Nobody Runs Your Cleanup Script (And Regulators Know It) — Daily DevOps & .NET
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Documented retention policies without automated enforcement are evidence of negligence, not compliance. The post identifies four fatal flaws in typical retention approaches: manual scripts that never run, backup retention that undermines primary deletion, monitoring storage without tracking personal data volumes, and the 'storage is cheap' mindset. It then presents four Azure-based patterns for automated enforcement: Azure Blob Storage lifecycle policies (Bicep), Cosmos DB TTL, Azure Functions for SQL databases, and ASP.NET Core health checks to detect violations. Backup retention policies must also align with primary data retention to satisfy GDPR Article 17 erasure requests. The core argument is that compliance requires infrastructure-as-code with execution logs and metrics, not wiki documentation.
Table of contents
The Fatal Pattern: Retention as Documentation TheaterThe Correct Pattern: Infrastructure-as-Code RetentionBackup Retention: The Often-Forgotten Compliance KillerFrom Theater to Enforcement: What Actually ChangedPractical Implementation ChecklistThe Real Test: GDPR Article 17 Erasure RequestsConclusion: Compliance is Code, Not DocumentationSort: