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Every person and every business in the United States and most other countries
are mandated by law to store information for a pre-determined period of time. Wether it is your personal
tax information or your corporate accounting and personell files it all has a retention requirement
that you need to know and adhere to.
Data Retention Requirements:
The hardest thing about this is to find the requirements that apply specifically
to you or your businesss. Each state has requirements, there are federal requirements, most businesses
have industry related requirements, each type of information can have its own set of requirements
and so on.
Legally, most businesses need to
keep records long term. Broadly speaking, state and federal regulation require:
- Business records: 7 years to permanent
- Contracts: 7 years to permanent
- Employee records: 3 years
- Payroll records: 3 to 7 years
- Email & Instant Messaging: 3 to 7 years (depending on the type of information in the correspondance
this may fall under business records, contracts, etc.)
Personal information such as your tax returns have similar retention requirements.
what most people don't know is it is not just the tax return copy that has to be kept for 7 years it
is also all of the documents used to create the return.
The first step in any information retention plan is to find out what requirements
you need to adhere to and the retention periods that go with those requirements. Then you need to
figure out how you are going to accomplish retaining these records for that period of time. Keep
in mind that it is your responsability to safegaurd this information for these retention periods.
The loss of a computer hard drive or your paper files due to machanical failure or natural disaster
such as fire will not get you out of these requirements.
Basics To Consider When Creating A Data Retention Plan:
Below are some basic things to consider when creating your data retention plan. These are just a
few of the things that need to be considered when creating a plan that will fit and meet your specific business
need.
- Research Your Retention Requirements:
Find out what your Industry specific requirements
are for data retention on a Federal and State level.
- Data Retention Mistakes:
One thing is for sure though... if you're creating
or trying to manage an information retention strategy, there are some definite things that you
need to be aware of to keep yourself out of the boardroom hot seat and your managers out of the
regulators' crosshairs.
Click here to read the full
list of things to keep in mind when creating your data retention plan.
- Determine what data needs to be retained:
To make this determination you need to
consider what data is being generated, who is involved and what your internal policies are. An example
of this would be your company email. Any email that has to do with the operations of your business will
have a retention requirement, but an email from the CEO's wife letting him know what time dinner will be
has no requirement for storage.
- Determine who will be involved:
Based on your research and your business
structure determine who will be responsible and involved in your planning cycle.
- Set your goals:
Determine what your goals are and establish clear timelines for
acheiving these goals.
- Determine what processes it will take to acheive your goals:
Hardware, Software,
Vendors, etc. will all be needed to acomplish this.
- Data Destruction:
Another key eliment to consider is the end of your
information lifecycle. How do you ensure your employees and customers that their information will
never be accesable by anyone other than who it was originally intended for.
More Information:
Data Storage Media
Data Security
Cost of Lost Data
Personal Backup Plans
Business Backup Plans
Disaster Recovery Planning
Business Continuity Planning
Information Lifecycle Mgmt
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