Video retention requirements
Video retention requirements define how long security camera footage must be stored before it can be deleted. Requirements vary by jurisdiction, industry, and insurance policy. Getting retention wrong, too short and you lose evidence; too long and storage costs escalate.
How to set a defensible retention period
There is no single legal retention period you can look up and apply. Surveillance retention is governed by a mix of data-protection law, sector regulation, local licensing conditions and your own insurer's requirements, and those interact differently at every site, which is why the industry figures further down this page are norms to calibrate against, not a compliance answer.
What is consistent across the major regimes — Singapore's PDPA, the EU and UK GDPR, and US state privacy law — is the shape of the obligation rather than the duration:
- You need a stated purpose. Footage is personal data. Recording it requires a specific, documented reason — typically security of premises — not a general intention to have cameras.
- Retention must be no longer than necessary for that purpose. This is the operative test almost everywhere. Keeping footage indefinitely is the most common compliance failure, and it is a failure regardless of jurisdiction.
- The period must be defined and applied. A written retention period that your system does not actually enforce provides no protection. Automatic deletion at the stated period is the control that matters.
- People have rights over the footage. Subject-access, notification signage and the ability to retrieve or delete specific footage on request are near-universal requirements.
In practice most commercial sites settle between roughly one and three months, set by whichever of these bites first: how long an incident typically takes to surface, what your insurer or sector regulator requires, and what your storage budget supports. Sites subject to specific licensing conditions, gaming, banking, some transport and healthcare settings, are frequently required to hold footage longer, and those conditions override the general rule.
Confirm your own position with your data-protection officer or legal counsel before fixing a policy. Once you have the number, Camzify's retention management enforces it per camera and deletes automatically at the boundary, so the policy on paper and the policy in the system stay identical.