How should personally identifiable information be handled in archives?

Managing PII in archives

Personal data requires special handling due to privacy laws and reputational risk. Archive practices should minimize exposure while preserving necessary records for business or compliance.

Recommended controls:

• Classify and tag PII so it can be filtered and managed separately.
• Apply encryption at rest and in transit and protect keys.
• Limit access using least privilege and strong authentication.
• Implement retention rules that comply with privacy regulations (e.g., right to be forgotten).
• Mask or pseudonymize PII in copies used for analytics where full identifiers are unnecessary.

Document decisions and data flows, and coordinate with privacy and legal teams to ensure retention practices meet regional privacy laws. Regular audits and data subject request workflows make compliance manageable.