With each passing year, businesses worldwide rely on data to understand their performance, create better strategies, and find a way to grow faster than their competitors.
However, businesses must protect sensitive data from malicious parties or unauthorized access. Data leaks and cyber attacks threaten to jeopardize your revenue and reputation by leaking analytics, financial records, plans, etc.
Although you can black out and censor information on digitized documents, redacted company data can still be uncovered if done incorrectly.
To safeguard your data and ensure it stays away from the wrong hands for good, you can rely on our pick of the five best document redaction tools. Learn more about redaction and why you can trust our recommended service to protect your classified information.
What is Redaction and the Information You Need to Redact
Redaction refers to the censoring or omitting information to prevent unauthorized access and disclosure of confidential data. The aim of redacting documents is to safeguard the parties’ privacy.
Documents can be redacted by physically blacking out specific parts on hard copies or virtual file formats such as PDFs by striking out content before sharing it with others. You need a proper understanding of the content to make complete, error-free redactions.
Without accurate redactions, you could leak company secrets, financial information, medical records, break compliance laws, etc.
Sensitive information can be related to both individuals and organizations. Here are the primary types of data you would want to look out for when redacting your documents:
- Personal Identifiable Information (PII): Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is any information that can be used to reveal an individual’s identity.
These include addresses, real names, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, license plate numbers, etc. Companies also record and store data such as biometrics and geolocations meant to be kept hidden.
However, cybercriminals usually target PII data to commit fraud, identity theft, and other crimes. Organizations are bound by law to protect PII by preventing unauthorized access.
- Confidential Business Information: Information related to intellectual property, trade secrets, customer lists, and employee data is crucial to the functioning of a company. Removing these from publicly available documents helps you secure your revenue.
However, metadata and other persistent document elements can still recover redacted company data. A reliable redaction tool such as Redactable can prevent snoopers from revealing confidential information.
- Financial Information: Protecting data in the financial sector involves obfuscating bank account numbers, credit card information, tax identification numbers, etc., to protect clients from credit card fraud and money laundering.
- Medical Records: Alongside treatment information and diagnoses, you must adhere to compliance laws such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
Protected Health Information (PHI) must be redacted before releasing documents to the public to uphold the patient’s privacy. In the healthcare industry, patient data is handled by Covered Entities and medical institutions.
Healthcare providers, insurers, business associates, etc., must effectively handle personal information to not leak it.
- Legal Compliance (FOIA and GDPR): Attorneys must take extreme care when it comes to censoring individual data and adhere to compliance laws.
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) enables citizens to request federal agencies’ data. The government must disclose data under the FOIA unless it falls under one of the exclusions to safeguard personal privacy and national security.
As a government agency that receives a FOIA request, you are responsible for redacting data that would be considered too sensitive to divulge.
GDPR is enacted in all EU countries, where an individual can contact your company to request all of their data to be deleted from your specific system within a particular time frame. Efficient redaction can save you from deleting an entire record.
With a range of information to be redacted, it can become overwhelming for an individual or company to keep track of relevant data and remove them accordingly. To make accurate redactions that safeguard privacy consistently, you need the help of redaction tools.
Top 5 Redaction Tools to Protect Sensitive Data
Now that you know the importance of redaction, here are the five best redaction tools that ensure your redacted company information stays hidden:
1.Redactable
Redactable is an AI-driven cloud-based redaction software that you can use from your browser to safeguard individual privacy and secure redacted company data effortlessly.
Redactable’s powerful Natural Language Processing algorithms and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) can detect and automatically redact sensitive data from particular sentences or huge sections on various file formats like PDFs, Excel, HTML, and XML.
Redactable remove texts, images, and videos while scrubbing the document of digital signatures, metadata, and hidden elements to remove the chances of snoopers finding individual redactors or uncovering obfuscated information.
You can rely on our Redaction Wizard to carry out the redaction process without complex training or manual work to save time and resources. You can also use “Patterns'' or the “Manual” feature to redact documents with its One-Click Redaction.
Redactable allows you to streamline your review process by setting up a task hierarchy. You and your team can collaborate on a single project to take on larger, more complex documents by simultaneously redacting without downloading additional plugins.
Regarding legal compliance and privacy, Redactable adheres to the GDPR and HIPAA guidelines while maintaining a transparent Privacy Policy.
Our services are so easy to use that you can redact almost 10 pages in 2.5 minutes. Here’s how you do it:
1. Open Redactable on your browser
2.Upload the document
3.Select images and text you want to redact (if you aren’t using Redaction Wizard)
4.Click on “Finalize Redaction”
5.Download the newly redacted file
Redactable offers 3 different pricing plans for your unique business needs. You can also opt for our annual plans that include the Pro ($375/year) and Pro Plus ($854/year) plans. Alternatively, with our free trial you can try out our features without risks.
2.Adobe Acrobat Professional
Adobe Acrobat Pro is a comprehensive PDF redaction tool widely used to censor and omit sensitive data seamlessly. Like Redactable, Adobe Acrobat Pro utilizes OCR to convert scanned documents and non-textual formats into editable text files.
The Remove Hidden Information feature hides information like texts and images. Adobe Acrobat Pro allows you to choose between black-out text boxes or custom text to conceal sensitive information.
The intuitive interface and design enable you to search for specific words or phrases, where you can redact individual instances or multiple words and patterns. You can remove metadata, watermarks, and hidden texts for added privacy.
Once removed, these redactions can be covered with redaction codes, colored boxes, or colorful figures. Adobe Acrobat Pro allows users to collaborate on documents and save them as PDFs or convert them to formats like Excel, Word, PowerPoint, etc.
3.iDox.ai Redact
iDox.ai Redact is part of a range of products offered by iDox.ai that provides document management solutions powered by AI technology. It is a cloud-based redaction service that integrates directly into your production infrastructure to review and redact content.
iDox.ai uses computer vision and Machine Learning to automatically redact text, keywords, images, and numbers through their plugin or on their proprietary platform. They support various file formats, such as PDFs and DOCX.
Like Redactable, iDox.ai offers native integrations to platforms like Google Drive and Box so that you don’t have to navigate multiple interfaces.
4.CaseGuard
CaseGuard is a reliable redaction tool that offers solutions for complex PDFs, images, and especially video files. CaseGuard blurs license plates, faces, addresses, and other PII from pictures and videos.
For text files, CaseGuard conceals sensitive data, such as tax forms, medical diagnoses, bank records, etc., by detecting and redacting them automatically with no hassle. Aside from Redactable, CaseGuard is one of the most accessible and cost-effective tools.
5.Foxit PhantomPDF
Foxit PhantomPDF is another example of an affordable redaction tool that reliably detects and redacts confidential data to avoid unauthorized access. The mark for redaction feature highlights information that could be sensitive for better audits.
You can merge multiple PDF files into the same document for easier sharing, management, and review. Custom redaction stamps offer better customization options to personalize your document according to your requirements.
Like other redaction tools, Foxit PhantomPDF is equipped with OCR to convert and edit scanned documents and non-text file formats.
Conclusion
The rapidly growing technological advancements of the digital age have led to more dangerous cyber attacks. Without proper precautions and countermeasures, even your redacted company data can cause severe data leaks, leading to a loss in revenue and trust.
At Redactable, we provide the tools to safely redact and conceal sensitive information from prying eyes so you can share your documents without anxiety. We excel at delivering easy-to-use redaction solutions for professionals of all industries to safeguard their privacy.
Try out our services risk-free with a free trial and put your worries to rest as you use our powerful Machine Learning algorithms and document scrubbing features for superior data protection.
