Zero Data Retention (ZDR)¶
Zero Data Retention (ZDR) refers to a bundle of technical controls and contract terms ensuring customer content (prompts, outputs, files) is not stored at rest by a vendor. ZDR is the cornerstone requirement for enterprise adoption of LLMs in regulated sectors (Healthcare, Finance, Government).
Without ZDR, providers may retain data for model training or abuse monitoring (often for up to 30 days).
ZDR Postures by Provider¶
Providers take fundamentally different approaches to data retention.
| Provider | Default Retention | ZDR Mechanism | How to Enable | Compliance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWS Bedrock | None (ZDR default) | Default | No action needed | SOC 2, HIPAA, FedRAMP |
| Fireworks AI | None (ZDR default) | Default | No action needed | SOC 2, HIPAA |
| OpenAI | 30 days (abuse) | ZDR / MAM | Sales approval → Dashboard | SOC 2 |
| Anthropic | 7 days | ZDR Arrangement | Enterprise contract | SOC 2, HIPAA (BAA) |
| Google Vertex AI | 24h cache | Abuse monitoring exception | Support request / invoiced billing | SOC 2, HIPAA, ISO 27001 |
| Azure OpenAI | 30 days (abuse) | Abuse monitoring opt-out | Support ticket (EA/MCA required) | SOC 2, HIPAA, FedRAMP |
| Groq | 30 days | ZDR toggle | Dashboard Data Controls | SOC 2 |
Evaluation and Impact¶
ZDR eliminates provider-side risks, ensuring no training data leakage or third-party employee access. However, ZDR alone is not enough; it must be paired with proxy-based PII redaction and secure self-hosted environments for maximum security. For organizations with extreme privacy needs, self-hosting open-weight models (e.g., Llama, DeepSeek) remains the only fully trusted path.
Sources¶
- Zero Data Retention (ZDR) for LLM Providers — Comprehensive guide to keeping data private when using LLM APIs.
Questions¶
- TBD — How do emerging open-weight reasoning models (like DeepSeek-R1) change the break-even math for self-hosting versus relying on ZDR cloud APIs?
- TBD — What are the performance impacts of strict proxy-based PII redaction on RAG latency?