Part of the data assessment is determining how long to retain the data. In some cases, as with medical records or tax records, legal requirements determine the length of retention. When there are no legal requirements, the length of retention is a customer decision based on several considerations. Some of these include:
- What data is mission critical?
Data like client information (for law offices) may need to be kept longer than customer information (for businesses). - What data is time sensitive?
Financial information (revenue and expenses) for purposes of tax reporting or securities reporting needs to be kept longer than say, comparative analysis of two different sales/marketing campaigns. - What data is nice to have?
Customers want to save some data for various reasons. However, when data starts to push storage limits, costs should be understood.
Setting criteria for retaining data is highly important when discussing backups. Because deleting data from storage is different from deleting data on a Windows-based computer. If a file or folder is inadvertently deleted from Windows, data can be recovered with certain software. If data is deleted from backup storage, then that data is permanently gone.
Use delete with caution. Do not:
- Assume the next backup restores the data.
- Assume the data can be retrieved after deletion.
- Take any unnecessary risks.
If there is a chance you might need the data, do not delete the data!