As a follow up to the recent introduction of compliance exports in RingCentral Video, enterprise customers can now set data retention policy to prevent information from being retained in cloud storage beyond a given time limit.
With compliance exports, RingCentral Video administrators can export data from cloud storage and archive it offline, in a system where messages can be retrieved, if necessary, for legal discovery or internal review. By setting a data retention policy, they can ensure data will be automatically purged from cloud storage after 30, 60, or 90 days, or a custom interval. This feature is available with RingCentral Video Pro and RingCentral Video Pro Plus and to RingCentral Office users.
Both compliance exports and data retention limits meet different sorts of regulatory compliance needs. For example, a data retention limit of 30 days is automatically set when healthcare organizations configure RingCentral MVP for compliance with HIPAA patient data privacy rules. RingCentral Video supports HIPAA by respecting that same limitation. This allows medical practices and other healthcare organizations to send secure team messages to coordinate daily work but treat it as a temporary conduit of information, as defined by the law, rather than a permanent repository of data that may include patient information.
Other industries have their own requirements about what must be retained and what must not be retained, either dictated by regulation or by a company’s own policies. An enterprise may need a reliable way of producing messages years later for legal discovery, either for use in its own defense or in response to a court order. Or it may want to automatically delete messages on a regular schedule to avoid potential legal liability or protect the confidentiality of messages. If an enterprise decides to limit data retention, doing so consistently, according to a standard policy, is essential to making the practice defensible in court.
The rules for retention of email have been established over a period of decades, while the standards for text messages and team messages are still being defined. However, it’s clear regulated enterprises need a way of setting and enforcing their own policies.
Adding support for data retention policies is another way RingCentral Video is bringing team messaging to regulated enterprises, with the flexibility to participate in conversations from a smartphone or your desk and incorporate file attachments and tasks — with the flexibility to switch smoothly between text messaging and RingCentral MVP calling.
Originally published Mar 21, 2017, updated Jan 24, 2023
