Introduction

Salesforce is the undisputed market leader when it comes to customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, with a 23.9% market share, as per IDC (figure below).

More than 150,000 companies across the globe trust Salesforce for managing their data ecosystems – doing everything from gathering and converting leads to opportunities, managing information to understand and engage customers, extracting insights from the data, to sharing information across the organization.

It’s clear that Salesforce is very much at the heart of your value chain, but how safe is the most important asset of your organization, your data? Let’s explore this question.

How Effective Is Native Salesforce Backup and Recovery Service?

According to industry analysts (and even a Salesforce best-practices blog), using the native backup and recovery capabilities can have the following drawbacks:

• It takes 6 to 8 weeks for data backup recovery time objective (RTO)
• Salesforce Data Recovery Service is very expensive, costing $10,000 per restore per organization
• Backup does not cover vital Salesforce metadata. You’ll miss out on custom fields, page layouts, reports, dashboards, and custom code backup.
• Salesforce ended its Data Recovery Service in July 2020, citing quality issues, but it was revived in March 2021 after customers demanded a native backup service.
• Salesforce suggests using third-party backups as part of the data backup strategy.

Why Do You Need Third-Party Backup?

In addition to the drawbacks above, there are many reasons why Salesforce data should be backed up with a third-party backup and recovery solution. Let us explore some of the main reasons:

1. Salesforce recommends it:
   
   “There are a number of data backup solutions offered by our partners on our AppExchange. Some of these are more comprehensive in that they allow you to automate backups of both your data AND your metadata and provide a mechanism by which to restore that data easily. You can search for these by visiting the AppExchange directly and searching for keyword backup. We recommend that customers vet multiple offerings and audit the reviews provided by other customers before selecting one of these offerings.”
   
2. Accidental deletion
   
   Consider this statement directly from Salesforce best practices to back up data:
   
   “Even with the best of intentions, users and administrators have been in situations where they have either deleted large amounts of data, or have modified records, only to later realize that a mistake was made. With tools like the Data Loader, it is very easy to mass delete or update records. And a simple mistake in your source file or field mapping could spell disaster for your data. It is recommended that you keep a regular backup of your data and to do a manual point-in-time backup before you proceed with any major data project within your organization.”
   
   Accidental deletion remains the top cause of Salesforce data loss, leading to nearly 70% of the data loss incidents.
   
3. Cybersecurity attacks
   
   Being at the heart of the value chain and hosting huge volumes of sensitive customer data, Salesforce is a prime target for cybersecurity attacks.
   
   Unfortunately, in 2019, a cloud-based e-commerce platform and children’s clothing company, Hanna Andersson, had its data exposed due to a malware that infiltrated Salesforce. The breach compromised a considerable chunk of customer data, including credit card information and personal identifiers. The hackers gathered data from about 10,000 consumers nationwide and sold it to criminals on the dark web.
   
   Bearing the sophistication of cyberattacks in mind, it is important to consider what the impact of a security breach is on your organization, and what your data protection plan is to mitigate these attacks.
   
   A third-party cloud backup is a key component of data protection best practices. With reliable backups and quick recovery in case of a disaster, you will not only have peace of mind that you can recover data (and metadata) when you need it, but also that you maintain data compliance.
   
4. Unpredictable (and high) costs
   
   Professional service costs are high, as high as $10,000 per restore, per organization. A third-party backup provider can offer superior services for a predictable, all-inclusive price per user, per month.
   
5. Limited data backup retention period
   
   Is your customer data part of your long-term strategy? Salesforce backup is limited to a maximum retention period of 90 days. In contrast, a third-party backup provider can provide the flexibility to retain data, from one year and up to 99 years.
   
6. The infrequency of backups and lacking automation
   
   Salesforce Data Export Service allows you to back up every seven days (or 29 days, depending on the Salesforce edition). Additionally, datasets greater than 512 MB are exported into multiple zip files.
   
   When compared to this, a third-party backup provider offers you complete, automated daily backups with data and metadata in a time- and user-friendly fashion. Further, they provide tracking and monitoring of the latest backup and your backup history.
   
7. Lackluster user experience and poor recovery options
   
   When you need to recover objects, dealing manually with multiple 512 MB zip files is resource intensive. A third-party backup can provide you with these additional features:

• Drill down to specific objects
• A search option to instantly search and recover deleted or modified data
• Granular restore
• Compare and restore metadata
• Restore permanently deleted records
• Navigate snapshots of previous data versions and recover

Ultimately, as an IT Leader, it comes down to data protection and data availability. Can your business afford to lose mission-critical data for 6 to 8 weeks? Can your budget handle unpredictable costs up to $10,000? Can you perform time consuming, manual reconfigurations due to loss of metadata with Salesforce backup?

Instead of worrying about when data loss will happen, by using a third-party backup provider, you can recover data and metadata in minutes – at a predictable price point – regardless of what happens.

Keepit Backup and Recovery for Salesforce

Keepit for Salesforce saves you time, is cost effective, scalable, provides ease-of-use through a simple user interface, and gives you peace of mind that your data is securely backed up, recoverable, and available whenever you need it. With Keepit, we ensure this through:

• Automated daily backups every 12 hours
• Easy user interface which is clutter-free, intuitive, and increases productivity
• Set and forget operation – set up in a few clicks and the backup will be running in the background
• Unlimited storage and archiving at no extra charge
• Technology scalable to millions of users with long backup retention from 12 months to unlimited
• Point-in-time restores
• Blockchain-verified technology for protecting your data
• World-class security with dual data centers and 4 copies of data in private data centers

Keepit for Salesforce saves you time, is cost effective, scalable, easy to use through a simple user interface, and gives you peace of mind that your data is securely backed up, recoverable, and available whenever you need it. With Keepit, we ensure this through:

• Automated daily backups every 12 hours
• Easy user interface which is clutter-free, intuitive, and increases productivity
• Set and forget operation – set up in a few clicks and the backup will be running in the background
• Unlimited storage and archiving at no extra charge
• Technology scalable to millions of users with long backup retention from 12 months to unlimited
• Point-in-time restores
• Blockchain-verified technology for protecting your data
• World-class security with dual data centers and 4 copies of data in private data centers

If you have children, you’re probably familiar with the feeling you experience when you suddenly realize how much they’ve grown over a period of time. Day by day, those changes may seem small, but when looking across years or decades, they add up. So it is with Office 365, which has grown to have more than 345 million paid seats and generates a large part of the nearly US$100 billion that Microsoft will book for cloud revenue this year. I’m old enough to remember Microsoft’s proud announcement that Exchange Server itself had crossed the US$1 billion/year revenue mark back in 2004.

“But what does that have to do with why I should back up my Microsoft 365 data?” you ask. Good question. In fact, it’s a great question, and one that leads to lots of other questions (thus the structure of this post as a sort of informal Q & A). 

This steady, sustained, and impressive revenue growth came about because organizations value the collaboration and communication features in Office 365 highly enough not just to subscribe, but to stay on the platform. Every minute that your users are using Office 365 applications and services, they’re creating and editing the data that your business needs to operate.

“What’s the worst that could happen?”

Lots of people tend to think that bad things only happen to other people. It’s natural to assume that the extensive data protection measures in Microsoft’s platform will keep your data safe—but that’s not entirely true. In future articles, I’ll dig into specific parts of the Microsoft data protection world and talk about their strengths and weaknesses, but for now, let’s say that it’s more accurate to say that Microsoft’s native data protection measures may protect you against some types of catastrophic data loss, but there are still lots of things to watch out for. 

First, not all data items are created equal; that email in your sent items folder accepting the meeting request for Bob’s retirement party isn’t worth as much as the Excel file that has your end-of-quarter sales data. To make this problem worse, let’s not forget that not all workloads are equally well protected. Some services have recycle bins, and some do not. Some provide support for document versioning, and some don’t.

Second, consider which threats you really need to protect against. Aliens probably aren’t going to attack Microsoft’s entire network and burn down all their data centers—the biggest risk you actually face isn’t Microsoft permanently losing your data (although it does sometimes happen).

Instead, there are some bigger risks you face, including, but not limited to, these:

• Service outages: A Microsoft outage will keep you from getting access to your data. The multiple outages in Azure multi-factor authentication that blocked users from logging on to the service in 2019, 2020, and 2021 are great examples. 
• Oops: A mistake by your own users or administrators, or by Microsoft’s service team, will delete some important data. (KPMG IT blunder erases 145,000 users’ data). 
• Malicious deletion: A security breach or problem will cause you to lose access to your data, either because ransomware has removed or encrypted it or because something else in the chain gets broken.

We sum these potential causes up with a simple phrase: mishaps, mistakes, and malice.

As you can see, the native data protection features included with the service may not help in all these scenarios, especially because you may have important data in workloads that don’t have much protection. Having an independent cloud-based backup with no dependencies on Microsoft’s services can preserve your ability to access your data even during an Azure AD or other outage.

“Is Microsoft responsible for my data?”

In a word: No, as you can see from this Microsoft article. Microsoft essentially says that they’re responsible for security (which in this case I’ll say means the confidentiality, integrity, and availability)of the infrastructure used to run Office 365, but that in the end you are the owner of, and responsible for, the data itself. 

If you carefully read the Office 365 or Azure service descriptions, you won’t find any promises by Microsoft that say things like “we promise to protect your data” or “we’ll never lose your data.” Instead, when you examine their security best practices for various parts of their estate, you’ll see recommendations to back up your data, test your backups, maintain good personnel security, and so on—all things that Microsoft may also be doing, but on which you probably shouldn’t bet your company.

“Do I really need a third-party backup tool?”

It’s an old cliché that aviation regulations are “written in blood.” When it comes to backups, it might be less dramatic and more fair to say that backup best practices are written in tears, lost dollar bills, or maybe in shredded resumes.  

The risk of you unrecoverably losing all of your M365 data may seem small, but the impact of such a loss would be very high for most of us. This is especially true when you consider that a worrying number (86%) of ransomware operators haven’t been restoring data even after the ransom’s been paid!  

The risk of unrecoverably losing some of your data, though, grows in line with multiple factors: how much data you have, how much of it is high-value, how many people have write access to it, and how emerging security threats hold that data at risk. Having an immutable copy of your important data stored securely in an independent cloud is terrific insurance against both large- and small-scale risks. 

Ken Schirrmacher, Sr. Director of IT/Interim CIO at Park ‘N Fly

“What do I do now?”

If you haven’t ever lost data because of malice, mistakes, or mishaps, maybe you’re not convinced of the value of robust, cloud-independent backup for your data. Sadly, though, most of us have indeed lost data for some (or maybe all!) of these reasons.  

Either way, the first step in deciding how to best protect your SaaS data is to take an honest and comprehensive look at the potential losses you’d face from not having timely access to your critical data. The built-in reports in the Microsoft 365 admin center will help tell you who your most active users are and who has how much data in OneDrive, SharePoint, and Exchange Online. Couple that with your own knowledge of your business and you’ll get a good start on deciding where the potential catastrophes might lie. 

Next, think clearly about the risks you face, both from the standpoint of your IT organization’s capability and maturity but also from the overall standpoint of your business. Many organizations have increased their spending on security—which is often beneficial!—but haven’t done anything to improve their ability to protect against mishaps or mistakes, much less to carefully plan and test a recovery strategy.

If, after doing these things, you realize that some or all of your Microsoft 365 data is valuable enough for your company to protect to continue day-to-day operations, then you can read more about how Keepit Backup and Recovery for Microsoft 365 can help protect your data on our product page.

Data sovereignty asks: Can you tell your data subjects exactly where their cloud data is stored?

The cloud, somewhat intangible and sometimes referred to as “up there” is actually very much grounded, geolocated within the borders of countries. Data sovereignty and data center strategy are important considerations for organizations as everything in the cloud is stored in data centers. But where? This should be an easy answer – and it is central to the discourse on data sovereignty.  

As cloud computing becomes the norm, so does the knowledge that a data protection strategy following best practices needs to be implemented in the cloud to ensure, among many things, data sovereignty. 

Not knowing where data is stored can be dangerous and may lead to exposing a company to unwanted risk: loss of company trust, litigation, compliance headaches, stagnation in business growth, fines, and permanent, unrecoverable data loss. 

What Is Data Sovereignty (if nothing more than difficult to spell)?

Data sovereignty is much more than a buzzword – it is rife with important requirements for organizations to protect and manage their (and their data subjects’) data in line with local and international laws, thereby complying with the general governance of the jurisdictions where the data has traveled across and is stored – not only where the company is located. 

Complying with the foreign legal requirements associated with data transmission across borders “is an important matter because the location of data storage directly affects the applicability of local privacy legislation” (Data Sovereignty: A Review). Not knowing where your data is also means you are unaware of the laws to which you are subject. 

Even while knowing where your data is stored, it can be complicated (and it may constitute a high risk) to store data in regions where there may be different or unique requirements—or instability in the local political spheres that may result in outages—impacting data availability and ultimately data security.

By now, many of us have experienced the changes that followed the European Union’s implementation of the GDPR, where the fundamental right for data protection of data subjects is protected, resulting in an increased awareness (and requirements) regarding the handling of data. Learn more about compliance and GDPR here.

Simplifying the Situation

In the convoluted world of data sovereignty and data compliance, there are steps that organizations can take to add simplicity and predictability to their data management strategy. For instance, storing data in data centers that offer no-transmission guarantees means no surprises in terms of litigation due to the confidence of knowing exactly where data is stored. One way of achieving this is with a third-party backup service deploying a global data center strategy focused on (and committed to) guaranteeing no data leaves the customer’s chosen data center region. 

These services are offered by companies specializing in cloud SaaS (software as a service) backup and recovery. These providers may offer the added benefit of deploying a multi-regional data center approach with the ability to store targeted data in the regions required by the customer. 

It is important to find a service that can document and guarantee this – which is precisely what Keepit, a leader in SaaS data backup and recovery, does and continues to do through continual expansions of data center locations. Read Business Wire’s article on Keepit opening two new Canadian data centers.

“Superior Data Center Strategy”

Keepit, in their latest data center additions—this time in the Canadian market—has a global footprint that spans six regions: US, UK, Germany, Denmark, Canada, and Australia. Aside from the legal and compliance benefits, there are many other gains to be had from deploying a dedicated SaaS data protection solution. 

Learn more about how you can always be in control of your data with Keepit Backup and Recovery.

Funding to support fast growth into new markets and hiring talent
London – 9 June 2022 – Silicon Valley Bank, the financial partner of the innovation economy, has provided a $22.5 million debt financing package to Keepit in partnership with Vaekstfonden. The fresh capital will help fuel further international expansion, hiring, and product development as it continues to scale and build out its market-leading platform for SaaS data protection.

Keepit will use the capital for strategic growth purposes, extend its cash runway ahead of future rounds, and minimize dilution during this strategic growth phase. Keepit will use the debt facilities to support the creation of new services and capabilities as well as new roles within the organization as it grows internationally and adds further market-leading functionality to its product offering.

Founded in 2007 in Copenhagen, Denmark, Keepit is a leader in cloud backup and recovery and the world’s only independent, vendor-neutral cloud dedicated to SaaS data protection with a blockchain-verified solution being sold worldwide. The financing from Silicon Valley Bank follows Keepit’s $30 million Series A funding round in 2020.

Frederik Schouboe, CEO and co-founder of Keepit, commented:

“The support from Silicon Valley Bank and Vaekstfonden is a testament to the strength of our business. The strides we have made in the sector have placed Keepit as a market leader. This additional funding now enables us to accelerate our key strategic plans to help fuel the next phase of growth for Keepit.”

Sebastian Penn, Managing Director of Silicon Valley Bank, Denmark, commented:

“Silicon Valley Bank is delighted to extend its partnership with the outstanding team at Keepit. It is great to see further funding within the Danish innovation economy and Keepit is innovating to support the growth of the broader SaaS ecosystem. We look forward to watching the team continue to grow, build, and scale globally.”

Introduction

Salesforce is the undisputed market leader when it comes to customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, with a 23.9% market share, as per IDC (figure below).

More than 150,000 companies across the globe trust Salesforce for managing their data ecosystems – doing everything from gathering and converting leads to opportunities, managing information to understand and engage customers, extracting insights from the data, to sharing information across the organization.

It’s clear that Salesforce is very much at the heart of your value chain, but how safe is the most important asset of your organization, your data? Let’s explore this question.

How Effective Is Native Salesforce Backup and Recovery Service?

According to industry analysts (and even a Salesforce best-practices blog), using the native backup and recovery capabilities can have the following drawbacks:

• It takes 6 to 8 weeks for data backup recovery time objective (RTO)
• Salesforce Data Recovery Service is very expensive, costing $10,000 per restore per organization
• Backup does not cover vital Salesforce metadata. You’ll miss out on custom fields, page layouts, reports, dashboards, and custom code backup.
• Salesforce ended its Data Recovery Service in July 2020, citing quality issues, but it was revived in March 2021 after customers demanded a native backup service.
• Salesforce suggests using third-party backups as part of the data backup strategy.

Why Do You Need Third-Party Backup?

In addition to the drawbacks above, there are many reasons why Salesforce data should be backed up with a third-party backup and recovery solution. Let us explore some of the main reasons:

1. Salesforce recommends it:
   
   “There are a number of data backup solutions offered by our partners on our AppExchange. Some of these are more comprehensive in that they allow you to automate backups of both your data AND your metadata and provide a mechanism by which to restore that data easily. You can search for these by visiting the AppExchange directly and searching for keyword backup. We recommend that customers vet multiple offerings and audit the reviews provided by other customers before selecting one of these offerings.”
   
2. Accidental deletion
   
   Consider this statement directly from Salesforce best practices to back up data:
   
   “Even with the best of intentions, users and administrators have been in situations where they have either deleted large amounts of data, or have modified records, only to later realize that a mistake was made. With tools like the Data Loader, it is very easy to mass delete or update records. And a simple mistake in your source file or field mapping could spell disaster for your data. It is recommended that you keep a regular backup of your data and to do a manual point-in-time backup before you proceed with any major data project within your organization.”
   
   Accidental deletion remains the top cause of Salesforce data loss, leading to nearly 70% of the data loss incidents.
   
3. Cybersecurity attacks
   
   Being at the heart of the value chain and hosting huge volumes of sensitive customer data, Salesforce is a prime target for cybersecurity attacks.
   
   Unfortunately, in 2019, a cloud-based e-commerce platform and children’s clothing company, Hanna Andersson, had its data exposed due to a malware that infiltrated Salesforce. The breach compromised a considerable chunk of customer data, including credit card information and personal identifiers. The hackers gathered data from about 10,000 consumers nationwide and sold it to criminals on the dark web.
   
   Bearing the sophistication of cyberattacks in mind, it is important to consider what the impact of a security breach is on your organization, and what your data protection plan is to mitigate these attacks.
   
   A third-party cloud backup is a key component of data protection best practices. With reliable backups and quick recovery in case of a disaster, you will not only have peace of mind that you can recover data (and metadata) when you need it, but also that you maintain data compliance.
   
4. Unpredictable (and high) costs
   
   Professional service costs are high, as high as $10,000 per restore, per organization. A third-party backup provider can offer superior services for a predictable, all-inclusive price per user, per month.
   
5. Limited data backup retention period
   
   Is your customer data part of your long-term strategy? Salesforce backup is limited to a maximum retention period of 90 days. In contrast, a third-party backup provider can provide the flexibility to retain data, from one year and up to 99 years.
   
6. The infrequency of backups and lacking automation
   
   Salesforce Data Export Service allows you to back up every seven days (or 29 days, depending on the Salesforce edition). Additionally, datasets greater than 512 MB are exported into multiple zip files.
   
   When compared to this, a third-party backup provider offers you complete, automated daily backups with data and metadata in a time- and user-friendly fashion. Further, they provide tracking and monitoring of the latest backup and your backup history.
   
7. Lackluster user experience and poor recovery options
   
   When you need to recover objects, dealing manually with multiple 512 MB zip files is resource intensive. A third-party backup can provide you with these additional features:

• Drill down to specific objects
• A search option to instantly search and recover deleted or modified data
• Granular restore
• Compare and restore metadata
• Restore permanently deleted records
• Navigate snapshots of previous data versions and recover

Ultimately, as an IT Leader, it comes down to data protection and data availability. Can your business afford to lose mission-critical data for 6 to 8 weeks? Can your budget handle unpredictable costs up to $10,000? Can you perform time consuming, manual reconfigurations due to loss of metadata with Salesforce backup?

Instead of worrying about when data loss will happen, by using a third-party backup provider, you can recover data and metadata in minutes – at a predictable price point – regardless of what happens.

Keepit Backup and Recovery for Salesforce

Keepit for Salesforce saves you time, is cost effective, scalable, provides ease-of-use through a simple user interface, and gives you peace of mind that your data is securely backed up, recoverable, and available whenever you need it. With Keepit, we ensure this through:

• Automated daily backups every 12 hours
• Easy user interface which is clutter-free, intuitive, and increases productivity
• Set and forget operation – set up in a few clicks and the backup will be running in the background
• Unlimited storage and archiving at no extra charge
• Technology scalable to millions of users with long backup retention from 12 months to unlimited
• Point-in-time restores
• Blockchain-verified technology for protecting your data
• World-class security with dual data centers and 4 copies of data in private data centers

Keepit for Salesforce saves you time, is cost effective, scalable, easy to use through a simple user interface, and gives you peace of mind that your data is securely backed up, recoverable, and available whenever you need it. With Keepit, we ensure this through:

• Automated daily backups every 12 hours
• Easy user interface which is clutter-free, intuitive, and increases productivity
• Set and forget operation – set up in a few clicks and the backup will be running in the background
• Unlimited storage and archiving at no extra charge
• Technology scalable to millions of users with long backup retention from 12 months to unlimited
• Point-in-time restores
• Blockchain-verified technology for protecting your data
• World-class security with dual data centers and 4 copies of data in private data centers