Data disposition: What it is and why it’s essential for your retention 

What should you do when data comes to the end of its lifecycle and isn’t useful anymore? Leaving it dormant will inflate storage costs and open the door to potential compliance breaches. Deleting the file won’t work either, as attackers can still recover it. So, what’s the solution? 

Data disposition provides a clear, compliant process for archiving, destroying, or disposing of data at the end of its lifecycle. It also helps businesses decide how long to retain records based on their sensitivity, value, and relevance to compliance or legality. 

This guide will dive deeper into what data disposition is, how it can reduce your exposure risk, and what you need to keep in mind when laying out a data disposition policy for your own organization. 

What is data disposition? 

Data disposition refers to the various methods of managing, handling, and deleting sensitive information when it’s no longer needed. It’s an essential element of both data minimization and data governance, ensuring businesses never store more records than they need at a given time. 

It’s unreasonable for an organization to store data longer than it needs the information. Without proper data retention and disposition management, organizations raise their risk of a serious data breach and could face legal repercussions for not following compliance regulations.

A data disposition policy gives organizations a clear strategy for disposing of data properly. It handles the removal of data debris, which is known as Redundant, Obsolete, or Trivial (ROT) data. It also ensures that retained data is disposed of when the organization doesn’t need it anymore, or the data is moved to an archive if it contains permanent value. 

Collectively, this process enables an organization to use only the cloud or on-premises storage they actually need instead of continuously increasing storage usage for data with no value.

Why data disposition is essential

A growing data corpus is making it harder than ever for organizations to manage their records, meet government standards, and keep customer information safe.

Back in 2022, we saw the potential consequences of this ‘data overload’ when Morgan Stanley Smith Barney was required to pay $35 million for their failure to protect the personally identifiable information (PII) of millions of customers. We also recently discussed this topic in depth as part of our FILED podcast on the security risks associated with unstructured data.

Data disposition is about more than clearing out the digital filing cabinet to save storage. Getting it right (or wrong) can have massive ramifications for your business. Consider these benefits:

• Data security: A data disposition policy makes it easy for employees to securely classify, store, and destroy records. This ensures historical sensitive information isn’t at risk of unauthorized access; it simply won’t exist when it’s no longer needed. 

• Compliance: One of the key pillars of data disposition is to classify data. This can include marking PII and payment card information (PCI) data, which can help organizations comply with regulations.

• Cost savings: Disposing of data that’s no longer required reduces the burden on your storage infrastructure. This cuts costs for physical servers and cloud storage, resulting in cost savings over time, especially for data-heavy organizations. 

• Operational efficiency: Removing data prevents clutter. This means your teams can find the information that actually matters for their day-to-day workflows, improving efficiency and saving time that your staff can reallocate to core activities. 

• Business ethics: Customers demand privacy. By holding customer data only for as long as it has business value or as required by law, data disposition helps ensure their needs are met.

Storing unnecessary data creates a liability that grows more dangerous with time. Data disposition makes sense of the chaos and gives you a strategy to keep your records operationally relevant and compliant. 

Why should disposition be a part of your retention policy? 

Let’s sum up five reasons you need to make disposition a part of your retention efforts:

1. Protection: If an organization handles sensitive information, it has a responsibility to protect it. This includes disposing of it when it reaches the end of its lifecycle. 
2. Exposure: Disposition prevents unintentional or intentional exposure of sensitive historical data to unauthorized recipients. 
3. Compliance: Depending on the industry and local regulations, many organizations are required to have disposition policies to meet compliance regulations.
4. Recordkeeping: By reducing vast quantities of data, disposition makes it easier to find information, promoting confidence in the organization. 
5. Scalability: By creating an information architecture with data disposition policies, organizations are empowered to continuously improve and scale records management.

Ultimately, an effective data disposition strategy mitigates risks while reducing operational costs.

Where to find your retention policy

An organization’s specific retention policy depends on its industry and the regulatory environment in which it operates. To create an effective retention and disposition strategy, organizations must identify the legal, privacy, and regulatory requirements for the data they collect. Some considerations include:

• Public authorities: Local governments may have their own rules and regulations regarding how data is stored and deleted. Global organizations will also need to consider laws in different countries when managing data.
• Industry regulations: Industries often have their own data security standards to follow.
• Relevant privacy legislation: Different regions have legislation regarding personally identifiable information that organizations need to consider. The EU has the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), while the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) applies to certain businesses that collect personal information from California residents.

Organizations also need to account for the ongoing business value of their data to create a retention and disposal schedule.

The landscape of data privacy legislation, compliance standards, and other legal requirements is constantly evolving. Technology is also rapidly changing to enhance information security. Organizations should consistently monitor these changes to ensure their data disposition strategies are effective and compliant.

The 3 key stages of data disposition

Effective data disposition begins with a clear process and consistent execution. Three key stages form the basis of any successful strategy.

Let’s look at each of these steps. 

1. Develop clear policies

Before you ever sort through your unstructured data or begin disposing of records, you need to have a transparent policy in place. This will make sure every decision is made according to a predetermined framework. Here’s what to cover: 

• Retention schedule: This document defines how long each type of data should be kept based on its sensitivity, necessity, or legal requirement. 
• Disposal methods: List the authorized disposal methods for securely archiving or destroying data. Also specify how disposal differs for physical vs. electronic records. 
• Disposal criteria: How will you determine when data is no longer useful or relevant? Set out clear criteria that all key staff can follow to determine when to dispose of it. 
• Roles: Who is responsible for each element of your data disposition and retention strategy? Assign ownership so every stakeholder knows what’s expected of them. 
• Documentation: You should also create a framework for recording what, when, how, and why records were destroyed. This documentation can be essential for compliance. 

Remember that your policy also needs to be backed up by procedures and processes that make it easy for every team member to follow your framework. 

2. Identify and classify data

You can’t start disposing of data until you understand the data you already have. There are two things you need to focus on at this stage: 

• Data inventory: Build a map of all the data you store and where it lives. 
• Classification: Classify data based on risk and relevance to your organization’s needs. 

Identifying and classifying your data can be complicated, particularly if you have a large amount of unstructured and structured data siloed across a wide range of systems, spreadsheets, and software. Consider using software and tools to automate this process and reduce manual errors. 

RecordPoint will discover, classify, and unify your structured and unstructured data wherever it lies, without you having to move a thing from its original source. This gives you the granular visibility you need to make informed decisions. Find out more about our data discovery and classification solution. 

3. Identify and classify data

Once you know where your data lies and have your policies in place, the final step is to choose the disposition methods that make the most sense for your data types. Here are some possible approaches and how they differ: 

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Once you’ve completed these stages, you’re ready to operationalize your strategy. The key now is to work on baking your policies and procedures into your culture and workflows.

Automate where you can, train your teams, and remember to review your policies regularly to make sure your data stays current as your organization scales and compliance requirements change. 

Best practices for effective data disposition

As you start to develop your data retention and disposition strategy, here are six key things to keep in mind:

• Keep it structured: Effective data disposition lives and dies by policies. You need to have clear workflows that trigger reviews and outline when it’s time to dispose of or retain sensitive data. The more rigorous your framework is, the more accurate you’ll be. 

• Make your policies accessible: Set up knowledge bases or compliance portals to make your policies and frameworks easy to find for staff and stakeholders. Use simple language so those with limited expertise can understand their responsibilities. 

• Automate the process: Use tools and solutions to automate the data identification and classification processes. Advanced solutions will also identify sensitive data and automatically apply disposition and retention rules for your review. 

• Track the process: Maintain consistent documentation that shows who deleted what, when they deleted it, and why. Aside from supporting your own recordkeeping, this is absolutely critical for being prepared for an audit and meeting compliance standards. 

• Train your team: Your employees are both the greatest strength and biggest weak point when it comes to data disposition. When you introduce your policies, hold awareness training to inform them of best practices and recaps to keep things fresh in their minds.

• Review regularly: Laws and standards always change, as do your business needs as you scale. Host regular reviews of your policies to make sure you’re staying consistent as requirements change. 

Embedding these practices into your strategy will help you stay consistent on your route to reducing risk and achieving compliance. 

What prevents disposition? 

Disposition is crucial for records management and cybersecurity, yet some organizations are anxious about the disposition process. Here are a few barriers that commonly crop up: 

• Data volume: The sheer amount of data businesses need to find and classify can be overwhelming. This is why automation in this area is so pivotal. 

• Data silos: Business data is often spread across multiple systems and solutions, making it hard to aggregate. The right records management solution can help you manage this data in situ, so you don’t need to collate it from multiple different sources. 

• Irreversibility: Once you’ve permanently deleted files, you’re unlikely to recover them. However, with an effective data disposition policy in place, there is little reason to worry, as necessary records won’t get deleted. 

• Lack of ownership: A lack of designated data owners means no one feels accountable for data disposition. This is why clear policies that outline roles and responsibilities are the foundation of any successful disposition strategy. 

• Resistance: Many organizations take a ‘just in case’ approach to data retention, hoarding records because they worry they might need them in the future. Again, though, a clear retention timeline, along with specific criteria, puts these fears to bed.

Ultimately, all of these problems can be solved with two things. The first is having clear policies that ensure you retain records for the exact amount of time you need them. The second is leveraging the right technology to identify and classify all of your data automatically. 

How technology solutions can help

We’ve covered how to build a robust data disposition framework in this guide. The next step is to choose a solution to help you with the process. 

RecordPoint offers centralized governance, which connects data, records, and content from all sources across an entire network and various locations, along with in-place data disposition and minimization. Our platform will help you achieve full control and transparency over all your records and information in real time, without you having to move a thing.

Combined with machine learning and customizable rules, RecordPoint will automatically classify records and apply relevant record retention schedules. This comprehensive solution reduces operational burden while giving you peace of mind that your disposition and data retention are accurate and consistent. 

Book a demo today to see how our platform can support your data governance and compliance. 

FAQs

What types of data for disposition should I prioritize? 

A good place to start is with redundant, obsolete, or trivial (ROT) data that has no legal or operational value to your organization. This is an easy way to reduce storage costs quickly while minimizing security risks. A good data asset disposition strategy will also highlight when you can dispose of data that has been marked for retention. 

What’s the difference between data archiving vs data disposition? 

Data archiving is a way of preserving data for the long term so it’s ready for compliance. By contrast, the disposition of data is the process of disposing of that data by securely destroying or anonymizing it. Both of these processes often work hand-in-hand. 

How do I avoid disposing of data that I might need later? 

It all starts with classification and strong policies. Sorting your information to identify sensitive data will allow you to place legal holds on the data that matters most. This can help you prevent premature secure deletion of the information you actually need at a later date.