Retention and Disposition: Why it is a Must for Organizations?

“You gotta know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em.”
It’s much the same with data retention and disposition with the additional challenge,
“You gotta know where to put ‘em.”

In today’s digital world, data — both physical and electronic — is the fuel that drives growth for many businesses. However, more often than not, businesses collect more data than they need or keep it longer than they should. The result: the plethora of documents, files, contracts, reports, and more, which poses potential liabilities regarding risk compliance, security, privacy, space, and costs.

Managing legacy data has always been a daunting task for companies. However, with data consumption doubling every two years, the problem has become increasingly challenging to handle. The longer companies delay addressing data risks, the worse the situation becomes.

That said, over the past few years, there has also been a major shift in how regulators now treat the over-retention of privacy data and enforce related violations. The previous practice of “keeping everything forever, just in case…” is no longer acceptable. Regulators have also heightened rulemaking and enforcement to strengthen recordkeeping and data requirements.

As these risks and costs grow, they underline the importance of a company knowing how much data it has, where it is stored, and when to retain or dispose of it. It is becoming increasingly clear that by adopting a retention and disposition strategy, organizations can better manage their data assets, reduce the risk of data breaches and compliance violations, and save money too! In this white paper, we will explore the importance of retention and disposition, its benefits, and how to take the first steps toward implementing it.

What is Retention and Disposition?

Retention and disposition is a plan of action that specifies how long to retain records and when to dispose of them based on administrative, legal, fiscal, or research needs. Disposition covers the where and how, while retention addresses the why and for how long. That is the dilemma we face today. Shifting types of media have moved physical storage to online storage, and managing things you cannot see is difficult. Every organization faces the challenge of “it is just a bill for storage.” Do we ever look to see what is there?

When information reaches the end of its lifecycle and no longer remains relevant, useful, or valuable, it should be disposed of based on an established policy. Keeping everything forever leads to issues such as increased storage costs, difficulties with findability, and increased risks.

We want to ensure we identify and retain records that have legal or business value, but also comply with any legal hold. Everything else… well, you know.

Do you have any idea how much of your information is “data debris?” According to AIIM, you can expect it to be from 20 to 40%.

Why Dispose of Records?

A growing body of data poses many challenges to organizations. There are struggles with logistics, legality, and even privacy issues when organizations do not implement a data disposition strategy. Some of these issues include:

• Not meeting industry or government compliance requirements
• Increased storage costs due to keeping data forever
• Lack of data governance
• High amounts of storage lead to difficulty finding and classifying data
• If a breach occurs, a larger than necessary database of sensitive information is exposed
• Difficulty managing vast quantities of records

The goal of data storage is not to keep it secure forever. Instead, organizations can view data storage as one of the first steps of a disposition strategy. Disposition should focus on enabling the business and simultaneously meeting retention and disposal requirements.

The Benefits of Disposition

A data retention and disposition policy fits seamlessly into an organization’s overall information management strategy. It can also make it easier to manage an organization’s data. While there are many benefits to implementing an effective data disposition program, here are some of the main points.

Improved security

• Companies are responsible for protecting client data throughout its entire lifecycle. Firms that experience data breaches and privacy violations risk losing customers and generating negative reviews. 
• Proper data disposal reduces costly cybersecurity incidents and helps organizations maintain a strong and trustworthy reputation.

Improved risk and compliance posture

• Organizations today face rising pressure from government agencies, consumers, and watchdog groups to collect and use data more responsibly. At the same time, data compliance is becoming increasingly complex due to evolving privacy frameworks like GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
• Creating a data disposition strategy can help demonstrate regulatory compliance by ensuring proper data destruction, storage, and migration. As a result, firms can avoid costly penalties and violations.

Improved customer privacy

• Customers demand privacy, and data disposition helps ensure their needs are met. Organizations should position themselves as trusted sources. By only holding customer data for as long as it has business value or as required by law, customers can have confidence in your organization.

Improved cost savings

• Disposition reduces storage costs by reducing vast quantities of data that need to be stored.
• It also mitigates risks while lowering operational costs.

Improved e-discovery

• Ensures compliance with legal requirements, streamlines data retrieval, and reduces the risk of data spoliation.
• It cuts storage costs and enhances efficiency by retaining only necessary information, making the discovery process faster and more reliable.

Disposition is also crucial to better records management. By creating an information architecture with data retention and disposition policies, organizations are empowered to continuously improve and scale records management.

The Importance of Automating Retention and Disposition 

The good news is that modern technology can help tackle this problem much faster and more efficiently than you may have imagined.

Technology solutions exist to help automate the retention and disposition review process. Automating data disposition enables organizations to manage data easily and meet compliance standards. An intelligent information governance solution can automatically analyze and classify records and mark files for retention, disposition, and holds.

FiT simplifies the enforcement of retention policies for businesses. What was once a lengthy, intimidating, and daunting process is now quick and easy — customers need only set up their retention policy once and let the system handle the rest. The system will notify them when any physical or electronic records are ready to be disposed of by automatically tracking and adhering to their policy. With FiT, you always know what you have, where it is, and when you can dispose of it.

By utilizing cutting-edge data governance solutions that leverage your existing technical investments and automate your administrative policies, gaining control of valuable data while disposing of expired data is no longer a daunting task. With a strong retention and disposition strategy, organizations can better manage their data assets, reduce the risk of data breaches and compliance violations, and save money too.

Are you ready? Let’s embrace the challenge.