Call it regulatory compliance, legal vigilance, good disk management or just plain common sense -- regardless of your company's motivation, a sound system for retaining and disposing of data is one of the modern requirements of storage management.

Developing a consistent, repeatable and practical set of data retention policies is the first step in the process. Tools such as data classification applications can help automate the process of sorting through the reams of structured and unstructured data to determine its appropriate disposition. While storage managers may consider this a business unit function, as keepers of company's data they are very much in the mix. And, as such, they need to know about the legal implications, the types of systems best suited for retained data and how encryption can help ensure that data is kept intact in its original form.