What Is Document Redaction?

In today’s world where data breaches seem to only be getting bigger and more damaging, keeping sensitive information private is a top concern for any company that works with it on a regular basis. However, over the course of your day-to-day business activities, you may need to utilize a document that contains sensitive information in a way that could expose this information to a third party. This is where your business could benefit strongly from document redaction.

What is Document Redaction?

Document redaction is essentially a way of shielding the confidential information on a document so it cannot be exposed to a third party. Some common examples of information that needs to be redacted include:

• Social Security numbers
• License numbers (professional, driver’s, or otherwise)
• Personal health or other medical record information
• Financial information
• Judiciary records
• Proprietary information or trade secrets

There are a variety of ways this can be done. On a physical document, a solid black permanent marker can often be used to block out this sensitive information so it can’t be seen. While this is the most effective way to do this, it’s extremely slow and wildly inefficient, requiring manual human review of every document that needs redaction.

Thanks to modern technology, computers can now aid us in this process. Optical character recognition, or OCR, has made redacting large numbers of documents a breeze. Computer software that utilizes this this technology can recognize any character string that looks like one of the previously mentioned types of data and shield it. This allows you to quickly sort and scan through large numbers of document and redact any sensitive information to protect your business, your clients, and more.

Attorneys, medical offices, or any other business that frequently works with sensitive information could greatly benefit from this process. This way you can relax and breathe easier, knowing your business isn’t at risk of accidentally leaking potentially damaging information, and facing the consequences of doing so.