Description

This policy identifies AWS Kinesis Streams configured with a retention period of less than 168 hours (7 days).

Rationale

By default, records in a Kinesis data stream are retained for only 24 hours. Extending the retention period to 7 days provides a meaningful reliability buffer. If a downstream consumer, such as an AWS Lambda function or an application running on Amazon EC2, fails or experiences processing delays, a longer retention window ensures that data remains available while the issue is investigated and resolved.

Additionally, during periods of increased data ingestion, consumers may fall behind. A 7-day retention period allows sufficient time to scale consumer capacity and reprocess data without permanent data loss.

Many organizations also require the ability to re-run analytics or perform audits on recent data. Short retention periods increase reliance on external backup mechanisms even for recent events, adding operational complexity.

Impact

Increasing the retention period beyond the default 24 hours results in additional AWS costs, which are based on the volume of data retained and the configured retention duration.

Audit

This policy flags an AWS Kinesis Stream as INCOMPLIANT if the Retention Period Hours value is less than 168.