For those in highly regulated industries, redaction plays a vital role in making sure that confidential data or sensitive information is not viewed by the wrong people. Below, we look at how automated redaction can make this process a breeze, but before we do that, why is automating this workflow important?
Simply put, organizations that are using manual processes to redact documents are at a higher risk of exposing personal or sensitive information. What’s more, they’re opening themselves up to potential – and devastating – compliance failures. Of course, there’s also the time and cost aspect. Scouring a document, or multiple documents, to physically redact with a black marker is not only a painstaking task but can also be subject to human error. Due to the ‘needle in a haystack’ nature of manual redaction, sensitive information can easily be missed. Worse still, optical character recognition (OCR) technology can often identify words that have been redacted by hand, opening the gate for bad actors. One such incident followed a misstep by lawyers to properly redact pleadings for former lobbyist and Trump presidential campaign chair Paul Manafort. Journalists were able to publicize the redacted passages in the documents by copying and pasting the text into another document. This revealed the redacted passages from the originals, including new details of Manafort’s relationship with a suspected Russian spy. Yikes.
Now that we know why manual redaction isn’t ideal, we can take a deeper look at automating redaction:
What is automated redaction software and what can it do for your organization? Automated redaction software is used to automatically locate and redact sensitive data fields in electronic documents received for filing in public record systems. It can integrate with most modern case and records management systems and can be used with electronic documents as they are received for filing or on previously scanned or e-filed electronic images stored in a database.
Let’s look at some of the major benefits this powerful tool can provide:
A secure and controlled environment that lets redaction process owners choose who can access documents, as well as define permissions for each reviewer and their role in the document redaction process.
Improved collaboration by facilitating teamwork with complete visibility of which redactions have been suggested and by whom. Multiple reviewers can also work on the same document at the same time from different devices, both on and offline. This makes the redaction review more efficient, which is particularly important for time-critical documents.
A quicker and more compliant process that reduces time and human resources. Redaction software can identify multiple pieces of text and data that need to be securely redacted, making sure that the organization continues to comply with laws and regulations. It can also do so in a fraction of the time compared to manual redaction, freeing up resources for other value-adding activities.
Enhance business strategy while increasing efficiency. Most courts have rules and policies in place to prevent “restricted identifiers” from being displayed in public systems. These strategies typically rely on people to diligently observe processes to ensure that sensitive data is either not included in electronic documents or is otherwise appropriately protected. Examples include making it the responsibility of the filer to ensure the absence of sensitive data fields before filing and/or reliance on court staff to look for and appropriately classify a document or manually redact restricted identifiers missed by the filer. These are examples of “no tech” business strategies. Adding automated redaction to your business strategy introduces a technical solution to enhance current measures and fill gaps while increasing efficiency for the organization. If you are familiar with Continuous Improvement (CI) efforts, you may be aware of the concept of looking for “wastes” in business processes to improve products, services, or processes. Manually checking information received electronically, such as manual review of electronically filed documents for restricted identifiers, can be considered a “non-value added” activity to the extent that it adds manual steps (time and staff resources) to an electronic process in order to recheck or correct work. Automated redaction can virtually eliminate the need to manually check and redact documents, improving processes and increasing efficiency.
A complete audit trail that shows who has suggested information to be redacted and the reason why, as well as showing information that has been accepted for redaction and who accepted it. An automated redaction tool can produce a complete record that helps organizations to meet legal requirements and be audit ready.
Increased accuracy and consistency by eliminating individual oversight or human error, as well as the variabilities that are inherent with manual document redaction. One of the greatest attributes of automated redaction software is that is can be easily customized to meet your needs rather than requiring your organization to conform to a single set of hard-coded specifications. For example, the types of data fields the software will locate and capture for redaction (e.g. Social Security numbers, bank account numbers, dates of birth, etc.) are defined by your organization based on the kinds of documents typically received. “Business rules” used to locate restricted data can be easily and quickly modified to meet your changing business needs. In addition, whether a restricted data field identified by the software is automatically redacted without human intervention, flagged for verification by staff, or a hybrid approach is completely up to you. This too can be easily adjusted.
Easy to implement with reliable results. Unlike many other business and technology projects, implementing automated redaction is neither time nor resource intensive. Once you determine your solution, the implementation phase is straightforward consisting of a concise set of tasks. This may also include redaction of many documents already stored in the database. Depending on scope, most implementations can be completed within weeks or a few short months.
Getting redaction right is critical for any organization that deals with and distributes sensitive data. This is especially true for those operating within the world’s most regulated industries. Extract’s automated redaction product, ID Shield, boasts an accuracy rate of up to 90-95% without human verification. Even handwritten data can be detected in electronic documents when written in predictable form fields. You can choose to incorporate verification to achieve accuracy rates to as high as 99% based on the needs of your organization. If you’d like to see a demonstration of our software, or just have a discussion about how we might be able to help, please reach out and we’d be happy to help.
About the Author: Taylor Genter
Taylor is a Marketing Manager at Extract with experience in data analytics, graphic design, and both digital and social media marketing. She earned her Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Marketing at the University of Wisconsin- Whitewater. Taylor enjoys analyzing people’s behaviors and attitudes to find out what motivates them, and then curating better ways to communicate with them.