The Changing Nature of Global Data Retention Policy and Compliance

The focus on regulatory retention policies across various industries has ramped significantly over the past few years. GDPR, HIPAA, BCBS 239, DORA, and others all have their own particular guidelines that govern the length of data retention, archiving, and destruction to protect privacy and mitigate risk. For organizations operating in a regulated industry or cross-border, strong data management policies and execution are crucial to avoiding fines and staying compliant.  Here’s a topline summary of regulations that include a heavy focus on data retention policies, all of which carry heavy fines, costly operational disruption, and likely reputational damage as well.

• EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – Requires companies to keep data only as long as needed for the original reason, stressing data minimization and storage limitation.
• US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) – Hospitals need to keep patient health information (PHI) for six years or more.
• Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) – Requires US businesses to keep audit trails, balance sheets and other documentation for seven years at least.
• Basel III & BCBS 239 – Banks must provide proof of full-cycle risk data integration and reporting, requiring full data traceability.
• Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) – Calls for financial institutions to have explicit data governance and retention policies, with data available for audit and incident investigation.
• Local Data Privacy Rules (CCPA, PIPEDA, PDPB) – Organizations have also been subject to data deletion or anonymization requirements when the data no longer is needed under local privacy laws like the California CCPA, Canada’s PIPEDA, and India’s PDPB.

As we can see, while some of these regulations overlap, there are also conflicting requirements and expectations. This means teams there is no standard “retention and handling” policy that can be applied to all data. Teams must track, trace and be able to report on different levels of compliance across different time periods. Trying to do so with manual processes or non-automated policies creates real gaps that put organizations at high risk for heavy fines and operational damage.

And keep in mind that most organizations keep data on several databases, systems, and in various locations, making it difficult to centralize retention policies. When there is requirement for secure data deletion at the end of a retention lifecycle, teams need to ensure they aren’t inadvertently violating a different requirement and are able to prove they disposed of the data correctly.

Retention Compliance with Pentaho Data Catalog

Pentaho Data Catalog (PDC) includes everything required to manage data retention compliance across all regulatory regimes. It offers end-to-end visibility, audit trails, and automated workflows which makes it essential to stay compliant in the modern day.

Data Lineage and Traceability
Data lineage records the data journey — from ingestion to processing, reporting, and deletion. Pentaho’s visual lineage map gives firms 100% traceability, allowing them to show compliance with BCBS 239, GDPR, and DORA requirements.

Metadata Management
PDC’s metadata solution gives a single view of the classification of data, identifying sensitive data (such as PHI for HIPAA or PII for GDPR) for handling and storage. By organizing the data into regulatory buckets, companies can define retention policies and implement automation processes for deletion according to GDPR’s “right to be forgotten” and CCPA’s deletion request provisions.

Policy-Driven Retention Rules
Businesses can create configurable retention policies in PDC. For example, if the records fall under “Financial Documents” SOX-style, they are set to seven-year retention. PDC can notify data custodians for audit at the end of the period or request automatic deletion with flexible workflows that comply with jurisdiction-based retention standards.

Audit Trail and Reporting
Auditability is one of the foundations of compliance. PDC’s reporting functions create full audit reports of accesses, deletions, and modifications to data. Supervisors, internal auditors and attorneys will have immediate, time-stamped visibility of how and when data was processed and used to show compliance with SOX and HIPAA.

Automated Data Disposal
Inspecting and securely disposing of outdated data as soon as possible is important for regulations like GDPR and CCPA. PDC’s automation engine can discover items marked for deletion and begin secure removal processes. It will delete records per policy and log compliance into an audit log, saving time and effort.

Navigating the Data Retention Labrynth

Global data retention laws are some of the toughest obligations that organizations must face. Data privacy regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, SOX and BCBS 239 prescribe, many times in overlapping and conflicting ways, how data must be kept, destroyed, and what the records should show that you comply. With a strong combination of data lineage, metadata, retention policy-based, automatic deletion and auditing through Pentaho Data Catalog, compliance can be simplified, costs lowered, and regulatory risk reduced.