How to Protect Your CRM Database

Tips for Protecting Your CRM Database

Your CRM database is a valuable asset that stores large volumes of highly confidential customer information, and houses the vital intelligence that sales, marketing, and support staff need to effectively interact with existing and potential clients.

In order to achieve your CRM-related goals, you need to put the right procedures and technologies in place to protect your CRM database from security breaches, performance problems, technical failures, and other issues.

24 x 7 Availability

If your CRM database goes down, your ability to perform routine customer-facing activities will be severely hindered. The keys to ensuring that your CRM database is accessible – and operating at its peak – at all times are around-the-clock monitoring and system redundancy.

By continuously tracking the performance and availability of your CRM database, you can maximize uptime by instantly identifying any problems and taking immediate corrective action. Mirroring and redundancy can help you avoid downtime in the event of a major system failure, by providing you with an exact duplicate of your CRM database that can be rapidly “brought up” when needed.

Data Security

The information contained in your CRM database is one of your most important competitive resources. Additionally, your customers need to feel confident that their private and personal information – such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, or any other data they share during business transactions – won’t fall into the wrong hands. Therefore, maintaining the integrity of your sensitive and confidential customer data is crucial.

While there is no way to create a completely failsafe environment, there are plenty of measures that can be taken to dramatically enhance CRM database protection.

For example, multiple levels of login authentication can help you prevent unauthorized access. Role-based security, which enables users to view only certain portions of the data based on their job function, can help ensure that all customer information is handled correctly. And, securing your CRM database with data encryption and firewalls can significantly minimize the risks caused by hackers other cyber-criminals.

If your company has chosen an on-demand CRM system, you’ll need to work closely with your service provider to ensure that, even though your CRM database may not be physically separated, there are plenty of safeguards in place to keep other clients from getting to your information. Additionally, you’ll need to make sure that the service provider promptly installs any application, database, or operating system patches to keep security optimized.

Back Up and Disaster Recovery

The loss of mission-critical customer data could be detrimental to your business. Are you prepared for a major disaster?

A well-designed disaster recovery plan will allow you to retrieve the information stored in your CRM database if something happens. Back up your CRM database at least once a week (although most experts recommend a daily back up for the utmost protection). It is also preferable to back up to a server in an off-site location. While an on-site back up will enable you to quickly restore your data after a power surge or a system collapse, it will do you no good in the event of a fire or flood.