In this episode of Compliance Technologies, we continue our series on GDPR fines by examining one of the most enforceable compliance risks: data retention.

GDPR requires organizations to keep personal data no longer than necessary for the purpose it was collected. In practice, many systems retain data indefinitely through backups, logs, analytics pipelines, and downstream services, long after its original purpose has expired.

We explore how retention failures emerge, why deletion and anonymization are engineering challenges rather than policy problems, and how excess data quietly compounds regulatory and security risk over time.

This episode reframes data retention as a system lifecycle issue, where compliance depends on a system’s ability to let go, not just to collect.

If you build, operate, or govern systems that process personal data, this conversation will help you spot where retention risk often hides in plain sight.