This policy establishes the rules for the complete lifecycle of your data. It defines how long different types of information must be kept to meet legal and business needs, and—just as importantly—how to securely destroy it once it's no longer required.
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Reduce Legal & Compliance Risk: Comply with GDPR's "storage limitation" principle and other regulations by ensuring you don't keep data longer than necessary.
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Lower Storage Costs: Avoid paying to store redundant, obsolete, or trivial data by implementing a scheduled disposal process.
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Ensure Secure Data Destruction: Implement secure, irreversible disposal methods like cryptographic erasure and physical destruction to prevent data recovery from retired assets.
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Simplify Audits: Use a master Data Retention Schedule to provide auditors with a clear, justifiable record of your data lifecycle management practices.
Read Full Overview
The Data Retention and Disposal Policy for SMEs is a crucial component for businesses aiming to maintain robust data governance and regulatory compliance. This policy outlines the processes for retaining and securely disposing of data, ensuring that information is managed throughout its lifecycle in accordance with legal, operational, and business requirements. It establishes clear guidelines for archiving, retention periods, and secure disposal methods, including cryptographic erasure and physical destruction, aligned with standards like NIST SP 800-88. By implementing structured data management practices, SMEs can reduce risks associated with data breaches, legal liabilities, and storage inefficiencies. The policy mandates the creation of a master data retention schedule, ensuring that data is retained only as long as necessary and disposed of securely thereafter.
What's Inside
- Data Retention Schedule
- Secure Disposal Methods
- Legal Hold Procedures
- Backup & Archive Retention Rules
- Roles & Responsibilities
- Compliance & Enforcement
- Risk Management
- Policy Review & Updates
Built for Leaders, By Leaders
This policy brings clarity to a complex compliance area, giving you a defensible and practical framework for managing your data from creation to destruction. It was authored by a security leader to be a practical framework that stands up to auditor scrutiny.
Authored by an expert holding:
Framework Compliance
🛡️ Supported Standards & Frameworks
This product is aligned with the following compliance frameworks, with detailed clause and control mappings.
| Framework | Covered Clauses / Controls |
|---|---|
| ISO/IEC 27001:2022 | 6.1.38.1 |
| ISO/IEC 27002:2022 | 5.33 |
| NIST SP 800-53 Rev.5 | AU-11MP-6SI-12 |
| EU GDPR | Art. 5(1)(e)Art. 17 |
| EU NIS2 | Art. 21(2)(a) |
| EU DORA | Art. 5(1) |
| COBIT 2019 | BAI03.04DSS01.06 |
Part of a Complete ISMS Toolkit
This policy is one of 37 documents in our complete toolkit. When implemented as a set, our framework helps you achieve comprehensive compliance across major standards.
100%
ISO 27001:2022
95%
NIST
88%
NIS2
75%
DORA
70%
GDPR
Related Policies
This foundational policy is directly linked to the following organizational security policies to ensure comprehensive alignment and traceability across the ISMS.
P2S - Governance Roles & Responsibilities Policy
Defines policy ownership and authority for retention exceptions.
P13S - Data Classification and Labeling Policy
Determines how retention rules align with data classification levels.
P12S - Asset Management Policy
Governs the storage media containing data subject to this policy.
P17S - Data Protection and Privacy Policy
Ensures data minimization and supports lawful processing under GDPR.
P30S - Incident Response Policy
Is activated when retention failures result in potential data exposure.
About This Policy
A Data Retention and Disposal Policy is a critical governance document that defines how long your organization keeps information and how it securely destroys it once it's no longer needed. For Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), this process is essential for complying with legal requirements like the GDPR's "storage limitation" principle, which mandates that personal data not be kept indefinitely. This policy helps you avoid unnecessary legal risks and fines.
By implementing a structured retention schedule, you can also reduce data storage costs and improve system performance by regularly purging obsolete data. This policy outlines clear procedures for both digital and physical data, including methods for secure, irreversible disposal like cryptographic erasure and physical shredding. It provides a simple, auditable framework to manage your data's entire lifecycle, demonstrating due diligence to regulators, auditors, and customers.
