All organisations must comply with local (and sometimes global) data retention and data privacy regulations, depending on where, how and with whom they conduct their business. Failure to comply with the various regulations could result in severe penalties being imposed on the organisations or individual members of their management teams.

Although the requirements vary, most of these regulations mandate that organisations retain data for a specific number of years and to ensure that the privacy of data relating to individuals is protected. Specific industry regulations govern the amount of time that data must remain available for easy access, and all compliance regulations require that data remains in its original business context.

Furthermore, as we have seen in recent New Zealand court cases, the ability to provide information when required, and to be able to demonstrate that the associated trail of data is intact, is important to the confidence of legislators, investors and potential customers.