A retention policy is the rule for how long recorded video is kept before it is automatically deleted. It is not a disk size — it is a decision, and the two are often confused: a system that "keeps 30 days" frequently keeps 30 days only because that is when the disks fill and the oldest footage is overwritten, which is an accident of capacity, not a policy. A real retention policy states a target duration per camera or class and sizes storage to meet it.
The defining idea is that retention has two opposing limits. There is a minimum — operational needs and sector rules that say keep footage at least so long (gaming, banking, and cannabis sectors set explicit minimums) — and a maximum, because privacy law caps how long you may keep personal data. Under GDPR Article 5(1)(e) footage must not be kept longer than necessary, and EDPB Guidelines 3/2019 point to a few days as typical for ordinary CCTV. Different footage can have different clocks: one system, many retention periods.
The pitfalls are capacity-driven retention and forgetting the maximum. Letting the disk size decide retention means you cannot answer "how long do we keep footage and why", which is exactly what a regulator or court asks. Deletion should be policy-driven (ONVIF Profile G exposes a maximum retention time), logged, and applied consistently — and a legal hold must be able to override it to preserve specific footage for an investigation. This is engineering guidance, not legal advice; confirm specifics with qualified counsel.
The handbook · 7 volumes
Fora Soft Video Engineering Handbook
A retention policy is a decision about how many days of footage to keep, yet in many systems it is just whatever the disks happen to hold. Our seven-volume handbook covers the full video stack, and for a retention policy start with Volume 1, which covers bitrate, codec choice between H.264, HEVC and AV1, and compression settings that decide how many days fit on the storage you buy. Written by Nikolay Sapunov, CEO at Fora Soft.
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