Compliance with governmental regulations is a significant challenge for financial organizations and their complex networks. Customer information protection and process control documentation is a requirement, an audit trail must be provided to legal institutions. Bank internal and external regulations ask for an archive concept which includes storage/archive media which cannot be altered and has long term reliability. The data archive must support the trust customers have in the bank.

Without an archive strategy you will loose history data. An archive strategy includes software which archives the right data at the right time. And it includes a hardware selection which gives long term access to vital data at highest reliability and the right price.

Different data requires different archiving rules. Most important is, that rules for archiving are established and applied on a company wide basis. Archive applications apply those rules and archive (or delete) according to specified events like dates or other parameters. Archive content may differ widely and will range from electronic transaction documents, account statements or check imaging to quarterly results and the source of these published documents.

Country and state specific legal requirements for data retention periods range up to 30 years. Legal requirements are getting modified and require flexibility in applying archiving rules. It is a management responsibility to ensure data access within given legal guidelines.