Data retention management offers challenges, opportunities to IT teams

Companies and organizations with an interest in data retention management have a lot of options for how to take care of their information, but no clear defining standard. That’s the kind of thing that makes Andrea Simmons, a data-management consultant based in the UK, sympathetic to teams making decisions about their data.

“If something goes wrong, you’re going to need to have records,” she told IT Brew, adding, “If you’re gonna have to rebuild your business, then the difficulty there is you need everything from your incorporation documents at the start of the business, which could be 20-plus years old, and your current contract, and what you [are] supposed to be working on.”

Conflicting advice. There’s no universal standard to how long to keep data or why, and companies and organizations may have multiple reasons to keep data longer than necessary.

Simmons sees the issue of retention as, broadly, split between operational and legislative concerns. The latter has a “plethora of available signposting as to how long you should be keeping stuff” that can be confusing. But some basics are there for a reason.