How long should commercial
CCTV footage be kept?

Retention is the difference between footage you can use and footage that's gone.

By Lucas Marendy, Director, Unified Security · NSW Master Licence 000109179 · Updated September 2026

Most commercial CCTV systems ship configured for whatever retention the recorder defaults to - often a fortnight, sometimes a month. That is fine until an incident is only discovered six weeks later and the footage you needed has already been overwritten.

Retention is a planning decision, not a default. Set it against the realistic timeline of how incidents on your site are actually discovered and investigated - and against any retention obligations from insurance, regulators or contracts you operate under. It is one of the first things we set, and document, on every commercial CCTV installation.

Typical retention periods we see by use case.

• check_circleGeneral office and reception areas - 30 days
• check_circleRetail floor and till areas - 60-90 days, to cover monthly stocktakes
• check_circleLoading docks, yards and high-value zones - 60-90 days
• check_circleAged care and healthcare - 60-90 days recommended; check the provider's own policy and any contract or insurer requirement
• check_circleGovernment and civic sites - per contractual requirement, often 90 days or more
• check_circleLicensed venues (NSW) - at least 30 days where the licence carries the standard CCTV condition, with footage producible to police or Liquor & Gaming NSW within 24 hours

Why we size Hunter industrial sites longer.

By Lucas Marendy, Director, Unified Security · NSW Master Licence 000109179 · Updated September 2026

On industrial yards and self-storage sites across the Hunter, a break-in is often only discovered when a tenant or a stocktake turns it up weeks later. On those sites we size retention to at least 60 days, and push perimeter and entry cameras longer where storage allows. If you have taken over a site and are not sure what it is doing, start with our CCTV audit checklist.

Retention only counts if it's enforced.

A retention setting is only as good as the recorder it lives on. We document the retention each system is configured for, audit it on scheduled maintenance, and flag when a disk or recorder change has quietly moved the actual retention away from what was specified.

If you do not know what your current retention is - or whether your recorder is actually achieving it - that is the first thing to check.