If you think about early adopters of new technologies, legal professionals are probably not the first group that comes to mind. In fact, it’s basically in these individuals’ job descriptions to move cautiously. However, there are signs that this is changing. The events of the past year have forced companies across all industries to accelerate their digital transformation, and legal is no exception. In fact, 76% of legal pros say the increasing importance of legal technology will be the top trend to impact their organizations over the next three years.
For many law firms and in-house legal teams, this move to the cloud means finally ditching the spreadsheets (or worse, paper!) and utilizing a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform instead. There are massive advantages to using a CRM—especially one built for legal. These platforms can help legal teams have better access to information within their company, aggregate data and reporting, and automate administrative tasks and workflows. When every legal request, task, document, and communication is mobile accessible and saved in one place, lawyers not only benefit from increased transparency and efficiency, they can also better structure their teams and work and anticipate future outcomes.
It’s become clear that adopting these cloud technologies is no longer just a best practice for legal teams- it’s imperative. However, as important as this is, it’s just one part of the equation. Having a way to protect all of this sensitive data is just as critical.
Who’s responsible for SaaS data?
Although there are many advantages to moving to the cloud, like scalability, cost-savings, and customization, there is also one big consequence of housing all of your data in the cloud: you’re on the hook for what happens to it.
You might be thinking, “my SaaS data is protected because it’s in the cloud”. The truth is though, most SaaS apps like Salesforce require shared responsibility for keeping data safe. That means you can count on Salesforce to ensure the security and integrity of the platform, but as a client, you are responsible for the data you put into it, and who you allow to access it.
What types of things can go wrong?
There’s no doubt that cloud software has made significant strides in data security and threat protection. Salesforce in particular guarantees 99.9+% uptime. Still though, as companies' reliance on SaaS applications increases, many are seeing a corresponding uptick in data corruption, data overwrites, deletion by malicious attacks, and advanced threats like cyberattacks and ransomware.
And although major data breaches tend to get all of the headlines, not all data loss comes from nefarious sources. On the contrary, the majority of incidents continue to be innocent errors. According to Gartner, 99% of cloud security failures and resulting data loss will be the customer’s fault through 2025. We see a similar trend within the Salesforce platform specifically. Based on our 2020 State of Salesforce Data Protection Survey, human error is the leading cause of data loss within the Salesforce ecosystem, making up just less than half of all incidents.
How to protect your SaaS data and stay compliant
For some legal teams, these statistics might seem like the perfect excuse to hit pause on your digital transformation initiatives. But before you go telling your CIO “I told you so!”, there’s one certain way to mitigate the impact of data loss and corruption: implementing a cloud data protection solution.
Safeguarding essential data and sustaining business continuity requires automated cloud-to-cloud data protection. This modern approach detects and alerts you to data anomalies, safeguards mission-critical data and metadata with complete data backups, and makes precision repair of data problems effortless.
The other key benefit, which should be of particular interest to this audience, is simplifying compliance. The compliance function is often an integral part of the overall responsibility of the legal team, and data compliance shouldn’t go overlooked. As data growth continues to escalate, so do the regulatory and legal requirements to control all this information. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and other regulations dictate how long companies can retain certain types of data. These stricter privacy laws mean businesses can no longer afford to waste money or time on out-of-date or incorrect data sets, making data protection all the more important.
With a comprehensive data protection solution, you can find where personal data is located throughout your backup and which attachments it may also be within. The right solution will also help you meet Data Subject rights, such as Right to Rectification, Right to Erasure, and Right to Data Portability, as it applies to personal data within backups.
Run in The Cloud, Never Fall Down
Adopting new technology, no matter what function you work in, is never easy. But having a safety net in the form of a data protection solution can help you make the leap with peace of mind. OwnBackup is the #1 cloud data protection platform for Salesforce, protecting critical data for over 3,000 customers.
To learn more about how legal teams can drive innovation while mitigating data risks, register for our upcoming virtual event: “Corporate Legal Tech Isn't Magic: A Discussion on Navigating Digital Transformation.”
