Cloud Backup Expert Tips: Uncertain Times Cast a Spotlight on Business Continuity

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By Matthew Hutchison, VP Product Marketing at OwnBackup
March 27, 2020

Cloud Backup Expert Tips: Uncertain Times Cast a Spotlight on Business Continuity

Across the globe, organizations of all shapes and sizes are faced with unprecedented challenges. The realities of the current situation have caused us all to react quickly and decisively, from mandating work-from-home policies and restricting non essential employee travel, to canceling large events and postponing business initiatives.

During this time, the most important thing is that we stay healthy and protect the health of everyone around us. But beyond a greater focus on maintaining the well being of employees, families, and customers, these changes have cast a spotlight on how prepared companies are for crises. Once again, the lesson is that business continuity plans should be tested and reviewed early and often.

Here at OwnBackup, your data protection is top of mind at all times. But given our current climate, it’s more important than ever to review how backup and recovery of your organization’s data fits into your business continuity planning.

Let’s examine the four reasons why a Salesforce backup and recovery solution is more crucial than ever:

1. A global crisis reinforces the need for a data recovery plan.

Few of us could have predicted we’d be where we are now. It serves as yet another reminder that the unexpected can happen at any time. On a lesser but still significant scale, this is also true of data loss and corruption. User-inflicted data loss happens, often unexpectedly, so it is important to have a data backup and recovery plan.

For many industries, including healthcare, pharma, and manufacturing, losing data is not an option, especially now when these industries are being stretched to their limits like never before.

As you construct your data recovery plan, it’s critical to make sure that it’s a comprehensive one. What makes a solution comprehensive is one that has intuitive data identification tools and fast recovery times in a data loss scenario. You should also be sure that the solution meets your company’s security and compliance requirements, and provides accessible, reliable backups of all of your Salesforce data, metadata, AND attachments.

2. A remote workforce creates new challenges, including for your data.

Over the next few months, you’re going to be hearing A LOT about the pros and cons of working remotely, and how to do it most effectively. We’re not here to give you advice on that front. But we do want to point out how having a fully remote workforce could potentially put your Salesforce data at higher risk.

According to one study, 86% of business executives agreed data breaches are more likely to occur when employees are working out of office. Coupled with the fact that 88% of companies have no comprehensive backup and recovery strategy according to the 2020 State of Salesforce Data Protection survey results, these statistics are especially concerning.

Designed to mimic the office experience from a different location, remote employees have the ability to access corporate servers, customer data, email, databases, and the cloud all from their laptop or mobile device. However, logging in to any of these networks without the company’s private internet connection increases the risk for that employee experiencing a data security incident and for information to be compromised.

Just as remote workers can mitigate these risks by using security measures like VPN and two-factor authentication, employers have the responsibility to implement an enterprise-wide Salesforce backup and recovery strategy for when a data loss occurs.

3. Less direct oversight and control can lead to data errors.

Beyond the security concerns mentioned above, there are also other, less obvious risks that come with not being together in one place.

For example, let’s say your organization has multiple Salesforce administrators who all sit together while in the office. Before any of them make an important change within the platform, they are likely communicating those changes to each other in real time.

When those same employees work remotely, that communication chain is delayed or sometimes non-existent for workers who haven’t been trained on remote work communication procedures. Yes, email, text, and messaging platforms can help, but they can never replace that instant feedback. You can imagine the increased risk of errors as admins or other Salesforce users duplicate or bypass certain tasks simply over a lack of communication.

Having a proactive solution in place is critical. This way, you don’t have to rely on another user to know when data is changed, deleted, or corrupted. Plus, you can get regular updates on your backup progress for further peace of mind.

4. With other projects on hold, there’s more time to focus on new initiatives.

As we all do our part to follow “social distancing” guidelines, in-person business meetings, conferences, events, video shoots, etc. have come to a halt. While some of these can still be held virtually, many still require face-to-face interaction. For OwnBackup, several Salesforce events we had planned to attend have been cancelled or postponed, so we are looking into new (digital) ways to connect with customers and prospects.

What initiatives has your organization been putting off that you could tackle now? A Salesforce data backup strategy tends to be one of those things that people say they will “get to eventually,” or “when I have time.” Well, now might be that time.

Moving forward together

We understand that this is a challenging situation and there are lots of things you may be concerned about. At OwnBackup, we are doing everything possible to make sure your Salesforce data isn’t one of them.

For our current customers, this means operating without any service disruptions. OwnBackup runs on AWS servers across 10+ data centers distributed across the globe. In addition, we apply industry-leading security measures including real-time and near real-time replication of data, secure encrypted connections, multiple copies of data distributed across data centers, and global 24/7 monitoring.

As a cloud-native company with a global team and flexible workforce, we are prepared to manage all business opportunities and challenges virtually. We will continue to have open channels for timely communications with our customers, employees, and other stakeholders.

Should you have any concerns about your account during this time, OwnBackup’s Customer Success team is available 24×7.

For everyone else, we are ready to help you reduce your risk of data loss and maintain business continuity. To learn more about OwnBackup and our solutions, click here, or request a demo below.

Let’s all stay healthy and safe!

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About OwnBackup
OwnBackup, a leading cloud-to-cloud backup and restore vendor, provides secure, automated, daily backups of SaaS and PaaS data, as well as sophisticated data compare and restore tools for disaster recovery. Helping more than 1,700 businesses worldwide protect critical cloud data, OwnBackup covers data loss and corruption caused by human errors, malicious intent, integration errors and rogue applications. Built for security and privacy, OwnBackup exceeds the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements for backed-up data. Co-founded by seasoned data-recovery, data-protection and information-security experts, OwnBackup is a top-ranked backup and restore ISV on Salesforce AppExchange and was awarded the Salesforce Appy Award in 2018. Headquartered in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, with R&D, support and other functions in Tel Aviv and London, OwnBackup is the vendor of choice for some of the world’s largest users of SaaS applications. For more information, visit http://www.ownbackup.com

About the Author: Matthew Hutchison is VP of Product Marketing at OwnBackup, a leading cloud to cloud backup company that offers bespoke services to global businesses and consumers.

Tags: Expert Tips, Matthew Hutchison, OwnBackup