Between class registration, test scores, student admissions, and more, data fuels and empowers educational institutions to bring their objectives to life. But it's not a solo effort: Many organizations entrust Salesforce and Education Cloud to store and manage student, faculty, and administrative data, ensuring they’re top of the digital transformation class.
Even with data-driven initiatives underway, many organizations still have a lot to learn regarding the importance of safeguarding Salesforce data. In this article, we unpack why protecting Salesforce data should be a top priority for educational institutions and how Own makes it easy.
Understanding the Shared Responsibility Model
Educational institutions are well versed in the advantages of managing their data in Salesforce. But, what many fail to realize is the accountability that comes with adopting a CRM like Salesforce. Under the shared responsibility model, the cloud service provider is in charge of infrastructure security, while the customer is responsible for protecting and recovering the data stored in the platform.
For educational institutions, it’s critical to clearly understand customer expectations and proactively plan their protection and recovery efforts before an incident strikes.
Benefits of safeguarding Salesforce data
As your Salesforce data grows, so does your reliance on it–further emphasizing the importance of having a trusted backup and recovery solution. Protecting your data has a multitude of benefits, including:
Ensure operational continuity
Even with the most diligent safeguarding efforts, data loss or corruption is still considered a ‘when not if’ scenario. Therefore, protecting your Salesforce data ensures that your organization can minimize downtime and keep operations running smoothly when an incident arises.
Let’s say your university is in the throes of admissions season, storing thousands of prospective student applications in Salesforce. Suddenly, the excitement of welcoming a new class comes to a screeching halt: During routine maintenance, a Salesforce admin accidentally deletes a segment of the application database, losing critical application data like personal details, transcripts, and recommendation letters–putting your university at risk of admission delays, reputational damage, and resource allocation issues.
Turns out, a data loss doesn’t have to send your university into an organizational tailspin if your data is protected. With a backup and recovery solution, your teams can swiftly identify and restore the lost application data without disrupting business operations, ensuring a smooth admission process from start to finish. Plus, it can inform and educate teams on protection pitfalls and provide insights into how to mitigate future issues.
Stay ahead of regulatory compliance
The global regulatory landscape is constantly evolving, with the education sector facing its own stringent requirements. Fortunately, protecting your Salesforce data can help you comply with regulations like FERPA and GDPR, and insulate you from the legal, financial, and reputational consequences that stem from non-compliance. With a backup and recovery solution, your data is securely stored, recoverable, and protected against data loss, allowing your organization to seamlessly check regulatory compliance boxes.
Accelerate on-platform development
At its core, education encourages students to discover, experiment, and innovate. Turns out, those same principles apply to Salesforce development. But, in order to get the most out of this important process, you need to prioritize what you’re putting in, starting with reliable, accurate data. Backing up your data ensures that developers have secure, high-quality information to work with, streamlining deployment cycles and decreasing errors in production.
Fast-track AI initiatives
AI’s transformative capabilities are making their way into the classroom and school curriculum–shouldn’t it be part of your organization’s digital transformation, too? Regardless of where you are in your AI journey, harnessing its full potential requires accurate, accessible data–which can only be ensured if you’re effectively protecting it. With historical data drawn from Salesforce backups, your educational organization can draw insights and generate insights faster, putting your AI-driven future and initiatives within reach.
Protect your critical Salesforce education data with Own
Whether you’re in the classroom or a Salesforce environment, lessons should never be learned the hard way. Don’t wait for a messy data loss to protect your Salesforce data. With the Own Data platform, educational institutions can seamlessly protect and manage their Salesforce data. Own solutions like Recover, Discover, and Accelerate enable educational organizations to prioritize safety and innovation within the Salesforce platform.
Will your institution ace the data protection test? Request a demo today.
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