Salesforce is more than just a CRM—it’s the digital nerve center for sales, service, marketing, operations, and more. As your organization grows, so does the volume and complexity of your Salesforce data. From customer records and case history to custom configurations and automation workflows, this data is foundational to your business operations.

But how protected is it?

When it comes to Salesforce, many organizations assume their data is automatically safe just because it lives in the cloud. While Salesforce provides a secure and reliable platform, it operates on a shared responsibility model—meaning it’s your responsibility to ensure your data is protected from loss, corruption, or accidental deletion.

If you’re new to Salesforce data protection, this guide will walk you through the basics, explain why backups and archiving are essential, and introduce how Flosum can help.

What Is Salesforce Data Protection?

Salesforce data protection refers to the practices and technologies used to safeguard your organization’s Salesforce data from risks such as accidental deletion, user error, malicious attacks, and compliance violations. This includes:

• Data backups: Creating copies of your data so it can be restored in the event of loss or corruption
  
  
• Data archiving: Storing older or less frequently accessed data to improve performance and maintain compliance
  
  
• Access control and monitoring: Restricting who can view or edit data and tracking changes over time
  
  
• Data recovery: Being able to quickly and accurately restore data to its previous state

In short, data protection ensures that your most critical business asset—your Salesforce data—is always available, secure, and compliant.

Why Backups Are Essential

Salesforce doesn’t automatically back up your data in a way that allows for fast, granular recovery. Yes, Salesforce keeps your data secure on its servers. But if a user accidentally deletes thousands of records or overwrites key fields, that data could be lost without a proper backup strategy in place.

Common causes of data loss include:

• Human error
• Integration errors
• Malicious insiders
• Cyberattacks or ransomware
• Bad deployments or configuration mistakes

Having regular, automated backups in place ensures you have a safety net, allowing you to recover records, metadata, and relationships without disrupting your business operations.

Why Archiving Matters

As your Salesforce org grows, so does your data storage. Over time, large volumes of data can slow performance, clutter your system, and lead to rising storage costs. That’s where archiving comes in.

Data archiving involves moving older, inactive records to a secure, long-term storage solution. These records can still be accessed or restored when needed, but they’re no longer bogging down your production environment.

Archiving also helps with:

• Meeting data retention policies
• Preparing for audits or compliance reviews
• Keeping Salesforce clean, fast, and efficient
• Reducing storage costs

Together, backups and archiving form a critical one-two punch for effective Salesforce data protection.

The Shared Responsibility Model

It’s important to understand that Salesforce operates under a shared responsibility model. Salesforce protects its infrastructure, but you’re responsible for your data within that infrastructure. That includes backing it up, managing retention, and ensuring you can recover it if something goes wrong.

Salesforce’s own documentation recommends that customers use a third-party backup and recovery solution to meet business continuity and compliance needs.

Flosum Backup & Archive: Your All-in-One Solution

That’s where Flosum Backup & Archive comes in. Built natively on Salesforce, Flosum provides a secure, automated, and user-friendly solution for both backing up and archiving your data.

With Flosum, you can:

• Automate daily backups of records, files, and metadata
• Restore data quickly at a granular level—including relationships and dependencies
• Archive data based on custom rules or timeframes
• Ensure compliance with industry regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, and SOX
• Store data in immutable, encrypted environments for maximum security

Whether you're a growing business or a global enterprise, Flosum helps you stay protected without sacrificing performance or user experience.

Want to learn more about how Flosum Backup & Archive can help with all of your Salesforce data backup and archiving needs? Connect with an expert today!