Unstructured Information

Data that lacks a pre-defined format, organization, or schema, typically consisting of text-heavy content without standardized fields or categories. This encompasses documents, presentations, spreadsheets (when used for free-form content rather than structured data tables), emails, chat messages, social media content, images, videos, and other media files. Unstructured information is estimated to comprise 80-90% of organizational data but remains harder to manage for privacy compliance than structured databases. Key challenges include: identifying what personal data exists within unstructured content, locating all instances of an individual's information across diverse file types, applying retention policies when different sections of documents have different retention requirements, implementing appropriate security controls, and responding to data subject rights requests. Organizations should: implement content indexing and search capabilities, use data classification tools identifying sensitive information in unstructured formats, establish document retention and disposition schedules, apply appropriate access controls based on content sensitivity, and develop processes for handling unstructured data in rights requests that balance completeness with practicality.