Maximize Storage, Minimize Risk: Data Retention Best Practices

The amount of data stored globally is doubling every four years¹, with no signs of slowing down. However, 52% of this data has no business, legal, or regulatory value, meaning it’s useless and not critical to business operations.²

The problem is that this "useless" data, along with its multiple backup iterations, is still being stored, resulting in 90% of organizations overspending an average of 43% of their storage budget on unnecessary storage each month.² Even worse, keeping the wrong data too long or not long enough can lead to liability issues.

This is where a solid retention strategy for your backups becomes essential. By cleaning up older backups and aligning with regulatory requirements, you can use your storage more efficiently and avoid potential fines.

What Is Data Retention?

Retention policies are essentially schedules that dictate when it’s time to discard old backups. This is crucial because certain industries have regulations that require businesses to retain specific types of data for a set period—like account statements, personal health information (PHI), or patient records. These regulations go both ways: retain the data for the required time, but don’t keep it longer than necessary.

Where to Start With Data Retention?

To manage your unused and overstored data effectively, start by determining your legal requirements and practical business needs. These will form the foundation of your data retention strategy.

Begin with an inventory of your existing IT systems, applications, data, remote locations, and even at-home employees. Then, categorize the data based on:

• Regulatory requirements (HIPAA, PCI DSS, GDPR, etc.)
• Data sensitivity, especially if it contains personally identifiable information (PII)
• Business dependency

Once you've identified and classified your data, you can create a backup retention policy that specifies how often each type of data should be backed up and how long it should be retained. Here are some guidelines for crafting a data retention policy:

• Keep it simple and easy to explain.
• Make sure it meets legal and regulatory requirements.
• Retain personal customer information only as long as necessary.
• Store critical data in fast, accessible storage.

For more details, refer to our whitepaper, “Building a Better Backup Strategy,” which you can download here: Whitepaper Download

Retention Policies for Your Backup Strategy With NovaBACKUP

NovaBACKUP simplifies the implementation of your data retention policy as part of your backup strategy. You can set up a custom backup retention schedule, ensuring that only necessary backup data is stored. Given that every business is different, the flexibility to fine-tune these settings is crucial. With NovaBACKUP, you can choose how many valid backups to keep, how long to retain them, and what types of backups to retain (file backups, image backups, etc.).

To further reduce storage needs, NovaBACKUP uses the incremental forever backup scheme, which differs slightly from traditional backup methods like full + incremental or full + differential backups.

What are Incremental Forever Backups?

An incremental forever backup begins with a complete backup of all selected files. After that, only changes made since the last backup are saved in subsequent backups. This method contrasts with traditional full and differential backups, which require periodic full backups along with differential backups that capture all changes since the last full backup.

This strategy optimizes storage usage and simplifies the backup process, but understanding how it interacts with retention settings is crucial for maintaining data integrity and efficient storage management.

Handling Retention with Incremental Forever Backups

1. Initial Backup: The process starts with a complete backup of all selected files and folders, which serves as the baseline for all future backups.
2. Subsequent Backups: Each subsequent backup captures only the changes since the last backup. With NovaBACKUP, this happens at the file or the file's block level, further reducing the required backup storage space.
3. Retention Policy Application: With incremental forever backups, the retention is applied to the selected files and folders. So, when the retention period is reached, files or versions of those files outside of the retention policy are removed from all the backups.

Example:

For a 30-day retention period with a mix of files - some changing daily, others not at all - the initial backup captures all selected files. Subsequent backups record only changes. Once the retention period is up:

• The last version of any unchanged file (i.e., from the initial backup) remains.
• Changed files have outdated versions or blocks removed from all backups, ensuring that all the pieces that are needed to recover the file using the blocks that are within the retention period are still available.

Note: If a file has been deselected or deleted from the backup, it will also be deleted from all the backups once the retention period is due.

Benefits of Retention Policies Based on Incremental Forever Backups

1. Space Efficiency: By removing old versions of files and blocks of files that no longer meet retention policies, the system significantly reduces storage requirements and the need for multiple full backups.
2. Data Integrity: The retention process captures all changes within the retention policy, maintaining data integrity and continuity.
3. Simplified Management: Administrators no longer need to manage multiple full and differential backups. The incremental forever approach simplifies management by maintaining a single full backup that is continuously updated.

Wrapping Up: Optimize Your Backup Retention for Success

To comply with legal requirements and protect against cyber threats like ransomware, maintaining multiple copies of data is often necessary. NovaBACKUP's retention functionality gives backup administrators control over what data is retained and for how long, while also saving on storage costs.

Try it for yourself and see how easy it is to manage your entire backup and retention strategy with just one backup job. Download a trial today.

1 IDC - https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200513005075/en/IDCs-Global-StorageSphere-Forecast-Shows-Continued-Strong
2 Techradar - https://www.techradar.com/opinion/useless-data-and-carbon-waste-the-dark-side-of-digitization