Dive Brief:
- Google announced that Drive for Work now enables better retention and deletion of company data, CIO reports.
- Drive for Work features a data management and e-discovery service and has also been certified to comply with the ISO 27018 standard, which governs how companies handle personal data stored in the cloud.
- Companies are increasingly cautious about making sure new technology meets discovery and compliance requirements, including data retention and deletion.
Dive Insight:
The handling and deleting of email has garnered attention lately as the result of the Hillary Clinton email scandal and a few closely watched court cases. Using Drive for Work, emails and other files are saved for a defined timeframe inside Vault, even if end users delete them from their drive. Companies can set a policy to automatically delete files after they reach a certain age, or hold some types of data longer so it's available if needed for a lawsuit.
"It's pretty much transparent in the sense that Vault, as its name suggests, is holding or expiring this content in its store," said Scott Johnston, the director of product management for Drive. "And so you take something like [the legal hold feature], you're going to delete something, and Vault's going to hold onto it as long as needed."
The U.S. Senate is currently considering a bill that would standardize the way the government handles email for law enforcement needs, and a few businesses, including Microsoft, are currently involved in disputes over whether or not they are legally required to turn over email and data stored in the cloud.
