One of the biggest sources of confusion for legal and compliance teams is knowing the difference between in-place preservation and archiving. Both strategies are critical for defensibility, but they serve very different purposes. Treating them as interchangeable can create unnecessary risk, inflate costs, and leave organizations exposed in litigation or audits.
In this article, we’ll break down what each approach means, when to use it, and how Hanzo helps enterprises apply both effectively.
In-place preservation means locking down data where it lives—ignoring retention policies and preventing deletion attempts—without moving or altering it.
Not all technology vendors support this capability, but leading platforms like Slack, Microsoft, and Google Workspace do, allowing data to remain in its native environment under legal hold.
Why it matters: In-place preservation keeps the full story intact: threads, reactions, edits, deletions, and metadata. This delivers defensibility while reducing manual processes, human effort, and storage costs.
Hanzo Illuminate enables enterprises to preserve collaboration data directly in Slack and Teams. Active sync captures every message, edit, and deletion while maintaining a clear chain of custody. Legal teams get the evidence they need without disrupting how employees work.
Archiving involves moving data into long-term, tamperproof storage. Many platforms do not support in-place preservation: for example, Atlassian tools like Confluence and Jira, so the only option is to create an archive or defensible copy.
The benefits of archiving are immutability, centralization, and scalability. Archiving ensures data is locked down for as long as required: whether that means meeting regulatory timelines of seven, ten, or more years, or preserving content under a legal hold while a case is active.
Hanzo Illuminate enables enterprises to capture and archive collaboration data sources such as Confluence, Jira, Slack, and Microsoft 365, even when those platforms don’t support in-place preservation. For websites, social media, and other SaaS applications where in-place preservation isn’t possible, Hanzo Chronicle provides tamperproof archiving. Together, they ensure complete, defensible coverage across modern data sources.
Mixing up preservation and archiving creates real legal and compliance risk.
Archiving when preservation is required strips away critical context, weakening defensibility in litigation. On the other hand, preserving when archiving is required can lead to compliance gaps, bloated systems, and retention failures that undermine regulatory obligations.
Regulators such as the SEC, FINRA, HIPAA, and GDPR authorities expect organizations to demonstrate deliberate control over both practices. Missteps can be costly, resulting in penalties, adverse rulings, or long-term reputational damage.
In-place preservation is the right choice when governance and compliance are strong:
With strong IT governance and clear enforcement of policies, PIP legal holds minimize risk. Without it, errors or ad hoc changes can be costly.
Example: Hanzo Illuminate can preserve a Slack channel in place, capturing every message, edit, and deletion. Legal teams can then review the conversation exactly as it happened, without interrupting ongoing business operations.
Archiving is the better choice when long-term retention and immutability are required or when SaaS tools don’t support in-place preservation. Failing to archive in these scenarios risks compliance violations and regulatory penalties.
Common use cases include:
Not all platforms allow in-place preservation (PIP). Only vendors like Slack, Microsoft, and Google support preservation directly in their native environments — and even then, there are gaps. For example, Slack Connect cannot be preserved in place, while platforms like Atlassian (Confluence, Jira), websites, social media, and many SaaS applications don’t support PIP at all. In these cases, archiving or creating a defensible copy is the only option.
Many organizations also choose to archive sensitive content or critical communications as an extra safeguard against administrator error, ensuring nothing is accidentally altered or deleted.
Example: Hanzo Chronicle archives websites and social feeds in a compliant, tamperproof format. During an audit, teams can instantly produce historical captures that show exactly what the public saw on a specific date.
Organizations that rely too heavily on one strategy expose themselves to significant risks.
Neither approach alone will satisfy the combined demands of regulators, auditors, and the courts. The cost of getting it wrong is measured not just in penalties, but in lost cases, reputational harm, and operational disruption.
Modern enterprises can no longer choose between archiving and preservation—they need both, working in tandem.
When these strategies are aligned, governance shifts from a reactive burden to a proactive strength. Policies become consistent, retention gaps close, and legal holds can be applied with confidence.
In-place preservation and archiving are not competing strategies; they are complementary. Preservation protects context. Archiving ensures immutability. Together, they form the foundation of a defensible and compliant information strategy.
Hanzo unifies both. With Illuminate and Chronicle, organizations can preserve, archive, and retrieve data with confidence—whether responding to a lawsuit, preparing for an audit, or addressing a regulator’s inquiry.
Talk to Hanzo today to see how Illuminate and Chronicle can close your compliance gaps.
Content Team 
