Docusign has revolutionized the way businesses handle document signing, offering unprecedented convenience and efficiency. However, many users are unaware of the potential risks associated with data loss in their Docusign accounts. This post explores the crucial aspects of backing up your Docusign data, exploring why it's essential and how both users and IT departments can implement effective strategies to safeguard their digital signatures and associated documents.
Before we dive into backup strategies, let's consider the key roles Docusign plays in businesses including:
- Facilitates legally binding electronic signatures
- Streamlines contract management and approval processes
- Enhances document security and compliance
- Accelerates business transactions and reduces costs
What are the Common Threats to Docusign data?
- Human error with accidental deletions or changes to important documents and templates can set your business back by hours or even days.
- System glitches or temporary downtime, although Docusign generally has good uptime, even minor glitches or temporary outages can significantly impact on your operations.
- Malicious disgruntled employees or those looking to reduce their workload may intentionally delete or alter important data.
- Ransomware and phishing attacks are on the rise with Docusign-mimicking phishing emails poses a severe threat. With a thriving underground market for fake templates and login credentials, attackers can easily craft convincing phishing emails to trick employees and gain access to sensitive information.
Why You Need to Back Up Your Docusign
Docusign does provide platform-level disaster recovery, which is designed to ensure the overall availability and functionality of their service. This means that in the event of a major system failure or natural disaster affecting Docusign's infrastructure, they have measures in place to recover their systems and maintain service continuity.
However, it's important to note that this disaster recovery is focused on the platform, not individual user accounts. It's designed to prevent extended service outages and ensure that the Docusign platform remains operational. This doesn't necessarily mean that all individual user data will be fully protected or recoverable in every scenario.
Docusign's Backup Functionality
While Docusign offers some built-in features to help protect your data, you should understand their limitations. Docusign does offer some built-in features to help protect your data:
- Audit trails for tracking document history
- Limited retention of deleted items (usually 30 days)
- Option to download signed documents
Docusign provides audit trails, which allow you to track the history of your documents, including who viewed, signed, or made changes to them. This feature is crucial for maintaining transparency and can be helpful in case of disputes or compliance audits.
Docusign also offers a limited retention period for deleted items, typically around 30 days. During this time, you can recover documents that were accidentally deleted. However, it's crucial to note that this is a relatively short window, and once this period expires, the data is permanently lost.
The platform does provide an option to download signed documents manually. While this can be useful for creating local backups of individual documents, it's not a comprehensive or automated solution. For businesses dealing with a high volume of documents, this manual process can be time-consuming and prone to human error.
This may not be sufficient for a complete data protection and recovery solution.
The True Cost of Docusign Data Loss
To underscore the importance of Docusign backups, consider the potential consequences:
- Legal and compliance issues due to missing contract evidence
- Financial losses from delayed or voided transactions
- Damage to business relationships and reputation
- Productivity loss during data recovery efforts
Protecting Your Docusign Data
One of the key limitations of Docusign's service is the absence of a built-in, comprehensive backup solution for all account data. While Docusign does offer some features that can aid in data recovery, such as the ability to recover recently deleted items and download signed documents, these features fall short of a true backup system.
A comprehensive backup solution would ideally include:
- Automatic, scheduled backups of all account data
- The ability to easily restore data to a specific point in time
- Backup of not just documents, but also templates, user settings, and other account-specific data
- Long-term retention options for compliance and archival purposes
Implement Regular Backups: Consider setting up a schedule for backing up your Docusign data. This could involve using Docusign's API to automatically export documents and associated metadata on a daily or weekly basis. Store these backups in a secure, off-site location to protect against local disasters or system failures.
Use Version Control: For critical documents and templates, implement a version control system. This allows you to track changes over time and revert to previous versions if needed. While Docusign doesn't offer this functionality natively, you can achieve it by regularly exporting and archiving your documents.
A Third-Party Backup Solution: Many specialized backup solutions exist that can integrate directly with Docusign, such as HYCU. HYCU offers features like automatic, regular backups of your entire Docusign account, easy restoration of previous versions or permanently deleted files, and the ability to compare versions of projects, tasks, comments, and custom fields.
Secure Off-Site Storage: Ensure that your backup data is stored securely off-site. This could be in a separate cloud storage service or a physical location different from your primary business location. This protects your data from localized disasters and provides an additional layer of security.
Implement Access Controls: Limit who can delete or modify critical Docusign data. By implementing role-based access controls, you can reduce the risk of accidental or malicious data loss.
Regular Testing and Verification: Don't just set up backups and forget about them. Regularly test your backup and recovery processes to ensure they're working as expected. This includes verifying the integrity of backed-up data and practicing the restoration process.
Educate Users: Ensure that all users of your Docusign system understand the importance of data protection and know how to use any backup tools you've implemented. Regular training sessions can help reinforce good practices and reduce the risk of data loss due to user error.
Without such a system built into Docusign, users are left to either manually manage their data protection or seek third-party solutions to fill this gap. This is particularly crucial for businesses that handle a high volume of important documents through Docusign, as manual backup processes can be time-consuming and prone to error.
The integrity and availability of your Docusign data are paramount. By implementing a robust backup and recovery strategy, you not only protect your organization from potential data loss but also ensure business continuity and compliance. Whether you're an individual user or part of an IT department managing Docusign at scale, taking proactive steps to safeguard your digital signatures and associated documents is an investment in your business's future security and success.
Additional Information:
- Request a HYCU for Docusign Demo
- Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup and Recovery: See why HYCU has been recognized as a Visionary for three consecutive years.
- Research: State of the SaaS Data Protection
- HYCU R-Cloud Brochure
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