A Glossary of Key Terms in Offsite Archiving & Storage Technologies for HR & Recruiting
For HR and recruiting professionals, navigating the complexities of data management, compliance, and security is paramount. With increasing regulatory demands and the critical nature of employee and applicant data, understanding the core concepts behind offsite archiving and storage technologies isn’t just a technical exercise—it’s a business imperative. This glossary demystifies the essential terms, offering clear, actionable insights into how these technologies impact your daily operations, compliance obligations, and overall data strategy.
Data Archiving
Data archiving refers to the process of moving inactive data from active production systems to a separate, long-term storage system. Unlike data backup, which is a snapshot for recovery, archiving is for data that is no longer needed for daily operations but must be retained for compliance, legal, or historical purposes. For HR, this often includes records of former employees, old payroll data, or historical applicant information that must be held for specific retention periods. Properly implemented archiving reduces the load on primary systems, improves performance, and minimizes costs, all while ensuring regulated data remains accessible when required for audits or legal discovery. Automation platforms can be configured to automatically identify and move data based on predefined retention policies, ensuring consistency and reducing manual effort.
Offsite Storage
Offsite storage involves storing data in a physical location separate from the primary data center or office premises. This can range from physical tapes or hard drives stored in a secure third-party facility to data replicated in a distant cloud server farm. The primary benefit for HR and recruiting is enhanced data protection against localized disasters such as fire, flood, or theft at the main office. In the context of sensitive HR data, offsite storage is a critical component of a robust disaster recovery plan, ensuring that employee records, contracts, and other vital documents remain safe and recoverable, no matter what happens to your primary systems. It’s a proactive measure that safeguards business continuity and compliance.
Cloud Storage
Cloud storage is a model of computer data storage in which digital data is stored in logical pools, typically across multiple servers, and often in multiple locations. The physical environment is owned and managed by a hosting provider, and the storage resources are delivered on demand over a network (usually the internet). For HR, cloud storage offers scalability, accessibility, and often greater reliability than on-premise solutions. It enables secure remote access to documents, facilitates collaboration, and can reduce infrastructure costs. When evaluating cloud storage for HR data, critical considerations include the provider’s security protocols, data encryption standards, compliance certifications (e.g., SOC 2, ISO 27001), and data residency requirements to ensure sensitive employee information is adequately protected and regulatory obligations are met.
Hybrid Cloud
Hybrid cloud is an IT infrastructure environment that connects an organization’s on-premises private cloud or data center with a public cloud, allowing data and applications to be shared between them. This approach offers the flexibility and scalability of the public cloud for less sensitive data or burst workloads, while keeping highly sensitive HR data (like social security numbers or health records) within a more controlled, private environment. For HR and recruiting, a hybrid model can provide the best of both worlds: leveraging public cloud for general collaboration tools or applicant tracking systems, while maintaining a private cloud for core HRIS or sensitive employee files. This strategic partitioning of data allows organizations to optimize for cost, performance, and security, balancing operational efficiency with stringent compliance needs.
Data Retention Policy
A data retention policy is an organization’s established protocol for retaining information for a specified period, typically dictated by legal, regulatory, or business requirements. For HR professionals, this policy is crucial as it governs how long applicant data, employee records, payroll information, and benefit enrollment details must be kept, and when they must be securely disposed of. Non-compliance can lead to significant fines and legal repercussions (e.g., GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA). An effective policy not only outlines retention periods but also details the methods for data destruction and ensures proper documentation. Automation tools can be integrated with these policies to automatically flag data for archiving or deletion, providing a systematic approach to data lifecycle management and reducing the risk of human error.
Compliance
In the context of data archiving and storage, compliance refers to adhering to relevant laws, regulations, and standards governing data privacy, security, and retention. For HR and recruiting, this includes a myriad of regulations such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act), HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), and various federal and state labor laws that dictate how employee and applicant data must be handled. Achieving compliance involves implementing appropriate security measures (encryption, access controls), establishing clear data retention and destruction policies, and maintaining thorough audit trails. Failure to comply can result in severe penalties, reputational damage, and loss of trust. Robust archiving and storage solutions are integral to demonstrating compliance by ensuring data is managed according to legal mandates.
Data Security
Data security encompasses the measures taken to protect data from unauthorized access, corruption, or theft throughout its entire lifecycle. For HR and recruiting, this means safeguarding highly sensitive personal information, including financial details, health records, background check results, and performance reviews. Key components of data security in archiving and storage include encryption (data at rest and in transit), access controls (role-based permissions), regular security audits, and threat detection systems. Emphasizing data security ensures the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of critical HR data, mitigating risks of breaches, identity theft, and legal liabilities. Organizations must continuously evaluate and update their security postures to adapt to evolving cyber threats and maintain trust with employees and applicants.
Encryption
Encryption is the process of converting information or data into a code to prevent unauthorized access. In the realm of data archiving and storage, encryption is a fundamental security measure, especially for sensitive HR and recruiting data. Data can be encrypted “at rest” (when it’s stored on a server or hard drive) and “in transit” (as it moves across networks). For HR professionals, ensuring that all archived and stored data is encrypted is non-negotiable for compliance with privacy regulations like GDPR and HIPAA. Strong encryption scrambles the data, rendering it unreadable without the correct decryption key, thereby protecting it even if a storage medium is physically compromised or accessed without authorization. This provides an essential layer of defense against data breaches.
Data Redundancy
Data redundancy is a strategy in data storage where the same piece of data is stored in multiple places within a system or across different storage locations. The primary purpose is to ensure data availability and reliability by providing backups or duplicate copies. If one copy of the data becomes corrupted, lost, or inaccessible due to hardware failure or a localized incident, other copies remain available. For HR and recruiting, data redundancy is vital for business continuity, ensuring that critical employee records, payroll information, and applicant data are always accessible. This protects against service interruptions and data loss, allowing HR operations to continue smoothly even in the face of unexpected technical issues or disasters. It’s a cornerstone of any effective data protection strategy.
Disaster Recovery (DR)
Disaster Recovery (DR) is a comprehensive plan and set of procedures for restoring an organization’s critical IT systems and data after a disruptive event, such as a natural disaster, cyberattack, or major system failure. For HR and recruiting, a robust DR plan is essential to ensure that vital data—like employee records, payroll systems, and applicant databases—can be quickly and fully restored. This minimizes downtime, prevents loss of crucial operational capabilities, and ensures compliance with ongoing regulatory obligations. Offsite archiving and storage solutions are foundational to DR, as they provide the secure, geographically separate repositories from which data can be recovered, safeguarding the continuity of HR operations and the entire business.
Business Continuity Plan (BCP)
A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is a proactive strategy to maintain or quickly resume essential business functions following a disruption. While a Disaster Recovery plan focuses specifically on IT systems, a BCP takes a broader view, encompassing people, processes, and technology to ensure the entire organization can continue operating. For HR and recruiting, a BCP would address how to manage payroll, communicate with employees, access critical HR data, and continue hiring operations during a crisis. Offsite archiving and storage are key enablers of a BCP, ensuring that the necessary data infrastructure is resilient enough to support HR’s ability to maintain vital functions, protect employee well-being, and mitigate the financial and operational impact of a major incident.
Data Governance
Data governance is the overall management of data availability, usability, integrity, and security within an organization. It encompasses the policies, procedures, roles, and responsibilities that ensure data is managed effectively and in compliance with legal and ethical standards. For HR and recruiting, robust data governance is critical for managing sensitive employee and applicant data, ensuring its accuracy, privacy, and accessibility while adhering to retention policies. It defines who can access what data, when, and for what purpose, helping prevent misuse and ensuring accountability. Through proper data governance, organizations can streamline HR operations, mitigate compliance risks, and build trust among employees regarding their personal information.
Data Lifecycle Management (DLM)
Data Lifecycle Management (DLM) is a comprehensive approach to managing information from its creation or acquisition through its active use, archiving, and eventual disposal. For HR and recruiting, DLM involves systematic processes for handling all data related to applicants and employees – from initial application to retirement or termination, and beyond, covering mandated retention periods. An effective DLM strategy defines clear stages for data storage, access, security, and disposition, ensuring compliance with privacy regulations and internal policies. By automating aspects of DLM, such as triggering data transfers to archives or scheduling secure deletions, HR departments can reduce manual burdens, minimize storage costs, and significantly lower the risk of retaining unnecessary or non-compliant data.
Recordkeeping
Recordkeeping refers to the systematic process of creating, maintaining, and storing records, whether physical or digital, for a specified period. In HR and recruiting, accurate and comprehensive recordkeeping is a fundamental requirement, critical for compliance with labor laws, tax regulations, and internal policies. This includes employee files, payroll records, benefit enrollment forms, performance reviews, disciplinary actions, and applicant tracking data. Effective recordkeeping ensures that organizations can readily provide proof of compliance during audits, defend against legal challenges, and support internal decision-making. Offsite archiving solutions are instrumental in maintaining secure, accessible, and compliant records, particularly for long-term retention requirements, providing a reliable single source of truth for all HR-related documentation.
Audit Trail
An audit trail is a security-relevant chronological record of events in a system that allows for the reconstruction and examination of the sequence of activities. For HR and recruiting, an audit trail provides an invaluable record of who accessed, modified, or deleted sensitive data, when, and from where. This is crucial for maintaining data integrity, demonstrating compliance with privacy regulations (like GDPR or CCPA), and investigating potential security incidents or unauthorized data access. Robust archiving and storage systems include features to automatically generate and maintain immutable audit trails, providing transparency and accountability. In the event of an HR data breach or an internal dispute, a clear audit trail can be instrumental in identifying the root cause and demonstrating due diligence in data management.
If you would like to read more, we recommend this article: Beyond Live Data: Secure Keap Archiving & Compliance for HR & Recruiting
