Data retention defines the policies of persistent data and records management

Records management

Records management, or RM, is the practice of maintaining the records of an organization from the time they are created up to their eventual disposal...

 for meeting legal and business data archival requirements. A data retention policy weighs legal and privacy concerns against economics and need to know concerns to determine both the retention time, archival rules, data formats, and the permissible means of storage, access, and encryption.

Data retention issues plagued recovery of essential data of many early computer systems, notably the data recovery for the Viking lander.

See also

• Telecommunications data retention
  Telecommunications data retention
  In the field of telecommunications, data retention generally refers to the storage of call detail records of telephony and internet traffic and transaction data by governments and commercial organisations...
  
  

Open Rights Group's page on Data Retention