A process is disclosed by which data is securely deleted in a transactionally consistent manner. This may be accomplished by committing a preparation transaction for a data object within a system managing the data object in order to return the system to an initial condition if necessary, attempting to commit an execution transaction with the data object only after committing the preparation transaction, and securely deleting any portion of the data object necessary to return the system to the initial condition if committing the execution transaction fails and to change the system to a completed condition only if committing the execution transaction succeeds. In a delete or move transaction an existing backup object may be assigned a new logically deleted state such that if the delete or move transaction fails, the data will be made accessible again.