8.1.3 Security & Compliance — Data Protection — Data Retention — Policies and Purge

Data retention defines how long information is kept and when it is permanently removed. The platform provides policy-driven retention controls to support regulatory compliance, operational needs, and data minimization principles.

Retention Policy Model

Retention policies are defined per data category and applied deterministically.

Policy characteristics:

Explicit retention duration

Category-based rules

Tenant-level configuration where permitted

Policies are evaluated continuously.

Data Categories

Different data types follow different retention rules.

Common categories:

Content and media metadata

User and access records

Analytics and usage data

Logs and audit trails

Each category has a documented default.

Purge Mechanism

When retention periods expire, data is purged automatically.

Purge guarantees:

Irreversible deletion

No partial removal

Logged execution

Example purge job:

RetentionPurger::run('analytics.events');

Manual Deletion Requests

Authorized users may trigger manual deletion where policy allows.

Manual deletion rules:

Permission-gated

Scope-limited

Fully auditable

Backups and Snapshots

Backups follow independent retention schedules. Purging active data does not retroactively modify historical backups.

Backup retention is documented and enforced separately.

Compliance and Legal Holds

Legal or regulatory holds may suspend deletion for specific data sets.

Hold behavior:

Explicit activation

Scope-restricted

Auditable lifecycle

Transparency and Verification

Administrators can inspect effective retention policies and purge history.

Visibility includes:

Applied policy

Last purge timestamp

Affected data scope

Security and Isolation

Retention and purge operations are tenant-scoped. Data belonging to one tenant is never purged as part of another tenant’s lifecycle.