Access & Change Log Retention Periods

This question asks about your specific policy for how long you keep records of who accessed patient data and what changes they made. It's like asking how long you keep security camera footage - HIPAA requires you to maintain these digital breadcrumbs for specific periods (typically six years) so investigators can look back and understand what happened with patient information.

HIPAA mandates six-year retention for certain logs, and healthcare organizations face severe penalties if they can't produce required audit trails. Your retention period directly impacts whether healthcare clients can meet their compliance obligations. Too short, and you create compliance gaps that could cost them millions in fines; too long, and you may unnecessarily increase storage costs and privacy risks.

Many companies set arbitrary retention periods without understanding HIPAA's six-year requirement or apply the same retention to all logs without distinguishing between access logs, change logs, and security event logs which may have different requirements. Another mistake is keeping logs for the required period but in formats that become unreadable or unsearchable over time.