protection, it’s important to note that sensitive data in any collaboration platform (i.e., Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox, etc.) must be protected to ensure your customers’ privacy.
So, be forward-thinking when building your compliant data protection strategy. Consider your IT infrastructure; ask yourself, what SaaS applications do you use or will you use in the future that may face compliance issues? Partnering with a provider that offers compliant data protection across multiple SaaS applications will prevent switching providers in the future.
Think about what requirements you face now and what you might face in the future as your organization expands or regulations increase. A provider that has access to global data centers and expertise in international regulations will help you scale with ease.
This proactive approach will not only help you meet regulations for today but set you up for success in the future.
Final Thoughts
Backup is a critical component of privacy compliance. As a leader in multi-cloud backup, AvePoint Cloud Backup is the answer to your data protection compliance concerns. Through a combination of automatic daily backups; comprehensive, granular restore capabilities (including data and metadata); and search and export functions that simplify information gathering requests, Cloud Backup can offer you a safe, compliant Salesforce environment.
Start your free trial of AvePoint Cloud Backup today and enjoy a more efficient way of protecting your Salesforce data.
