A retention service registers a target system as a consumer service. A cloud platform provides services to each of multiple consumer service. Retention rule information about the target system is received and reflects a data retention requirement. A rule is created that corresponds to the data retention requirement. A configuration is defined that specifies recurring future invocations of the rule. The rule is invoked per the configuration and a query is sent to the target system, the query configured to extract data. Extracted data is received and the rule is applied thereto. An action specified by the rule is taken with regard to the data.