Choosing camera retention.

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

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.

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 minimum, longer where regulation requires
• check_circleGovernment and civic sites - per contractual requirement, often 90 days or more
• check_circleGaming and licensed venues - per licensing requirement, often 90 days minimum

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.