Data, retention and deletion
Where your data is
Everything Cerberon stores stays on your machine.
| What | Where |
|---|---|
| Scans, findings, reports, accounts, settings made in the app, keys | Docker volume cerberon_cerberon-data |
| Machine identity and licence | ~/.cerberon/instance |
| Installation settings | ~/.cerberon/.env |
| Snapshots | ~/.cerberon/backups |
| Installation logs | ~/.cerberon/logs |
On Windows these are inside the WSL distribution Ubuntu-24.04.
Retention
Settings → Data → Keep scans and reports for (months), from 1 to 120 months.
- Off by default: until an administrator sets a period, scans and reports are kept indefinitely.
- When you save a period, Cerberon shows exactly what will be deleted and asks you to confirm. It then deletes every finished scan older than the period, with its findings, reports, share links and files, and repeats daily.
- Audit records are kept.
- Uploaded files that no scan or schedule uses any more are removed after 30 days.
Deleting by retention cannot be undone, except by rolling back to an earlier snapshot.
Delete a scan
Open the scan and choose Delete. Cerberon shows what will go and asks you to type the scan's ID to confirm. Deleting a scan removes its findings, reports, share links, events, files and notifications. A software bill of materials that another scan of the same asset still uses is kept. Administrators and analysts can delete scans; viewers cannot.
Delete a project
Deleting a project deletes its scans the same way, its schedules, its stored scan credentials and its notifications, and removes its members from it. An instance always keeps at least one project, so the last one cannot be deleted.
Delete a user
Users → the user → Delete. Their scans and findings stay. Schedules they created stop, and say why.
Backups
Every update takes a snapshot first. Take one at any time with sh install.sh --backup; see snapshots. A snapshot is a full copy of the data volume and this machine's identity, kept in ~/.cerberon/backups. Copy that folder elsewhere for an off-machine backup.
Delete everything
To remove Cerberon and every piece of its data from a machine, uninstall it and then delete what uninstall keeps:
docker volume rm cerberon_cerberon-data
sudo rm -rf ~/.cerberonThis cannot be undone. The machine then has no licence identity; installing again counts as a new machine.