Retention and deletion

Your data stays in Forest for as long as it is useful to you, and it can be removed when it is not. Retention and deletion give you control over the lifecycle of your assessment data rather than letting it accumulate indefinitely by default.

Why lifecycle matters

Data you no longer need is data you still have to protect. The longer something lives, the longer it is exposed to risk and the more it complicates compliance. A clear retention and deletion practice keeps your footprint matched to your actual needs. You hold history while it informs your roadmap and trend view, and you remove what no longer serves a purpose.

Deletion also matters when relationships end. If you stop using Forest, your data should not linger somewhere indefinitely. The ability to have it removed is part of treating that data as yours.

What to keep in mind

• Retained history supports trend tracking and roadmap projections over time.

• Removing data is deliberate, so you decide what goes and when.

• Deletion of inputs changes what the Forest Intelligence Service can compute, since scores are derived from those inputs.

Before deleting historical assessment data, consider what you lose for trend analysis. Once it is gone, the comparison points go with it.

Retention is one layer of the broader picture in Data protection. For the record of deletion activity, see Audit logging.