Everyone hears about large security issues, like those recent credit card breaches at major retailers. What's less discussed but more frequent are those "oops" moments where human error means disappearing data. In fact, leading analyst groups report one in three companies had an incident of SaaS data loss, and most of that loss is from user mistakes.

Raise your hand (and be honest) if you’ve ever deleted something you didn’t really mean to delete, if you’ve forgotten to do a backup, if you’ve made a mistake in a data load, or if you’ve left your laptop open at work while you took just a minute to pick up lunch. In the stories I hear while doing research, these “oops” happen every day, and they’re all data loss security risks.

It’s easy to prevent these “oops” moments; here are 9 best practices for doing just that. 

Data Access Best Practices

1. Establish and communicate data access policies.Create “who can access the data” policies, and communicate those policies throughout your organization. That way, everyone knows who can access what, and are less likely to try and access data outside what’s permitted. Salesforce makes it easy to use Roles and Permissions to help.
2. Foster a collaborative partnership with IT. If you use a CRM like Salesforce, make sure that your sales operations and marketing operations teams have a primary “go to” within IT to help align data security best practices.
3. Build better habits. Before leaving a computer, be sure it’s locked and password protected—even if you’re just stepping away for a few minutes—and advise your colleagues to do the same.
4. Change passwords early and often. Some applications require regular updates—but even if they don’t, this simple tip will reduce the risk that someone else you trust might have an “oops” moment with your data.

Backup Best Practices

1. Automate your backup process. Make sure you’re using something that lets you “set it and forget it,” to reduce the “oops factor” of missing a backup.
2. Replicate, replicate.To really cut the risk from the “oops factor,” you’ll want more than one location for your backups—for example, by storing both to a secure local location and in a secure cloud infrastructure.
3. Test your restore. Ensure that you can quickly and easily restore from your backup. Do a little test—if you were to overwrite a piece of data or delete a dashboard and wait a day, how long would it take you to recreate the data or dashboard that’s been overwritten? If a report using deleted data is needed by executive management, how long would it take to recreate? Use these sorts of tests to communicate with your organization the impact of human error, and best practices to cut the risk.

“Life Cycle” Best Practices

1. Keep everything current. Work with IT to be sure your hardware and software are kept up to date. You can lose data if a computer hard drive fails, or if old software no longer is compatible with new software.
2. Train the newbies. New employees need training in how to “prevent the oops.” Make it a part of your onboarding process so that when your team grows, you can make sure they use the processes and policies you’ve set.

Remember, only you can reduce the risk of data loss “oops” moments. Take action now, and let me know how it goes in the comments!

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