According to reports, more than 322 million individuals in the United States were affected by data exposures. Explore how to avoid data exposure, protect data privacy and ensure compliance with the best redaction software.
With growing privacy concerns, redaction failures, and the increasing need to comply with data privacy regulations such as HIPAA, CCPA, FERPA, CJIS, the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, and GDPR, it is essential to prioritize selecting the best redaction software to safeguard sensitive data across your data - whether videos, audio, images, and documents.
To help in the process, several redaction software have emerged on the market today. The best redaction software should offer robust features, deliver accurate results, be user-friendly and secure, and ideally include automation and AI capabilities to simplify your redaction workflow and help you avoid non-compliance with data privacy regulations and information access requests.
However, with multiple options in the market, selecting the ideal software can be challenging and time-consuming. Fortunately, you're in the right place. This blog compares the eight best redaction software, highlighting essential features based on extensive market research and our decade of industry experience in this domain.
Using outdated, manual redaction methods or workflows puts your compliance at risk. Plus, traditional methods are time-consuming, labor-intensive, and often prone to errors and potential non-compliance, which can result in costly consequences.
Read more about how manual redaction exposed Sony’s confidential data.
The best redaction software offers a user-friendly platform that allows both manual selection and automatic identification of sensitive content—such as Personally Identifiable Information (PII), Protected Health Information (PHI), and Confidential Commercial Information (CCI)—in videos, audio, images, and documents, protecting it from unauthorized access. This approach saves time and resources, while ensuring compliance.
Best redaction software goes a step further by automating the identification and redaction of confidential information, ensuring compliance with data privacy regulations, helping prevent costly consequences, and offering a comprehensive and advanced solution for organizations.
AI-powered redaction allows tracking subjects of interest (such as a running person in a video). It then places a black box, blurs out, or pixelates the sensitive content to cover the redacted elements.
Let us look at some of the big names in the redaction software industry. This will help you make an informed decision and make the right investment for your organization’s long-term needs.
Here is a list of the best redaction software, and we have compared them feature-by-feature to help you make an informed decision.
VIDIZMO has a constantly improving proprietary redaction tool called VIDIZMO Redactor.
VIDIZMO Redactor uses VIDIZMO Indexer to power its AI. This allows it to perform automatic redaction through multiple capabilities, including automatic pattern recognition, object detection and tracking, Optical Character Recognition, and spoken PII redaction.
With this tool, redaction can be done in bulk for faces, people, and other PII stored across audio images and documents. Redaction can also be done for custom-defined objects such as license plates, addresses, symbols, weapons like guns & rifles, and other elements in videos.
Key Features of VIDIZMO Redactor:
Veritone has its redaction tool, Veritone Redact, aimed at law enforcement data, judicial agencies, and legal and compliance teams.
The tool uses aiWARE to power its AI to auto-detect sensitive information. The detection results are displayed chronologically alongside the tool’s video player. The player supports downloads of the redacted file alongside an audit log of all its changes.
Key Features of Veritone Redact
Axon is one of the oldest contenders in the law enforcement industry. Formerly known as TASER, the company has its redaction tool, Axon Redaction Assistant.
The tool has been mentioned to detect up to twenty faces at a time. Besides faces, the tool can redact MDTs and license plates as well.
The tool can also be used manually for added accuracy, is claimed to be constantly improving, and can be executed as a background task. It also exists as an add-on for Axon Evidence.
Key Features of AXON Redaction Assistant:
CaseGuard’s product, CaseGuard Redaction Software, is a standalone redaction tool that allows for redaction in both automatic and manual modes.
To be more specific, redaction can be performed on a video in automatic mode with the power of AI, in a manual object tracking mode where the user specifies an object to be redacted, which is later tracked and redacted throughout the video. Caseguard also offers support for audio, images, and documents.
The last is simple manual redaction through masking with boxes, with no tracking of objects.
Key Features of CaseGuard Video Redaction Software:
REDACTIVE by Motorola Solutions allows for the automatic detection of faces, people, vehicles, license plates, and small objects and enables the user to manually choose which of these are to be redacted and which are not.
The tool can also scan the entire video backward and forward for any manually redacted element at any point in the video. The tool is also applicable for audio redaction.
Key Features of Motorola Solution REDACTIVE:
Sighthound Redactor is an AI-powered software designed to automate the redaction of sensitive information in videos, images, and audio files. It utilizes advanced computer vision algorithms to detect and redact faces, vehicles, license plates, and other identifiable information, ensuring privacy and compliance with data protection regulations.
Key Features of Sighthound Redactor:
Genetec Clearance has a built-in redaction tool that allows for redaction on-demand, with each upload automatically scanned for facial detection.
The tool then provides liberty to the user to choose which faces are meant to be redacted and add additional masks for redacting other elements in the video.
As part of their Clearance digital evidence management system, a video can be redacted, reviewed, and directly added to a case using the tool.
Key Features of Genetec Clearance Redaction Tool:
SuspectTech (Suspect Technologies) has a redaction tool named Exact Redact. The tool provides automatic and manual redaction of video and audio data.
Using the tool, faces, people, and cars can be automatically redacted, whereas manual redaction can be used for audio and custom identifiable information. Their focus is on meeting the compliance needs specified in CJIS.
Key Features of SuspectTech Exact Redact:
As several redaction software are available on the market, you need to choose the one that suits your needs and performs accurate redaction for your videos, audio, images, and documents to ensure compliance.
Moreover, you must consider the auto and manual redaction capabilities to increase productivity and accuracy. Other features like interface, integrations, and security capabilities must also be considered to comprehensively protect your data.
VIDIZIMO Redactor constantly improves with frequent new releases that add new features and improvements. The tool uses AI-based capabilities to automatically detect faces, people, and custom-defined objects such as license plates, addresses, symbols, and other elements in a video file.
Let's have a look at a few specific features that give VIDIZMO the edge over several other providers of redaction tools and services, such as those enlisted below:
This blog article is part of our complete guide on redaction software. Do check it out.
What is redaction software?
Redaction software is a tool used to securely remove or obscure sensitive information from documents, images, videos, and audio. It typically offers features like text and image redaction, metadata removal, search and redact, and security measures like encryption.
What is video redaction?
Video redaction is the process of hiding or removing sensitive information from video files. The information can include PII, names, faces, email addresses, SSNs, license plates, and many other confidential information.
What is the best redaction software?
Best redaction software is one that automates your redaction process and comprehensively helps you redact sensitive information to avoid data exposure, including Personally Identifiable Information (PII) or Protected Health Information (PHI) from your video data in order to comply with data privacy regulations, avoid data exposure as well as mitigate the risk of data breaches.
How do you choose the best redaction software?
Selecting the right redaction software requires considering key factors like AI-powered automation for efficiency and strong security features to protect sensitive data. Multi-format support ensures flexibility, while an intuitive interface enhances usability. Lastly, choose a scalable solution that integrates seamlessly with your existing systems.
Is redaction irreversible?
The redaction process is irreversible if you do it on the original file. The obscured data cannot be recovered. However, the best way to keep the redacted data is to create a duplicate file and then conduct the redaction process on it.