A system and method for securely storing electronic documents is provided. The system includes a client portion and a server portion and the client portion is located at a trusted location. The client portion encrypts each electronic document and produces a list of terms of interest relating to the document, which terms are also encrypted. The encrypted document and the encrypted terms are transferred to a server portion which need not be located at a trusted location. The document is stored at the server portion in a manner which allows for locating the document again via the encrypted terms and returning the encrypted document to the trusted client portion, where it can be decrypted. Attachments to documents can also be encrypted and stored at the server, as can copies of dynamic documents, such as web pages. The server portion can also have a retention manager and encryptor which is used to implement document retention and destruction policies defined by the user of the system.