5 Hidden Risks of Ignoring Redaction: Why is it Important?

From violating privacy laws to losing public trust, ignoring redaction can lead to potential consequences for your organization!

With the increasing number of crime and violence cases worldwide, video surveillance has become inevitable for businesses. The capabilities and usage of video surveillance are growing at a breakneck pace – not merely for security purposes but also for acquiring business insights.

From shopping malls to retail stores, restaurants to recreational centers, schools and universities to offices and banks, every organization implements video surveillance systems to monitor employees, customers, and visitors.

Surveillance videos play a pivotal role in helping organizations grow and secure themselves. They also help to ensure they have a complete track record of everything happening on their company premises.

However, it is crucial to understand that having strong physical security protocols and reliable video surveillance systems is not enough on its own.

To ensure the protection of sensitive information within these videos, you must have competent redaction software. This will help you to hide confidential data effectively, making your security measures more effective overall.

Redaction: Your Shield Against Data Vulnerabilities

While robust physical security protocols and advanced video surveillance systems are essential, they alone cannot guarantee complete protection of sensitive information such as personally identifiable information (PII) or credit card details. If exposed by negligence, it may lead to potentially severe consequences for your organization. 

Redaction software plays a crucial role in concealing sensitive data within videos, ensuring that confidential information remains safe and secure. By leveraging competent redaction tools, you fortify your defense against potential data breaches and enhance the overall effectiveness of your security measures.

Courtesy of the unprecedented technological revolution over the past few years, video redaction has become easier for businesses than ever before. Gone are the days when redaction was only used for hiding confidential information from printed documents.

Today, redaction has found its way to other data types, such as video and audio files. Whether it’s an insurance company, a regulatory firm or a government agency, every organization can leverage video redaction solutions to safeguard their information and preserve privacy. 

Risks Associated with Neglecting Redaction Software

While the importance of redaction can’t be overstated, many organizations don’t pay as much attention to proper redaction practices. This negligence typically results in legal liabilities and compliance, and regulatory complications.

Let’s look at some potential risks of ignoring redaction.

1.    Data Privacy Violation

The primary reason behind video surveillance is to ensure utmost security. Still, it may turn the other way and threaten people’s privacy if you don’t timely redact confidential information.

In 2022, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) received more than 1.1 million consumer reports regarding identity theft. Many organizations have secure data storage systems, but their data at transit isn’t as protected.

Sharing unredacted videos without adequate security protocols can lead to exploitation by malicious actors. This negligence often leads to identity theft and puts people’s personal information, such as their corporate position, financial details, addresses and license plate numbers, at risk.

2.    The Compliance Pitfall

In today’s regulatory landscape, organizations must ensure compliance with various laws and policies. Neglecting data redaction can lead to non-compliance with regulations like HIPAA, GDPR, and FOIA, especially if they contain sensitive information.

For instance, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) law in the European Union requires organizations to ensure the security and privacy of individuals’ data.

If you want to protect your organization from hefty fines and maintain a good reputation in the market, you should plan your course of action accordingly. Investing in high-quality redaction software will pay you off eventually.

3.    Brand Reputation at Stake

In today's digital era, the younger generations, Gen Z and Gen Y, heavily rely on social media. As a result, businesses must use videos and infographics to raise brand awareness effectively. However, when utilizing customer testimonials and feedback in these videos for marketing purposes, caution is paramount.

It is essential to thoroughly review the content to redact any element that could harm your brand reputation, marketing campaign, or customers' privacy.

In such cases, redacting sensitive portions becomes a necessary step. Filming and producing new videos from scratch can be challenging, making careful redaction the more practical and efficient choice.

4.    Public Trust on the Line: Risk for Law Enforcement

Justice and Law enforcement agencies rely heavily on digital evidence captured from various sources such as CCTVs, body-worn camera recordings, vehicle dashcams, 911 call recordings and more to evaluate criminal and civil cases.

To maintain public trust and transparency, you often need to share video footage of controversial incidents publicly.

However, you should ensure you are not compromising the privacy of people involved in a particular case when sharing such videos. People contributing to regulatory investigations and witnesses often don’t want to disclose their identities.

Under such circumstances, it is your utmost responsibility to redact all audiovisual data that may compromise the integrity of legal proceedings and expose people to potential harm, such as corporate espionage. 

5.    Inconvenience for Media and Press

Media and press deal with bulks of confidential data regularly. On top of that, they are constantly sharing such information with the public. A small mistake on their part can lead to irreversible implications.

Strategic use of redaction can help media and press organizations to safeguard sensitive information, preserve source anonymity (hiding the identity of whistleblowers or anonymous sources), blur the faces of individuals involved in a news story they need to share, stay competitive by accelerating review and analysis of video footage, facilitate collaborative editing and content publishing.

Therefore, to safeguard your data against potential risks, it is important to apply proper redaction techniques and fully understand the dangers of neglecting this process.

By utilizing robust and efficient redaction software, you can effectively avoid these risks and protect sensitive information. In the market, there are multiple solutions available.

One of the solutions is VIDIZMO Redactor!

Secure Your Confidential Information with VIDIZMO Redactor

Video Redaction Screenshot

VIDIZMO Redactor is your ultimate solution for securing confidential information. By using this powerful tool, you can ensure the protection of sensitive data in your videos, audio recordings, images and documents.

VIDIZMO's Redactor empowers you to detect, track and redact personal and sensitive information using the power of AI, saving your time and effort. You can safeguard your organization's privacy and comply with data protection regulations effortlessly with VIDIZMO's Redactor.

The following are some of the key capabilities of VIDIZMO Redactor:

  • VIDIZMO Redactor can automatically detect faces, people, license plates, vehicles and objects like weapons within videos. 

  • It offers various video redaction styles to blur, pixelate or add a black box on faces or objects you want to hide. 

  • It enables you to identify and redact specific audio segments that contain any sensitive information.

  • You can also search and redact specific words or phrases within documents.

  • You can use OCR functionality for redacting sensitive data from scanned documents.

  • Additionally, it also allows you to detect, track and redact personal information manually to ensure maximum accuracy and efficiency.

Learn More About Redaction In VIDIZMO

Or opt for our 7-day free trial today!

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Posted by Sania Abdul Bari

Sania Abdul Bari is a Product Marketing Strategist at VIDIZMO and an expert in redaction technologies. She is actively engaged in researching and analyzing technological trends in the redaction market landscape. For any queries, feel free to reach out to websales@vidizmo.com.

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