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How To Maintain Salesforce Data Security in 4 Simple Steps

Salesforce is the world’s leading CRM platform. Salesforce helps businesses and their teams to operate seamlessly and with utmost efficiency. Salesforce has helped businesses with automation consequently bringing accuracy and precision to businesses. Salesforce has positioned itself as a market leader in the world of CRM.  For its numerous features and capabilities, Salesforce has been hugely adopted worldwide. These features have facilitated an organizational-wide rollout. The evolution of Salesforce has made it a valuable software for businesses. With over 20% market share, Salesforce has been a hub for enormous business data. More and more business data is being stored in Salesforce.  Managing and securing this data is becoming an uphill task for businesses.  With an increase in data risks, businesses ought to be cautious and protective of their business data. This post discusses some of the actions to take to maintain Salesforce data security.  Salesforce stores sensitive business data. The platform’s popularity and its wide customer base have made it attractive to malicious people, including hackers. Sensitive and delicate business information stored in Salesforce should be protected lest it is exposed to hackers and business competitors.  For this reason, there is a need for businesses to maintain data security. This article takes you through a few steps to maintain Salesforce data security.  But before we get started, let us define the term security posture. Security posture is the status and condition of a business’s data and information and the organization’s readiness to counter potential threats.  There are several ways in which an organization can improve its security posture. data security teams must understand and map potential attack points, track the present data security status as well as prevent and mitigate threats. 

4 simple ways to maintain Salesforce data security in 2022 and beyond

Having understood security posture, let us dive into how you can improve and maintain your Salesforce data security.

Map out security vulnerabilities through Frequent System Audits

This initiative helps you identify security weaknesses and vulnerabilities. The vulnerabilities are clustered into low-risk, medium-risk, and high-risk, and dependent on the degree of the risk, appropriate remedies are taken.  Salesforce has been rolled out and embedded in most departments in organizations. Bearing the magnitude of the data stored, businesses need to carry out routine checks to map out data security vulnerabilities and deploy remedy measures.  Regularly revisiting and reassessing the organizational security posture is important in the preparedness for any potential breaches.  Salesforce offers the Salesforce health check that helps subscribers map out vulnerabilities. Salesforce health check is a free tool that scans and fixes potential security issues.  There are also other third-party solutions to maintain Salesforce data security. Some of these solutions are free while others require a subscription. To stay on top of data security, regular system audits are necessary.  Routine and timely system audits help the organization to identify potential threats on time and react accordingly. Routine audits also help to ascertain system health.  Routine checks may be within Salesforce and the organizational IT structure. Regular audits give the organization an upper hand in data systems maintenance and prepare the organization adequately to spot and deal with potential threats. Frequent System Audits are necessary for maintaining Salesforce data security. 

Set up security controls

There are several ways to protect your data while using Salesforce. Implementing security controls is one of the ways in which organizations can maintain Salesforce data security. Security controls measure range from setting up user access controls to setting up two-factor authentication for logins.  Organizations can limit the number of access to an account using the principle of least privilege. Selecting who gets to log in to the system and through which computer network is a strong preventive measure against a data security breach.  Setting up a two-step authentication requirement for logins is similarly an ideal data protection measure. Verifying and authenticating users as they log in to the system goes a long way in safeguarding your data. Tightening up and addressing default settings should be a priority for businesses that want to protect their data.  Using Salesforce shield helps organizations protect their data by automating Salesforce security policies. This adds a layer of data security. Many measures to protect business data are existent. Businesses should adopt these measures to maintain their data security. 

Verify API

Salesforce has availed the option to easily integrate and link with other applications. This enables businesses to cooperate by sharing data and sensitive information.  However, not all applications that link to your business have strict data protection measures. This, therefore, leaves a loophole for attacks via API.  Unsecured entrances are left open and vulnerable to attacks in this linking process.  Businesses cannot operate independently. The need for coexistence and interdependence will always be there.  The only solution to preventing data security breaches via API is to ensure that your business integrates and links with businesses with similar data protection policies and measures.  Assessing the security measures and policies of APIs that you connect to is a key step towards maintaining Salesforce data security. 

Organize and Backup data

data organization is always a key step in data protection. Businesses need to organize, classify and arrange their data. data organization helps to identify sensitive and non-sensitive data.  Having organized data, businesses can approach data protection based on the degree of sensitivity of the data. Sensitive data is accorded more protection. data organization also helps in deciding which application offers the best protection measures for your data.  Not all measures are penetration-proof. Some protection measures fail at some point and malicious people get your business data. Interruptions will happen at some time. Businesses need to be prepared for anything including loss of business data or technical system glitches.  For this reason, backing up data is essential for business organizations. Businesses should employ regular and frequent data backups to ensure that all business data is secured and backed up.  There are many ways and options for backing up data. Businesses ought to apply these measures to maintain Salesforce data security.

Conclusion

Business data is very important while carrying out business. Safeguarding and protecting sensitive business data should be a top priority for every business.  There are several ways in which businesses can maintain Salesforce data security. Some of these measures are easy and simple to implement while others can be tricky.  Salesforce is a revolutionary platform. Its capabilities have however led to the misguided assumption that the platform is solely responsible for data security.   However, businesses ought to protect their sensitive data, and sealing off security gaps is of utmost importance. data protection is a two-party action – Salesforce and the business itself. Data security is a shared responsibility and all teams must play. 
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