Your business is likely collecting more data than ever before. The challenge now is managing it effectively without skyrocketing storage costs or slowing down your systems.
Data retention and data archiving are essential strategies to tackle this challenge, but understanding the differences between them is crucial for making informed decisions. Though often used interchangeably, they serve distinct roles in data management. When used together, they create a well-rounded approach to managing your data throughout its lifecycle.
Below, we break down the key differences between data retention vs. archiving, along with best practices to help your business stay efficient and resilient in today’s data-driven world.
What Is Data Retention?
Data retention refers to the policies and practices that determine how long an organization keeps different types of data before taking further action, such as archiving or deleting it. These policies are driven by business needs, operational requirements, and legal or regulatory frameworks.
Retention policies can apply to everything from emails and financial records to internal documents and customer data. The goal is to ensure that essential data remains accessible for active use, whether for reporting, compliance, or operational purposes.
Your retention policies dictate how long specific data should remain in active storage. After that period has elapsed, the information is typically either archived or deleted. The key to effective retention is to segment the different categories of data and apply the correct policies to each. For example:
What Is Data Archiving?
Data archiving involves moving inactive or infrequently used data to long-term storage solutions. This data isn’t needed for daily operations but must remain intact and retrievable for compliance, historical analysis, or business continuity purposes.
Unlike retention, which applies to actively used data, archiving focuses on preserving information for the long term. Archiving is essential for ensuring that your business’s systems aren’t overwhelmed by outdated data, improving performance and reducing costs.
Archived data is typically stored in cost-effective, lower-performance storage environments, such as cloud-based cold storage. These storage solutions offer a balance between affordability and data durability.
Now, with an understanding of both concepts under your belt, let’s get into the differences and similarities between data retention and archiving.
How Data Retention & Data Archiving Compare
The data retention vs. archiving conversation comes down to four key things:
1. Purpose
The primary objective of data retention is to ensure you can access critical information to support daily operations or near-term needs. Retained data is typically used to support decision-making processes and dynamic workflows.
In contrast, data archiving focuses on preserving data for the long term. The purpose of archiving is to safeguard information for compliance recovery, or historical analysis. Archived data is rarely accessed but must remain available when needed.
If data retention is like putting items in your garage (readily accessible but not cluttering up your main living space), archiving is more akin to storing items in an off-site storage unit. You can retrieve them if necessary, but they aren’t available for immediate use.
2. Duration
Retention and archiving also differ in terms of how long data is stored. Retention periods typically range from a few months to a few years, depending on business policies and regulatory requirements. Archiving prioritizes long-term storage, which could span decades or even indefinitely.
However, it’s important to avoid holding onto archived data indefinitely unless required by compliance mandates. If the data is no longer relevant or valuable, it should be purged to avoid unnecessary storage costs.
3. Storage Needs
Data retention and archiving require different storage solutions.
- Retained data needs to be readily accessible, meaning it should be stored in high-speed environments such as solid-state drives (SSDs) or cloud platforms that support fast retrieval.
- Archived data, on the other hand, can be stored in more cost-effective solutions, such as cloud-based cold storage or tape backups. These solutions prioritize affordability over speed.
By archiving infrequently accessed data, you can free up space in your primary systems, reducing costs and improving performance.
4. Regulations
One way data retention and archiving are similar is that they are often driven by industry regulations. These rules dictate how long certain types of data must be kept and in what form.
For example:
- Financial institutions may need to retain transaction records for several years to meet regulatory requirements.
- Healthcare organizations must keep medical records for decades to comply with privacy laws like HIPAA.
By combining strong retention and archiving policies, your business can ensure compliance while managing storage costs
Best Practices for Data Retention & Archiving
Instead of pitting the two against each other, the conversation at hand isn’t really about data retention vs. archiving. It’s about using both strategies together to manage your data lifecycle effectively. You must also align your storage strategies with organizational goals and relevant compliance requirements.
Here are some best practices to help you do that:
- Segment your data: Identify which types of data should be retained in active systems and which should be archived.
- Define clear retention periods: Establish how long different types of data should remain in active storage and when they should be moved to archives or deleted.
- Leverage cloud storage solutions: Use scalable cloud services like AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure to manage your data cost-effectively.
- Ensure proper data classification: Classify your data accurately to make informed archiving decisions and determine which fields require encryption.
- Enhance security with encryption and permissions: Utilize Salesforce Shield for encryption and leverage data classification insights to implement stricter permission controls, ensuring both retained and archived data are properly protected.
Secure Your Data With Our Expert Tools & Solutions
Now that we’ve unpacked the differences and use cases between data retention and archiving, it’s time to ensure your team has the tools necessary to use these strategies effectively.
Own from Salesforce empowers businesses with data archiving and data security solutions, ensuring seamless data management within Salesforce. Our solutions help you efficiently archive your data while maintaining easy access, all while safeguarding sensitive information from unauthorized access.
Schedule a demo with us today and modernize the way you protect business-critical data.
