The importance of data retention policies

A data retention policy is the first step in helping protect an organization’s data and avoid financial, civil, and criminal penalties that increasingly accompany poor data management practices. This article outlines what a data retention policy is and why it’s important in your organization.

As the amount of organizational data around the globe grows, it becomes increasingly important for companies to develop comprehensive data retention policies or strategic plans. The growing impact of new data privacy and compliance laws, coupled with the importance of strong data security measures, makes having a comprehensive data retention strategy less of a want and more of a need at this point in time.

To ensure stored data is secure, accessible and held for no longer than required, organizations should implement comprehensive data retention policies that cover the specific nuances of their particular industry and business use case. In this guide, we’ll talk more about what exactly data retention policies are, the benefits of having a policy in place and some of the tools you can use to optimize your organizational data retention.

Data retention is the preservation and usage of data for a predefined period — called a data retention period — to satisfy business, technical and legal requirements. Data retention ensures that data is easily recoverable in the case of an unforeseen disaster or circumstance that leads to data loss. A practical approach to data retention should cater not only to the initial state of the data but also to its varying values and liabilities over time.

Your data retention approach needs to be mindful of your long-term needs and use cases, helping you to determine when and how to store data during data retention periods. It’s also important to map out your specific data retention requirements.

A data retention policy is a policy or principal course of action that ensures organizations store and dispose of data using a consistent approach. The policy specifies how long different types of data should be kept, as well as their storage locations and formats.

The data retention policy is the first step organizations should take to protect their data and avoid financial, civil and criminal penalties that often accompany poor data management practices.

Local, state, federal, and international laws — as well as industry-specific regulations — don’t simply specify the types of data organizations and businesses must retain. Guidelines also often dictate how long specific types of data must be maintained and even how the data needs to be stored.

From client and customer data to patient records, organizations face an increasing number of data retention requirements. The following are some of the types of information, records and data that should be covered by an organization’s data retention policy:

Data retention policies are incredibly important for businesses to maintain regulatory compliance, but legal considerations aren’t the only reasons to develop and implement strong data retention practices. Learn about some of the top benefits of having a data retention policy in place below:

A data retention policy helps enterprises maintain regulatory compliance with new and evolving laws concerning employee and consumer data privacy. For instance, the California Consumer Privacy Act regulates companies that carry out business with California consumers, regardless of the company’s location. A deliberate violation of CCPA can cost businesses up to $7,500.