Oops, you really shouldn’t have seen that … automated redaction for SharePoint content

Electronic redaction software for SharePoint

When you need to remove sensitive information from documents on a regular basis (think Legal, Engineering, or Healthcare environments), manual processes are both tedious and subject to error. I recently got to see a demo of a product that helps quickly and easily redact SharePoint content - Redact-It from Informative Graphics. With Redact-It, the risk of accidentally sharing sensitive information stored in SharePoint libraries can be virtually eliminated.

Redact-it can recognize some typical content in structured formats, like phone numbers and social security numbers. You can also train it to look for specific fields in pre-defined positions, which makes it really convenient for creating redacted versions of form documents that you store in SharePoint. Some of the scenarios that you can support with Redact-it include:

• Identifying sensitive content in the viewer (part of what you install in SharePoint) and manually redacting.
• Building a reusable redaction template that can be applied to structured documents.
• Using the automatic capabilities to redact based on data patterns.

Redaction with this tool doesn't just put a black line over sensitive content; it removes the content and can produce a searchable PDF as output, which is especially helpful when the content needs to be examined after redaction. Redact-it also doesn't care about the format of the input; it works with Word, TIFF, PDF and other files as input and can output to TIFF, PDF or a highly secure proprietary format called CSF (content sealed format) that can be viewed with a free reader (similar to PDF).

The exhibit shows an example of a redacted document viewed in a SharePoint library. The tool doesn't work as a "bulk" redaction tool, but it can be incorporated into a workflow so that documents or forms are automatically redacted as they are added to a library (and then the redacted version can be stored in an environment that is accessible by the user who is not allowed to see the sensitive information. If you work in an industry where document redaction is a concern, Redact-it is definitely worth checking out.

• Microsoft
• Collaboration/Web 2.0
• Electronic Redaction
• SharePoint Server