Struggling with DSARs? You’re not alone.

If your company finds Data Subject Access Requests (DSARs) overwhelming, you’re not the only one. These requests are essential for compliance with data privacy laws but they can also be complex and time-consuming to handle.

Fortunately, this guide is here to walk you through everything you need to know: what DSARs are, who submits them, how to respond, and how to automate the process.

What is a DSAR?

A Data Subject Access Request (DSAR) is a formal request from an individual to access the personal data your organization holds about them. It stems from privacy laws like GDPR, CCPA, and VCDPA, which aim to increase transparency and give people control over their personal information.

But DSARs go beyond simple access. Individuals can also request:

• Corrections to their data
• Deletion of personal records
• Information on how their data is used, shared, or retained

Why DSARs matter

Privacy laws have expanded individual rights and increased regulatory risks for businesses. Mishandling a DSAR can lead to:

• Hefty fines
• Damaged reputation
• Lost customer trust

Managing DSARs effectively is now a business imperative.

Who can submit a DSAR?

Any data subject can submit a request, including:

• Customers, users, and subscribers
• Employees, contractors, and candidates
• Donors or sales prospects

In some cases, authorized representatives (such as parents or legal guardians) can submit DSARs on someone’s behalf. In these cases, it's imperative to verify that the person submitting the DSAR is genuinely doing so on behalf of the data subject. Businesses can do this by requesting supporting information and evidence of their relationship (e.g., birth certificates, power of attorney documentation, etc.).

What’s required in a DSAR response?

DSARs usually request a copy of all personal data you have on a data subject. Sometimes, the subject may only request access to specific details and information. Either way, you're obligated to provide any data that is relevant to the individual's request for access to their information.

You must provide all relevant personal data you process, including:

• Whether and why you process the data
• The categories and sources of the data
• Any third-party recipients
• Retention timelines
• Rights related to automated decision-making

Depending on the request, individuals may also ask for data to be corrected, deleted, or opted out of processing.

Read more: CCPA DSAR process

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How long do you have to respond?

• GDPR: 30 days (with possible 2-month extension)
• CCPA: 45 days (with 45-day extension if needed)

Under the CCPA, you must respond to a DSAR within 45 days. The GDPR data privay regulations only gives you 30 days to respond to a DSAR. Although both laws offer extensions in certain cases, failure to respond to a DSAR within the proscribed timeframes can result in substantial fines and regulatory penalties.

Failure to fulfill a request can also damage your organization's reputation by suggesting that you don’t value data protection and information transparency.

How do you respond to DSAR?

1. Acknowledge the request and verify identity

• Acknowledge receipt of the request to assure the data subject it’s being processed
• Verify identity using a secure method to avoid unauthorized disclosure

2. Clarify the request and gather data

• Determine the type of request (access, deletion, correction, etc.)
• Search across all relevant systems and collect the subject’s personal data

3. Review and secure the data

• Ensure data is accurate and redact any unrelated or third-party information
• Deliver the data via a secure channel (e.g., encrypted portal or secure email)

4. Respond on time and document everything

• Comply with the applicable 30–45 day deadline
• Maintain an audit trail of when and how the DSAR was fulfilled

5. Consider exemptions and refusals

• Know your legal exemptions, such as when data pertains to legal privilege or trade secrets
• If refusing, document your reasoning and inform the requester of their right to appeal

6. Automate where possible and train your team

• Use tools to automate workflows, especially for intake, verification, and tracking
• Implement data mapping to locate information quickly
• Provide training so employees understand how to handle DSARs securely and consistently

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Why DSARs are challenging

Even with best practices in place, responding to DSARs can be difficult due to:

1. Dispersed data

Personal data can exist across multiple company data privacy manager systems. Personal data is spread across CRMs, support tools, cloud apps, logs, backups, and third parties. Without data mapping, it's hard to find everything.

Depending on your organization’s size, DSAR fulfillment may require accessing data across dozens or even hundreds of systems—including legacy tools, cloud platforms, data warehouses, and third-party apps. This complexity makes handling even a single DSAR time-consuming and resource-intensive.  

Without centralized data, businesses often need data mapping, privacy management tools, and reporting systems to locate and compile personal information. Since customer data is scattered across CRMs, finance tools, service platforms, logs, and backups, managing a complete and accurate data inventory remains a significant challenge for most companies.

2. Multiple identifiers

Personal data can exist in multiple formats and records. A single user might appear as a name in one system, an email in another, and a hashed ID in a third. Aligning these requires data unification across formats.

Personal data is scattered across systems and stored under various identifiers—like names, emails, cookies, or account numbers. One person might appear as “John Smith” in one system and a cookie ID or membership number in another.

To fulfill or automate a DSAR, you first need to identify and match this fragmented data. If a request comes via an email not used as a system identifier, you may need more info from the user or face challenges locating their data. Without accurate identification, DSAR automation becomes unfeasible, and compliance risks increase.

3. Limited tooling

Current tools for fulfilling consumer access requests are inadequate. Ticketing systems help with request tracking but can’t discover, redact, or delete data. Manual work still dominates most fulfillment processes.

Even if you locate all of a data subject’s information, fulfilling a DSAR still means executing each step across multiple systems. Ticketing tools can help manage workflows by creating requests, sending alerts, and tracking deadlines—but they don’t automate finding, deleting, or updating personal data.

The manual orchestration of those tasks remains your responsibility, and it's often the most time-consuming part of DSAR compliance. While support tools help organize the process, true DSAR automation—like what Ketch offers—is needed to fully streamline and scale your response workflow.

So can DSAR orchestration ever be truly automated? Luckily, that's exactly what Ketch is for. Ketch can automate your DSAR response process.

What about data deletion requests?

Data deletion (right to be forgotten) is more complex than access requests. It requires identifying every instance of a subject’s data and confirming whether you’re legally allowed to delete it.

To handle deletion requests, you must:

• Validate the request
• Locate data across systems
• Notify third-party processors
• Confirm and document deletion
• Prevent re-collection of new data

Ketch automates all of this, giving you full control over your data lifecycle and regulatory compliance with GDPR, CCPA and more.

How Ketch supports DSAR

DSARs are a legal obligation, a data management challenge, and an opportunity to earn trust. To manage them effectively:

• Follow best practices
• Understand your obligations
• Automate your workflows

Ketch makes it possible to do all three—with confidence.

Read further: DSR automation

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Schedule your Ketch demo and learn how our platform can simplify your response workflow for DSARs and data deletion requests.