Unstructured Data Governance: Unlocking Value Through Data Products
Executive Summary
Enterprises today face a paradox: while 80%+ of their data is unstructured, governance efforts are still dominated by structured datasystems.
Documents, PDFs, images, presentations, logs, and emails are rich with valuable business insights but also harbor regulatory, privacy, and operationalrisks if left unmanaged.
Traditional approaches to unstructured data governance are fragmented, manual, and siloed. The result is an enterprise blind spot where sensitive and critical information escapes the controls applied to structured data.
RightData’s DataMarket addresses this challenge by treating unstructured content as data products—complete with classification, data quality scoring, lineage, and governed marketplace-based access.
Through DataMarket, enterprises can:
- Discover and govern unstructured content at scale
- Automate sensitive data classification
- Score data quality for trust and decision support
- Enable business-friendly discovery and consumption
- Leverage AI for chat-based exploration of document insights
This paper outlines the architecture and process for unstructured data product governance and the business value it delivers.
The Challenge of Unstructured Data
The Growing Problem
- 80%+ of enterprise data is unstructured
- Distributed across: Confluence OneDrive Cloud object stores File shares Collaboration tools
- Contains unknown volumes of: Personally Identifiable Information (PII) Sensitive business data Critical intellectual property
Risks & Gaps
The DataMarket Solution: Treating Unstructured Data as Data Products
Core Capabilities
1️⃣ Creating Data Products from Unstructured Data
- Support for 21+ content types: Word, PPT, Excel, PDF, CSV, text, images, etc.
- Ingest from: OneDrive, Confluence, Cloud Blob Stores, Enterprise file systems
- Group related content into governed data products.
2️⃣ Federated Governance & Marketplace Access
- Publish to DataMarket with domain ownership.
- Enable business-friendly discovery and request-based access.
- Controlled consumption aligned with ISRM policies.
- Post-access, chat-based exploration using AI (optional).
3️⃣ Data Quality, Lineage & Classification
- Automated classification via glossary & ML.
- PII, PHI, PCI, critical elements tagging.
- Execute data quality rules on extractable elements.
- Generate Data Quality Scores for documents and data products.
- Provide citation-level traceability.
- Track lineage for compliance and auditing.
Architecture & Workflow
Process Flow
Architecture Diagram
Benefits
Key Use Cases
- GDPR / CCPA Compliance: Prove controls on unstructured content.
- ISRM Monitoring: Give risk teams a live view of sensitive unstructured data.
- Legal & Regulatory Audits: Respond to eDiscovery and compliance requests faster.
- Business Insights: Help business users easily find and understand elevant unstructured content.
- PII/PHI Monitoring: Continuous detection of sensitive data in file stores.
About RightData & DataMarket
RightData is a modern data products and governance company, helping organizations simplify and accelerate their data democratization journey.
RightData’s DataMarket is a next-generation Data Products Marketplace that enables:
- Federated self-service access to structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data.
- Data Productization of enterprise data sources.
- Business-friendly search, request, and consumption of trusted data assets.
Unstructured Data Products in DataMarket help enterprises close the governance gap on unstructured content—enabling security, compliance, and actionable insights.
