How long do we need to keep security camera and CCTV footage before deleting it?

There is no single universal number. Security camera and CCTV recordings are records, and like any record they are kept for as long as they serve a business, legal, or evidentiary purpose, then disposed of under an approved schedule. The right answer for your organization comes from a documented retention rule, not from a default setting on the recorder.

What drives the retention period

A defensible retention period for surveillance footage usually balances several factors:

• Operational need. How long the footage is genuinely useful for investigating incidents, theft, accidents, or disputes. For many routine settings this is short, often measured in days or weeks.
• Legal and regulatory requirements. Some industries and jurisdictions set minimum retention for specific environments (for example, certain regulated facilities or transportation settings). Check the rules that apply to you rather than assuming.
• Privacy obligations. Video that captures identifiable people is personal data. Privacy principles favor keeping it only as long as necessary and deleting it on a routine cycle once it is no longer needed.
• Litigation and evidence. If footage relates to an incident, claim, or investigation, it must be preserved until that matter closes, even past the normal cycle.

A practical approach

1. Set a baseline retention period for routine footage and write it into your retention schedule. Many organizations land somewhere in the range of about 30 to 90 days for general surveillance, but confirm this against your own legal and contractual requirements.
2. Apply a legal hold the moment footage may be relevant to an incident, claim, or investigation. The hold overrides the normal schedule, and you must not let routine overwriting destroy it.
3. Automate the deletion at the end of the period so disposal happens consistently and is documented, which is what makes destruction defensible.
4. Document the rule and follow it for every camera. Consistency is what protects you, not the specific number of days.

The bottom line

Keep footage long enough to meet operational, legal, and privacy needs, no longer, and place a hold whenever a specific event makes a clip evidence. A short routine period combined with a reliable hold process is usually the safest posture.

For more on building schedules and applying these principles, see the fundamentals topic hub.