Question

A retailer has accumulated 10 years of customer transaction records that must be kept indefinitely for trend analysis, but legal counsel wants to remove these records from the scope of data subject access requests and erasure obligations under applicable privacy law. The analytics team still requires the ability to study aggregate purchasing patterns over time but does NOT need to re-link records to any individual. Which data persistence technique best satisfies both the legal goal and the analytics requirement?

Accepted Answer

Anonymize the records so that individuals can no longer be identified directly or indirectly, retaining only aggregate-usable data

Answer

Pseudonymize the records by replacing customer identifiers with tokens stored in a separately secured mapping table

Answer

Encrypt the transaction records at rest with a strong key managed by the security team

Answer

Apply a longer retention schedule and restrict access to the analytics team via role-based access controls