01
Data categories
- Account and organization data
- website inventory
- audit evidence
- findings and work history
- reports and exports
- security logs
- support records
- billing records
- backups
02
Retention factors
- Selected plan
- customer configuration
- legal obligation
- security and fraud need
- contractual requirement
- backup lifecycle
- active dispute or incident
03
Deletion
Production behavior should define primary-record deletion, export windows, suspended accounts, terminated subscriptions, legal holds, and the time required for protected backups to expire.
04
Operational implementation
- Assign an owner for implementing and reviewing the obligations described in Data Retention Policy.
- Map the policy to product settings, contracts, support procedures, data flows, records, and staff responsibilities.
- Keep the public language aligned with actual production behaviour and contracted commitments.
- Retain approval, effective-date, change-history, and customer-notice records.
05
Review triggers
- A material product, pricing, data-processing, security, vendor, or support change.
- A new jurisdiction, customer class, contract requirement, or regulatory obligation.
- An incident, complaint, audit finding, or operational exception that shows the published process is incomplete.
- A change that could create testing outside the approved scope or at an unsafe rate.
06
Decision and verification record
Scope
Name the website, environment, URLs, entities, templates, or user journeys included in the data retention policy decision.
Decision
Record the chosen action, owner, priority, dependencies, approval, and the evidence that justified it.
Verification
Repeat the relevant check from an authorized context, confirm the original evidence is no longer reproducible, and retain a dated result.
Next useful action
Turn data retention policy into an accountable record.
An implementation checklist showing where Data Retention Policy is reflected in product behaviour and business procedure.