Data Retention & Disposition Policy¶

Data retention describes what data must be stored and for how long. This data is commonly used for disaster recovery, network forensics, network analytics, and cybersecurity investigations. Proper data retention standards minimize the company’s attack surface and prevent the accumulation of unnecessary data and the resulting costs.

This policy letter establishes the data retention policy for all production information stored on cloud infrastructure owned or operated by Second Front (2F). The scope of this policy includes all AWS regions and any other providers that host infrastructure managed by 2F for the Game Warden Platform as a Service (PaaS).

1. Data categorization & retention periods¶

This section defines types of data and how long each category must be retained. Retention periods are based on security, operational, and compliance requirements.

Access, authentication, and administrative auditable events¶

Retention period: 1 year

Audit scope includes:

Successful and unsuccessful login attempts
Privileged or system-level activity
Session start and end times
Concurrent logins from different workstations
Access to protected objects or resources
Program initiations and direct system access
Account creation, modification, disabling, and termination
Kernel module loads, unloads, and restarts

Backup requirement:

Audit records must be backed up at least weekly to a separate system from the source.

Network activity logs¶

Retention period: 1 year

Includes:

All inbound and outbound network traffic
All internal traffic within the environment

Mission-critical backups¶

Retention period: 3 months

Includes:

Backups and snapshots of systems, applications, and data that are critical to organizational survival

2. Superseding procedures¶

Retention periods explicitly stated in local network or system operating procedures may supersede this document if they extend the retention timelines defined above. This policy establishes the minimum baseline for how long data should be retained in cloud environments.

3. Superseded policies¶

This policy supersedes the Second Front (2F) Data Retention Policy dated 20 August 2021.

4. Reference documents¶

This section lists the authoritative documents and government directives that inform this policy.

Publication	Title	Date
Directive-type Memorandum (DTM) 22-001	DoD Standards for Records Management Capabilities in Programs Including Information Technology	02 June 2023
DoDD 5400.07	DoD Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Program	05 April 2019
DoD Instruction 5015.02	DoD Records Management Program	24 February 2015
NARA Pubs	National Archives and Records Administration General Records Schedule	Latest