Shedding ballast and meeting legal requirements – complying with retention periods using the DOXiS iECM Suite’s retention management system
Over the course of time a large number of documents which are no longer needed build up, even in electronic archives. This takes up valuable storage space. On the other hand there is often no continuous monitoring of the prescribed retention periods. The retention management system in the DOXiS iECM Suite ensures that archived data and documents remain in the archive as long as required by the statutory retention periods or internal company regulations. At the end of their lifecycle they can be designated for deletion.
Together with media management and cache management, retention management forms the basis for comprehensive information lifecycle management (ILM) with DOXiS. In this way, taking into account the organisational and technical aspects of an ECM solution, the conditions are created for managing all types of information according to its ‘value’.
Fields of application of DOXiS Retention Management
With the DOXiS Archive as a central content repository in the DOXiS iECM Suite, extensive options are available for retention management, whereby all the storage media supported by DOXiS are included. For each data and document set in the DOXiS Archive a separate retention rule repository is created which facilitates management of the retention periods. In this way DOXiS supports the monitoring of retention periods and data protection guidelines, e.g. for tax-relevant data and HR documents.
Highlights of DOXiS retention management
- Comprehensive regulatory framework for exact specification of minimum or maximum retention periods.
- Definition of rounding rules, e.g. for months or years. Modification of the rules is possible at any time, for example to extend the retention period. Rules applied at document level, with the corresponding rights, can likewise be changed at any time. This guarantees the necessary flexibility in everyday working life.
- With the hold and release functions it is possible to block documents explicitly and release them later to prevent them from being deleted within a defined period. This function takes account of exceptional situations, e.g. in the case of a legal dispute or ongoing processes.
- Deletion of documents in a two-stage process: in the first stage the document is deleted ‘logically’, i.e. taken out of the archive index. Physical deletion depends on the archive technology used. Deletion is done by periodic reorganisation of media, so that older media are deleted progressively. In the case of systems with in-built retention management logic (e.g. EMC² Centera, IBM DR 550 or NetApp Snap-Lock) the deletion mechanisms provided are used.
- Another DOXiS retention management function enables compliance with data protection rules for hard-disk-based systems and also for UDO media. With this function, the content of the data is destroyed on deletion. After reorganisation, the whole medium can be destroyed.