What is Data Retention Policy GDPR and Why You Need to Have One?

A data retention policy is a crucial step in managing and protecting important data of an organization to avoid any criminal, civil, and financial penalties that sometimes be caused by bad data management practices. This article outlines what a Data Retention Policy GDPR is and why it’s crucial in your organization.

A data retention policy gdpr  is a written set of guiding principles that an organization needs to follow when handling personal data — more specifically in relation to time period a data set should be preserved. Article 5 (e) of the GDPR tells that an individual’s personal data shall be retained for no longer than is needed for the reasons for which it is being handled. And whilst there are a few cases where personal data might need to be stored for longer periods (e.g. storing purposes in historical or scientific research, the public interest), the GDPR says that the time period for which the personal data and information is preserved should be restricted to a strict minimum.

International, state, local, and federal policies, laws, statutes and rules, as well as industry-obligatory regulations, spell out the types of data that organizations must preserve. Furthermore, these bodies decide the period of time that particular types of data should be maintained and retained, together with the way in which that data is stored.

Benefits of Good Data Retention Policy GDPR—

Gives You More Storage Space

When storing your own data and files, you can always make use of the additional storage space to make room for new files and data. Alternatively, if you have shifted your data and files to a cloud storage solution provider, you can reduce the cost by cleaning up your important data before shifting or whereas already in cloud storage if you find out second copies.

Removes Duplicated and Outdated Data

Regular data retention policy provides you the opportunity to clean space and eradicated the outdated and duplicated files to avoid mix-up and accelerated the necessary searches. Considering the ever-growing complexity and volume of data in today’s global business market, together with regulatory oversight involved and the advantages to your organization, developing a data retention policy need to be on top of your to-do list in 2019 and beyond.

Data Retention Policy GDPR— A Key Foundation to Data Management

Data retention policy gdpr form a key foundation for assisting manages important data and files of an organization. Besides paper documentation, businesses increasingly are developing and depending on hefty streams of electronic information that usually aren’t stored or catalogued in long-established filing systems.

Acquiring accounting records, customer messages, financial and sales data, electronic communications and other important digital business information is essential in helping to make sure that organization’s does not only follow industry regulations and legal requirements, but also that organizations have power over sufficient data backups essential for recuperating from disasters. Without sound data retention policies, businesses may find it quite impracticable to carry on operations following a disaster.

Ensuring that you anonymize or delete personal information when you no longer required, it will assist to avert data from becoming inaccurate, outdated and irrelevant. It will also lessen the data security threat to your data backup for business and restrict the odds of confidential personal data being exposed in the case of a data breach of your systems, which could possibly cause destruction to the individuals involved.

From a more sensible point of view, it is inept to keep more personal data than you require, and there may be avoidable costs related to security and storage.

Retention schedules are a vital aspect of records management for most organizations. Certain examples of retention times for different processing activities include storing—

• customer tax and financial data
• employees files and records
• direct-marketing customer data
• processing data needed for legal claims
• health records of health patients

Data Retention Policy GDPR Helps You Retain Important Data and Files

The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into force on 25^th May 2018, brings in more strict requirements about how long personal data may be stored. Organizations have to be more disciplined and considered in their retention of individuals’ personal data and information.

General Data Protection Regulation GDPR does not state retention periods for personal information and data. Rather, it states that store data for as long as needed only.

There are great reasons for the rules on data retention periods. The longer data are retained, the higher the probability that data will become outdated and the harder it turns out to make sure data are correct. In the case of a data breach, the more data that are retained on persons, the bigger the possibility for damage and mischief.

Creating the Best Data Retention Policy GDPR for Your Organization

Having an all-inclusive data plan is crucial to meeting state and federal compliance regulations. It’s a modern challenge— state and federal rules compel the pharmaceuticals, healthcare, and financial service industries, along with other segments, to develop more electronic documents—and to keep this documentation for longer time limits.

The other challenge that stumbles upon is— how organizations can ensure easy and quick access to specific types of data and files, without adding to the bottom line?

The key is to create and employ an effective data retention policy. Now more and more organizations have understood the importance of General Data Protection Regulation, and are enhancing their efforts for the same. But the truth is— success demands going beyond having merely policies and plans that reflect regulatory guidelines. Subject Access Requests allows an individual to get information— helping transparency on the accuracy and lawfulness of the information being held. To be successful, organization data retention plans need to boost adherence to the policies all through the enterprise.

Firstly, you’ll need to find out and understand what personal data you presently retain and take a look at where it is being preserved. Email accounts, databases, servers, company computers and even backup drives should be checked. Once you’ve precisely assessed your data set and located all storage locations, all you need is to define a specific storage for different types of data and start to choose which records need to be stored— this completely varies from business to business depending on your organization’s needs.

Irrespective of the retention period you choose for, however, you should prove your reasoning behind the length of time you want to store personal data and information for.

Backup Everything Simplifies Data Retention

You can choose to store your important data in the cloud. Cloud storage services offered by Backup Everything add several additional layers of protection to the data and files. The data ends up being placed on the cloud’s servers at safe locations (data centres) protected by high-end antivirus software. Backup Everything offers unified data storage and retention solutions for businesses of every size and industry. We offer the best possible cloud storage services and ensure to keep all your documents and data safe.