What needs to be redacted?

Redaction and Personal Information

Questions always arise on what needs to be redacted from documents to protect user privacy.  I always refer people to the legal industry, and they define the following items in the Federal Rule for Civil procedure.  Below is a list of items that should be redacted from all court submitted documents:

• Last 4 digits of a social-security or taxpayer ID number;
• Year of an individual's birth (not month or day);
• Minor's initials;
• Last 4 digits of a financial-account number.

Other types of information appropriate for redaction include:

• Medical information;
• Trade secrets;
• Informant names;
• Sensitive security information;
• Other forms of unique identifiers.

Replacing the Black Marker: Why Automated Redaction?

Automatic Document Redaction Benefits

Using that black marker to redact documents?  Have to make a photo copy after you redact to make sure the confidential information cannot be seen?  There are numerous benefits to automated redaction using software.  Below are some of the key benefits:

• Automated search to find key terms and auto-redact them
• Save time and effort with an automated software process
• High accuracy rates insure protection of confidentiality 
• Ability to meet regulatory requirements for protection of confidentiality
• Allow a simple injection of the redaction process into day to day work
• Provide redaction through your content repositories

Did I miss any?  Comments?

What is redaction?

The Redacted Definition

So just what is redaction?  Here is the Merriam Webster definition:

redact: to obscure or remove (text) from a document prior to publication or release

So, redaction has been brought to light with quite a few news stories about redacted documents that were not properly scrubbed.  For the most part, the redaction process is done to protect confidential or sensitive information on documents that are required to be public.

Here are some more sources:

CIO Online Dictionary Definition of Redact

Wikipedia Entry for Redaction