Cloud Data Retention Policies

Overview

This document provides information about customer data stored by the dashboard and the duration that data is stored for.

Meraki customer data can be classified into two types: management data and user traffic. While the Meraki dashboard collects and stores customers' management data and analytics on user traffic, it never stores user traffic. Meraki data centers store the active Meraki device configurations, historical network usage, and traffic analytics data. 

User Traffic

User traffic is data related to users' network traffic (web browsing, internal applications, etc.). The Meraki cloud does not store customer user traffic (network traffic, web browsing, internal applications, etc.) as this traffic is directly routed through the WAN uplink and does not reach the Meraki cloud. Only management traffic from Meraki devices (APs, switches, security appliances) is directed to Meraki cloud through a secure tunnel over the internet. You can learn more about user traffic and Meraki data segregation in the Meraki Cloud Architecture article.

Management Data

To enable cloud solutions, the Meraki dashboard gathers certain types of "management" data and stores it across the data centers. Traffic to and from Meraki servers is encrypted in transit. 

Major types of customer management data include:

• User records
  • Includes account information such as account email and company name, or other optional information such as user name and address
• Configuration data
  • Includes organization-level configurations and network-level configurations made in the Meraki dashboard
• Analytics data
  • Includes connected clients (mac address, IP address, SSID associated to, etc.), traffic and location analytics data, visualizations and network insights into traffic, foot-traffic patterns across customer sites, and similar information
• Customer-uploaded assets
  • Includes any customer-uploaded assets such as custom floor plans and splash logos

Data Retention Times

Data retention policy may vary depending on the geographic location where the dashboard is hosted. Dashboard stores the data within the region where it is hosted (for example: dashboards hosted in the EU region are stored in the Meraki data centers within the EU; those in North America are hosted in the U.S., etc). 

• EU: 14 months (12 months + 2 months worth of backups)
• Rest of the world: 26 months (24 months + 2 months worth of backups)

The Meraki dashboard can store data either based on time duration or number of logged events, depending on the type of data.

Most log tables are stored based on the number of entries. Below are the log tables that expire data based on number of entries:

• Changelog (Organization > Changelog)
• Event log (Network wide > Event log)
• Client Usage
• CMX Usage

 

The following table is segregated by product type providing the list of data stored on that product separated by feature type and the duration that data is stored for, depending on the geographically hosted location of the organization:

 

Product Type	Feature Involved	Dashboard Element	Rest of the World	EU
MX	VPN	VPN Connectivity	2 months	2 months
		VPN Health Stats	2 months	2 months
		VPN Data	2 months	2 months
	Security Center Events	IDS Event Logs	15 days	15 days
		IDS Event Packets	15 days	15 days
		File Reputation Events	15 days	2 weeks
		WIPS Event Logs	4 months	4 months
MS	Switch Ports	Switch Port Usage	2 months	2 months
	DHCP	DHCP Servers Seen	3 months	3 months
MR	Clients	Client Association Table	1 year	1 year
		Client RSSI	2 hours	2 hours
	Splash Stats	Splash Log-Ins	2 months	2 months
	Bluetooth	BLE Clients List	3 months	3 months
	Radius	Radius Accounting	1 month	1 month
MT	Environmental Telemetry	Temperature, Humidity, Door, Water Detection	2 years	2 years
	Device Health	RSSI, Battery, Missed Connections	2 years	2 years
Network-wide Logs	Clients	Connected Clients List	3 months	3 months
		Client Latency	3 hours	3 hours
		Client Latency Stats	3 days	3 days
		Client Latency Stats (5 minutes)	2 weeks	2 weeks
		Client Latency Stats (4 hours)	4 months	4 months
		Client Latency Stats (1 day)	6 months	6 months
		Client Latency Stats (20 minutes)	2 months	2 months
	Traffic Analytics	Traffic Analytics Client Stats	1 week	1 week
		Traffic Analytics Client Stats (4 hours)	1 month	1 month
		Traffic Analytics Network Stats (4 hours)	1 months	1 months
		Traffic Analytics Network Stats (20 minutes)	1 week	1 week
	Event Log	Event Log	12 Months	12 Months
Organization-wide Logs	Changelog	Changelog (24 Months, 12 Months)	24 Months	12 Months
	Location Analytics	Heatmap (24 Hours, 1 Hour )	13 Months	3 Months
	Summary Reports	Summary Reports (24 Months, 12 Months)	24 Months	12 Months
	Login Attempts	Login Attempts	14 Months	14 Months