Data management

Manage and oversee the lifecycle of your organization's employee data. Define the retention period of inventory and operational data, and comply with the data protection regulations for retrieval and deletion of data.

Refer to Privacy Code 2024 in the Global Privacy Hub for more information about General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other data protection regulations.

Accessing the Data Management page

Select Administration from the main menu.
Click on Data Management in the Content Management section of the navigation panel.

The Data Management link only appears for users with Retrieve and anonymize data (GDPR) administrative permissions and requires a none (full access) data privacy setting. Refer to the Roles page for more information.

Managing employee data

Manage employee data and comply with data protection regulations.

Data retention

Configure the data retention timeframe for your organization’s Nexthink instance.

Inventory data retention

Select the retention timeframe for inventory data. This setting applies to all inventory objects except binaries.

The last_seen field in the NQL does not account for all the device connections to the Nexthink instance (e.g., TCP handshakes or remote actions), so it is not a reliable indicator of device retention period. Refer to NQL data model and Monitoring device last activity for more information.

Operational data retention

Select the retention timeframe for operational data. This setting applies to events collected from employee devices, alerts triggered by alert monitors, remote action executions and binaries. Operational data retention must be shorter or equal to inventory data retention.

Refer to Data we collect and store and Data resolution and retention documentation pages for more information about data categories.

After you save the configuration, the system applies the changes to all new events and all active binaries.

Data retrieval

Retrieve data for any employee monitored by the Nexthink platform for the features and modules listed in the Data drop-down menu. Retrieve all other employee data directly using the Investigations module.

Username: Enter the username of the employee whose data you want to download.
Data: Select the feature or module to download the data from:
- Executions
- Sessions
- Applications
- Collaboration
- Campaigns

Click the Retrieve user data button. The system opens the Investigations page with the results of the NQL query, which you can export to a CSV format.

Data deletion

Nexthink provides a way to delete device and user data.

To delete devices or users from Nexthink cloud, select from the following options:

Upload CSV file: Upload a CSV file with either user UIDs and SIDs, or device UIDs along with the corresponding device names you wish to delete. The CSV should only include either user UIDs or device UIDs, but not both.
List users: Navigate to the Investigations module, which includes a preconfigured query to find a list of all users. This helps you generate the CSV file.
List devices: Navigate to the Investigations module, which includes a preconfigured query to find a list of all devices. This helps you generate the CSV file.

Click the Delete button to start the process.

Once you start the deletion process, it is irreversible. It can take up to 30 minutes to delete all the data.

Data anonymization (classic)

Some functionality described in this section is linked with Finder (classic).

Nexthink Finder is a Windows-only desktop application whose functionality is now available within the Nexthink web interface. Nexthink can now be used directly from a browser and most functions no longer require an additional desktop application.

Nexthink provides a way to anonymize data so that it no longer refers to either an employee or a device.

Select from the following options:

User: The system sets all the associated fields to null.
Device: The system sets all the associated fields to null.
Enter the Username or Device name depending on the option you chose in the previous step.

Click the Anonymize user data or Anonymize device data button to start the process.

Once you start the anonymization process, it is irreversible as the system anonymizes the values at the storage level.