Data Structure

A characteristic of a data object — its format, type, schema, or logical organization (e.g., file type, field sizes, message layout) — used as an inspection criterion by security policy filters and flow-control enforcement mechanisms. It is distinguished from *content* (the semantic payload of the data) and serves as a machine-evaluable property that boundary protection devices and cross-domain guards can test without necessarily parsing meaning: checking, for example, maximum file lengths, field sizes, or whether a payload conforms to an expected structured or unstructured type. In information flow enforcement contexts, security or privacy policy filters can address data structures and content; filters for data structures can check for maximum file lengths, maximum field sizes, and data/file types for both structured and unstructured data. The phrase is used compositionally — "data structure" carries its ordinary computer-science meaning (the format and organization of data) — rather than as a specialized term of art invented by the security field.

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