As you are classifying data, ensure your data retention policies

 

Organizations of all sizes and industries benefit from a comprehensive data retention policy. Between a sprawl of cloud-based apps and industry guidelines and laws, outlining what data needs to be stored, how it needs to be stored, and how long it needs to be stored, is no easy feat. However, with the right data retention policy template, you’ll have a solid starting point. In this article, we’ll walk you through data retention best practices and provide you with a downloadable data retention policy template to help you get organized and gain better visibility into your data’s lifecycle. For more at Data Retention Policy

Before you fill out your data retention policy template, let’s first cover what a data retention policy is. Your data retention policy is your organization’s central guidelines for handling its data. It helps you determine the purpose of your data, what laws (if any) apply to it, how long it should be kept, and how it should be archived or deleted when the time comes. An effective data retention policy not only helps you stay compliant with laws and regulations but also helps you cut inefficiencies and extract business value from your data. Data is the most valuable asset today’s organizations have. In fact, companies use an average of 88 apps across their workforce leaving critical information scattered, disorganized, and undiscoverable. A mature data retention policy can solve for this disorganized data landscape. In the next section, we tell you how.The first step in filling out a sustainable data retention policy template is identifying where your data lives. Make an exhaustive list of every app and data system in the cloud or on-premise that holds company data. Once you’ve done this, classify the types of data most pertinent to your organization. Organizing data that’s related to your industry is a good start. For example, if you’re in Healthcare, this might be PII such as dates of birth, social security numbers, and medical history, whereas if you’re in finance, this might be credit scores, PINs, or loan information. 

 

 

Organizing your data retention policy in this way will not only help you parse out your most sensitive information first, but also highlight the data retention periods that automatically apply to you by law. Once your most sensitive data is categorized, it becomes easier (and less risky) to sort through the rest. We also recommend a data classification schema with categories such as “confidential”, “proprietary”, and “public.” For more at Data Retention Policy