Data Retention Policies: What to Keep and What to Delete

A data retention policy is a plan that says how long a business should keep its information and what to do with it later. For small businesses, this is key for data management. It helps you keep only what you need and get rid of the rest, which is a process called data disposal.

The main goals of a data retention policy are to follow the rules and to keep less data. This helps you save money on storage, makes your data safer, and makes it easier to find files when you need them. It’s about smart data security.

A data retention policy is important because it protects your business from legal trouble. It helps with legal compliance, saves you money on storage, and makes your data security better. A good policy also makes records retention clean and simple.

A good data retention policy has many benefits. It helps small businesses follow laws like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. It saves money on storage. It also makes it easier to find information for legal requests, which is called eDiscovery. The policy helps with better data management and lowers the chance of a data breach.

A data retention policy should cover all kinds of information a business handles. This includes personal data from customers, financial records, emails, and other files. It applies to all records retention, no matter if the data is in the cloud or on a local computer.

A good data retention policy should clearly state its purpose. It needs to have a retention schedules that says how long to keep different types of data. It must also explain how to securely get rid of data, which is known as data disposal.

Beyond a simple timeline, a data retention policy should explain how to handle data at the end of its life. This includes rules for data deletion or data archiving. It should also say how data is kept safe and who is in charge of it. This complete approach ensures good data lifecycle management.

A good way to create a data retention policy is to have people from different parts of your company help. You should also get legal advice to know all the regulatory requirements. Make sure to write down how you will handle data disposal so it is safe and follows the rules.

When you make a data retention policy, ask yourself these questions: What data do we have? Where is it stored? Why are we keeping it? You should also think about the regulatory requirements for your field. Decide how you will handle data disposal and what your business needs are.

For many businesses, a data retention policy is a key part of their privacy policy. It should be easy for people to find. If your small businesses works with other companies to handle data, you need an agreement with them that explains how they will do data disposal.

Rules like GDPR and HIPAA affect how you handle personal data. These laws often say you should only keep personal data for as long as you need it. You also need a clear data retention policy to show you are following the rules.

Key laws that require data retention include the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) for public companies. HIPAA is another one for health information. Both of these laws, and the GDPR for personal data, are vital for legal compliance and avoiding big fines.

Google needs to keep data to meet legal compliance rules. This includes keeping records for government requests, legal orders, and financial reports. The company also keeps some data to make its services work better and to stop fraud.

Retention policies and retention labels can be set to automatically apply rules to data. This helps you stay in compliance. For example, you can set a rule to keep all money records for seven years. This meets regulatory requirements without you having to do it by hand. This is a smart way to handle data management.

Retention settings are for your normal plan to keep and get rid of data. An eDiscovery hold is a special, short-term stop that prevents data from being deleted during a legal case. It overrides your normal retention schedules to make sure data is not removed by mistake.

Before you can create a data retention policy in Microsoft 365, you must have the right permissions in Microsoft Purview. Your company also needs the proper license to use the advanced data lifecycle management tools in the system.

A retention policy is a broad rule for all the data in a spot, like a whole email box. A retention label is a tag you put on a single item, like one email or file. It gives you more control and lets people classify their own data.

An administrator should use a retention policy for a large group of data, like all files in a folder. A retention label is better when you want to give people a choice. It lets them pick the right rule for a single document.

An adaptive policy for data retention can change who it applies to based on things like a person’s job or location. A static policy does not change. It applies to a fixed list of places you choose. An adaptive policy is useful for big companies with many different groups.

You create a data retention policy for a service using the Microsoft Purview site. You go to “Data lifecycle management,” pick the service you want, and set your retention schedules to keep or delete the content.

Retention policies work by making a copy of a file when you change or delete it. This copy is saved in a hidden spot. For example, in SharePoint, a changed file is moved to a special library. This helps with records retention without getting in the user’s way.

After you make a new data retention policy in Microsoft 365, it can take up to a day to start working. The system needs this time to apply the new rules to all the right spots.

Recent changes in Microsoft Purview now separate the rules for Teams chats and Copilot. This means you have to make a separate retention policy just for Copilot. This makes sure its interactions are kept or deleted correctly based on your company’s rules.

The time data is kept can vary a lot. Some data, like old notes, may be kept for a few months. Other data, such as money records, must be kept for years to follow laws. A data retention policy says to keep data for a reason, and not for a day longer.

Data can be put into groups based on how it is used. For example, data a person deletes is one group. Another group is data used to make a service better, which is removed later. A third group is data kept for legal reasons. Each group has its own data disposal rules.

When a person asks for data deletion, the data is first hidden from their view. The full data disposal from the system can take up to two months. This is done to make sure the data is gone for good and to allow for a chance to get it back if needed.

Google keeps data on encrypted backup storage as a last resort against data loss. Data is held on these backups for a short time, maybe a few months. After that, it is erased or written over. This is a part of their overall data retention policy.

The Druva Cloud Platform helps with data retention by giving a single place to handle data management and data archiving in the cloud. It helps businesses set up and automate retention schedules for different data types. It also makes it easier to follow regulatory requirements and saves money on storage.