During the first World War over 12 million letters a week were delivered to soldiers. It was a vital way of keeping contact with loved ones at home. These letters would on average take three days to reach the front and were extremely valuable in boosting moral. The returning post would take a little longer as postal censorship was necessary to ensure security. Due to the fear of espionage and intelligence gathering, officers would read all the post and using a black pen remove all sensitive information. This was the start of mass redaction of information.
Redaction in the modern age
Governments continued to use the same methods to remove sensitive information from official documents. With stricter regulations around data protection resulting from the GDPR, there is now a need for document redaction for many businesses.
Redaction of a document will be necessary when you as a business need to share documents with a third party. If an ‘innocent’ person’s information is included within this document, then it must be redacted so that information is not shared.
Here is an example of that in practice: Susan has been discussed at a work-related meeting in her absence, certain details are recorded in the meeting minutes and she now wants a copy of them. However, other members of staff were also discussed, and their personal details are included on the same page. In this case, it is incumbent on the organisation to give Susan a copy of the minutes, but they need to remove all references to other 3rd parties before they do so.
How to redact a document
If you only have one request and one piece of paper, you will certainly get the black marker out and redact it yourself. But what happens when requests come from several people and the required documents are numerous, both hard and soft copy? That is when you need to hand this over to experts. At Datascan we use the most modern technology that will not only identify the relevant information but will redact it permanently both on hard and soft copies. Thus making the process faster and ensuring totally accuracy.
Ensure you are compliant with the GDPR when it comes to document redaction. If you are in any doubt, get in touch with our team today who can advise you on the next steps to redaction.
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