Our organisation works in the Health space and as such we have a legal obligation to keep records on file for 10 years. On the other side of the coin we also have to comply with Privacy legislation that allows clients to 'be forgotten'.
What solution do you know of / recommend for archiving, that would allow us to get records away from end users but still accessible to selected users for legal purposes?
Do you have a preference for a native solution, or a separate one?
And do these solutions generally integrate with back-up functionality or would you keep that separate?
The sharpest issue here is the one you flagged - 10-year retention vs right to be forgotten - so decide that policy first: you do NOT hard-delete a record you are legally required to keep. On a forget request you anonymize or scrub the identifying fields and keep the record for the legal obligation; your statutory retention is the lawful basis that overrides erasure for that data. Only data you are not required to keep gets targeted-deleted.
Native archiving: Big Objects. A scheduled Apex batch moves old records into a separate low-cost store that does not count against data storage and is out of end users normal view, but stays queryable - selected users reach it via a report or a small custom component. Salesforce also has Data Lifecycle Management now for rule-based archive and delete.
Native vs separate: Big Objects is free but a build (batch, Async SOQL, a viewer). Dedicated apps (e.g. DataArchiva) automate the lifecycle - retention rules, right-to-be-forgotten, targeted purge, preserved relationships - and can target Big Objects or external cloud. For a compliance-heavy health org with limited dev time, that is usually worth it.
Backup vs archive: keep them separate. Backup is point-in-time recovery (Salesforce Backup, Own, Gearset); archive is retention plus removing data from the live view. Some vendors do both, but do not treat a backup as your archive.
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