Best Practices on Securing Data When Replicating Salesforce to your Database

All companies today have the critical responsibility of managing and maintaining data. Whether it’s the personal information of employees or the confidential operations of the business, it is important to not only secure this data but to gain the insights on what can be improved.

With SaaS applications like Salesforce, it is much easier for businesses to store large amounts of data generated on cloud without maintaining it or dealing with IT responsibilities. Most of the basic security aspects related to authentication and data access will be integrated into the system; however,  it is not advisable to rely solely on the basics.  Advanced data security plays an important role for data-driven organizations, from data control and access, to download or transfer using replication tools, to external systems for reliability, accessibility and overall fault tolerance.

Enterprise data replication has proven to be a widely used service across finance, education, retail, e-commerce, media entertainment, and healthcare sectors.  With a compound annual growth rate of 4.6% valued at $9.4 billion (according to Datamation),  trusted data integration and replication platforms like DBSync enable businesses to extract data from different SaaS applications to ensure it operates even in cases of software or hardware failure.  If data is not secured properly, incorrect reporting or incomplete analyses result–affecting the overall health of the business.

Why is data replication an important part of a successful business?

Data replication gives a 360-degree view of the various data applications in an organization, focusing on both operational and analytical aspects. Various uses of data replication are data warehousing, operational business intelligence and real time and big data analytics.

What is data security?

Data security is a practice that involves a variety of methods to store and secure data from unauthorized access, misuse, corruption or theft.

How can data loss or misuse affect your business?

The exact impact of data loss/misuse on  businesses varies. Some of the most harmful consequences are:  

• Financial loss – Due to data misuse, a business may incur expenses in regards to penalties, lost sales, recovering corrupted data and legal aid. 
• Loss of reputation and loyalty – Data corruption or misuse may lead to customer/client confidentiality breaches, fostering negative publicity, and damaging businesses’ reputations.
• Operational failure – Financial and healthcare businesses rely heavily on stored confidential data. The loss of this data could lead to the temporary or permanent closure of a business,  as well as heavy fines.

What are the best ways to secure data?

Data is expected to grow exponentially by the year 2025: 25 zettabytes, according to IDC. The number one reason for data loss or misuse is human error,  due to accidental deletions or damage to equipment (estimated at 35% according to Netwrix Research). It is important to define and maintain strategies to secure the complete data lifecycle—replicating multiple copies that are protected while in transit and at rest. 

Since securing data can be achieved through a variety of methods, it is crucial to understand and implement what methods work best for each use case.  Data security can be managed by defining and practicing a variety of principles, such as:

• Infrastructure and Storage

Data can be stored on a variety of cloud and on-premise storage options and platforms like AWS, Azure or Google Cloud. It is important to note what security features are available to store and transfer data on each platform and database used, and also enable or use different security mechanisms available to ensure secure data transfers and storage across different platforms.

• Data Transfer and Loss Guidelines

Setting up important guidelines and practices ensures that only certain types of data can be shared outside the organization or to customers, monitoring and preventing sensitive data transfers. It is also vital to keep track of data losses/breaches and report to regulators, individuals or groups to get assistance and take action.

• Identity and Access Controls

It is essential to only grant access to required resources or providing ‘least-privilege permissions’ for individual users or groups, as AWS highlights in their “best practices.”   

Further, it’s beneficial to secure transmission, replication and storage mechanisms to ensure data is protected at all times.

Two important data security practices that can be implemented with replication to protect sensitive information and counter misuse or breach whether data is in transit or at rest are:  

• Data Masking

Data masking is a security practice that replaces actual data with dummy or false data. This ensures that sensitive information like Social Security numbers or credit card information is protected by randomly generated or mapped false data. Data masking is usually implemented during data transit from the source system, but it can also be implemented at rest within databases so the user who is not intended to access this data cannot understand or derive any meaningful information from the replicated data.

• Data Encryption

Another powerful strategy that can be implemented with the data transformation and data pipelines to download and store information securely is data encryption.

Data encryption is proven to be a highly sophisticated and highly secure means of transferring and storing data. While this method (also known as “data at rest”) is generally applied when data is stored, it can also be applied to scenarios before data transit or replicated to other storage by using sophisticated encryption techniques, such as cryptographic algorithms to encode data using encryption keys.

Data is encoded by using a specialized algorithm such as AES, DES or RSA and a symmetric key. The symmetric key should be shared only with personnel who need access to the encrypted data to restrict unauthorized access.Regulatory bodies and compliance standards like PCI-DSS, HIPAA and GDPR require encryption to be part of data security to ensure personal information is secured and free from malicious attacks and data leaks.

How can DBSync help you achieve data security?

DBSync Cloud Replication can easily be deployed on any on-premise or cloud platform, ensuring automatic replication of schema and data with data mask and encryption capabilities in batches or in real time–all with minimal costs compared to recovering lost data. Our replication solution helps your business comply with CCPA, GDPR and other regulatory requirements with the use of snapshot-based replication, along with easy modifications within databases and updates to CRM. With AWS Redshift support to archive or replicate data, your business can harness the power of big data on the cloud, reduce query latency, and minimize the overall API usage. 

Conclusion

In this digital age, information plays a vital role in making and keeping a business successful. Therefore, data protection is a must – whether in transit or at rest. Understanding and utilizing replication ‘best practices,” such as data masking and encryption, is key to securing successful outcomes in businesses/industries requiring immediate access to historical data and are ruled by strict regulations and compliance processes. With the ease of DBSync’s Cloud Replication product, data is secure at every leg of the journey, allowing you peace of mind, and  the time to focus on all of the other critical aspects of the business.