The user's data is gone. Now prove you deleted it.

transcript

An auditor asks you one thing. Prove user X was deleted. But the data's gone. So what do you show them?

The tempting move: delete everything. Audit logs included. Now you can't prove anything. The compliance audit fails. Worse, it looks like a cover-up. Instead, anonymise the audit logs. And add a record of the deletion itself.

Before you claim it, verify. Deletions can fail silently. So ask every system the same question. Does this user still exist here? Search says no. Files, no. Analytics says yes. That target isn't verified. It's flagged for review. An error while checking? Not verified either. Couldn't check must never read as deleted.

Then the report. The request, with the user ID redacted. Every system affected, with its status and records deleted. Plus the audit trail. And the verification results.

But here's the catch. Read the statement closely. Primary systems are clean. Backups will be fully purged under the retention policy. Saying all copies are deleted would be false.

Keep a copy of the data, and the deletion is a lie. Delete the trail, and there's no proof. Delete the data. Keep the proof.

Full breakdown in the lecture.