Data Preservation

Data Preservation, Data Security, Data Privacy, Data Integrity, Data Compliance all refer to the protection of the data.

Data Preservation is about securing and maintaining the safety and integrity of the data after it’s been processed, for future reference.

‘Data which is preserved cannot be changed and hardly purged or deleted.’

Things to consider for Data Preservation

• What data to be preserved? Not all data is worth preserving.
• What is the retention period to preserve data? Like for how long to keep data.
• Who will be responsible for preserving data? A custodian is required for data repository.

In the current era with big data having huge semi and unstructured datasets, it’s not worth rather not possible to preserve everything. One must decide what to preserve and for how long.

For example, in datastore like Data Warehouse or a Data Mart or in Data Lake etc., there are certain datasets to preserve. One can start from the list of compliance requirements e.g., traditionally in banking sector, the customers who has left the bank or in other words closed their accounts, their history is preserved or saved for 7 years from the day they closed their accounts.

In research field where 100s of tests are running on daily basis, not every piece of data is saved or preserved. Only the data which can convince investors to keep investing, is preserved till the time new investment is in 😊.