Unstructured Data

Information that doesn't follow a predefined format or organization, making it difficult to search, analyze, and manage using traditional database methods. Examples include: documents, emails, images, videos, social media posts, PDFs, audio recordings, and free-form text. Unlike structured data in databases with defined fields and data types, unstructured data accounts for the vast majority of organizational information but presents significant privacy compliance challenges. Finding specific individuals' data for access or deletion requests requires full-text search capabilities or manual review. Unstructured data often contains unexpected personal information—a PDF might include hidden metadata, a video might capture faces, or an email might discuss someone never directly in your database. Organizations should: implement systems enabling unstructured data search and discovery, maintain metadata helping locate relevant information, consider data loss prevention tools identifying sensitive information in unstructured formats, establish retention policies for unstructured data, implement appropriate security controls, and carefully scope data subject rights responses to balance thoroughness against practicality. The shift to unstructured data has made traditional privacy compliance approaches more complex.