Back Up, Archive or Delete?

About this interactive

The Data Retention and Retirement lesson starts where data's life ends. Data balances being an asset and a liability; once it is no longer an asset, it is only a liability, and it has to be disposed of properly, in line with the laws that apply. Backups and archives look alike but serve different purposes. A backup is a copy of a data set kept in case something goes wrong and it has to be restored. An archive holds data you are done with but might need on a rare occasion, moved to cheaper, less accessible storage. The lesson's example: before deleting 100,000 old records from a million-record database, copy them to the archive; the live database is faster and the backups smaller. Retention comes before deletion. Some data has to be kept for a set time: financial records in case of an audit, and student records a school has to keep for ten years. That data is archived until its time is up. Data with no business or legal reason left is deleted, and the lesson warns it lives in many places: the database, its backups, a failover site and that site's backups. Deleting a file also only removes the reference to it; the data stays on the disk until it is overwritten. So data that must really be gone is sanitized, by wiping or by destroying the drive (NIST SP 800-88 sets out how). A quick test for each card: is the data still in use, done with but still needed, or not needed at all?

What you'll learn

Decide whether data should be backed up, archived or deleted from every place it lives
Tell a backup, a copy of data still in use kept in case it must be restored, from an archive, data done with but kept for a rare need or a retention requirement

Aligned to

CompTIA Security+

4.2 Explain the security implications of proper hardware, software, and data asset management.

5.4 Summarize elements of effective security compliance.

ISC2 CISSP

2.4 Manage data lifecycle

NIST 800-53

SI-12 Information Management and Retention

Key terms

Backup: A copy of data captured at a specific point in time and stored separately from the source system, used to restore information in the event of data loss, corruption, or a security incident such as ransomware.
Archive: A long-term storage location for data that is no longer actively used but may need to be accessed occasionally, typically on cheaper, less accessible storage.
Data Retention: The practice of storing data for a required period of time to meet legal, regulatory, or business obligations before secure disposal.
Data Retirement: The process of managing data that has reached the end of its lifecycle, including decisions about archiving, deletion, or destruction.
Data Sanitization: The process of permanently and securely removing or destroying data from a storage device before disposal or reuse.

Topics

Data Retention Data Retirement Interactive Categorize

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