G Suite Retention Policy

[Mr_Jiminy]

Can I confirm the default retention policy set in G Suite?

 

Inbox - indefinitely?

Trash - 30 days?

[enjay]

By default yes, but you can change that - https://support.google.com/a/answer/151128?hl=en

[Mr_Jiminy]

Can I ask what is suggested best practice?

[enjay]

We have left ours at default as I couldn't see a reason to change it. I suppose we should possibly consider a 7 year retention on Inbox/Archive, or whatever the ICO guidelines are.

[Mr_Jiminy]

or whatever the ICO guidelines are.

 

This is proving half of the battle, finding out exactly what ICO guidelines dictate... Admittedly I'm probably missing figures that are right in front of my face, but I'm having a difficult time not going around in circles on the ICO website.

 

I know Office 365 provides indefinite retention for items in the deleted folder, which is nice.

[Mr_Jiminy]

Opened my eyes and found what I'm looking for.

[enjay]

This is proving half of the battle, finding out exactly what ICO guidelines dictate...

ICO offer guidelines not hard rules on data retention. Put simply (and I appreciate this isn't a simple matter!), you can keep data for as long as you can justify keeping it. So, the fact you can't delete data from SIMS means you can keep SIMS data forever. However since with G Suite you can delete older data, you probably have to be able to present a reason for keeping it indefinitely, and "can't be bothered to work out how to archive it" is probably not going to cut it.

[ADMaster]

The default is to keep indefinitely including deleted items if you are using vault.

outside of vault a users Spam / Trash folder is deleted after 30 days, but you can get messages back with vault.

If you set a retention period you can choose if it expunges deleted items or from the inbox too.

Also my understanding is if you delete an account, that also deletes their mail archive. I disable the account and move them to a leavers OU with the year they left. So in X years I can delete those accounts.

 

[Mr_Jiminy]

"can't be bothered to work out how to archive it"

 

I'm adding that very line to my updated policy document.