Redacted Audio with AI-Powered Audio Redaction

Imagine the shock when you discover that your data is being treated casually and left at risk of leaks. It’s like finding out your secret diary is being shown on a Times Square billboard.

Just like you, your customers and the people at large feel the same way. Research by the Pew Research Center, McKinsey and Company, and others reveal that people take data privacy seriously. Now, you need to live up to their expectations through redacted audio and other forms of redacted media.

Breaches of personal data can leave people feeling betrayed. Take the Facebook data scandal, for example, where users were left “Surprised, Shocked, Worried” upon learning how much of their data was being compromised. Anyone would feel the same.

Such incidents can damage an organization’s reputation faster than the spread of a wildfire. Not to mention, violating data protection laws can cost your organization penalties ranging from $50 per record to millions of dollars, even billions sometimes. Did it send chills down your spine? It sure did.

Personal data can also be found anywhere, even in audio files that contain PII (Personally Identifiable Information) and other sensitive data. To comply with regulations and protect privacy, this information needs to be treated with the utmost care. This is why redacted audio is a viable solution to protect data integrity.

What is Redacted Audio?

You may have noticed that on TV if someone uses slurs or mentions a brand name, it bleeps out. This audio is said to be redacted.

For instance, customer call recordings in a call center may contain sensitive information that needs to be protected. A similar scenario is observed in the banking and financial landscape.

Redacted audio refers to audio clips containing censored snippets. Audio bits with sensitive information can be identified and then redacted to hide the sensitive information. This can be done using redaction software that lets you perform audio redaction.

Why Redacted Audio Matters?

Companies that record and store audio containing sensitive information about their clients need to ensure that the data is kept safe and sound. Industries, including but not limited to call centers, law enforcement, and healthcare, take several measures to protect their clients' privacy.

For instance, customer call recordings in a call center may contain sensitive information that needs to be protected. A similar scenario is observed in the banking and financial landscape.

Furthermore, compliances such as HIPAA, FOIA, GDPR, etc., keep a strict check and balance on how companies deal with personal and sensitive data. Failing to comply with their laws can cost your organization a lot. More on this in the later section.

The Relation between Redacted Audio and Compliances

Although data privacy regulations do not target data protection for audio recordings in particular, given the wealth of sensitive details found in audio recordings, they are subject to the following compliances:

HIPAA
GDPR
FOIA
CRoC

HIPAA

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) covers entities (health providers and health plans) and business associates who collect patient health information (PHI) and are bound to follow the HIPAA rules. HIPAA ensures that an individual’s health information is secured.

PHI data under HIPAA compliance could be any information in any form, including spoken words. The breach of such information is considered a HIPAA violation and a serious crime resulting in penalties.

GDPR

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) ensures that EU citizens' privacy is protected, and their personally identifiable information is not exposed unnecessarily or misused.

Under Article 9, Article 15, and Article 17 of GDPR, all media formats, including audio files, that contain sensitive data or personally identifiable information must be redacted.

Learn more about the fulfillment of GDPR requirements.

FOIA

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) protects all confidential records and personal information from misuse with limited access provisions.

The Privacy Act ensures that the records are not accessible to the public or third parties and have the following primary objectives:

Restrict personally identifiable information from disclosure.
Grant individuals the right to access information about themselves.
Establish a code of “fair information practices” that must be abided by federal agencies for the collection, maintenance, and transmission of records.
Grant individuals the right to look for the amendments made to the data about themselves.

Learn about FOIA Rules for redaction.

California Rules of Court

As per Rule 1.201 Section (a) of the California Rules of Court, all personal information in court filings needs to be redacted. Rule 8.83 requires records to be made available for public access.

CRoC requires audio to be redacted before being presented in court to protect the person's confidentiality and not reveal it to the public.

Learn more about California Rules of Court.

Industries That Need Audio Redaction

Many industries generate audio data with personal information that needs to be redacted. The following are some of the industries that need audio redaction to ensure compliance with strict data privacy regulations:

Call centers
Law enforcement
Prosecution
Healthcare
Finance

Call Centers

On average, call centers handle 4,400 calls in a month, and all of them are recorded for quality assurance and evaluation purposes. Seems harmless, right? Wrong.

Call centers are always facing the threat of increasing data breaches. A single data breach can cost them a fortune. Why exactly?

Because customer calls may contain sensitive financial information that needs to be protected. The process of audio redaction in call centers obscures this sensitive information in audio files, ensuring compliance with data protection regulations.

Law Enforcement

Law enforcement officers spend hours daily performing their responsibilities to maintain law and order. However, recordings from 911 dispatch or digital evidence of a case need to be redacted before being shared publicly or with other concerned stakeholders. These recordings may contain PII information that cannot be disclosed officially under most circumstances.

Several laws, such as AB-748 of California, demand, under most circumstances, for records and evidence to be disclosed to the public after a withholding period of 45 calendar days. However, the need to redact PII remains intact; hence, law enforcement needs PII redaction software.

Learn more about redaction in law enforcement.

Prosecution

Audio redaction is necessary to mask all information that is irrelevant or does not hold any weightage for the case during court presentation.

In the prosecution landscape, both the prosecutor and defense must listen to long audio evidence to extract useful information and redact unnecessary or private information about victims or witnesses for court proceedings. Similarly, privileged communications between the attorney and the client need to be redacted as well to respect the attorney-client privilege.

AI redaction can significantly reduce the time required for this and help legal professionals focus more on the cases while staying compliant with the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

Learn more about redaction for prosecution.

Healthcare

Healthcare service providers are among the industries that need to collect extensive amounts of crucial patient information as part of their daily operations. The data at hand is confidential and requires privacy protection.

This data can include audio files containing sensitive PHI (Patient Health Information). One way healthcare facilities engage with audio recordings is through patient-nurse communications recorded for research purposes. This is quite risky if you ask us.

After all, healthcare providers are required to strictly adhere to the rules and regulations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). This act is enforced to ensure the privacy and security of patient's health information.

Learn more about the need for redaction in healthcare.

Finance

As digital tools are evolving daily, there is also an increase in customers doing their business with banks virtually through video conferencing tools and audio calls.

Data from these recordings contain personally identifiable information (PII) like full name, credit card number, social security number, financial information, passport number, and payment card information (PCI) such as Account holders’ number, ID, phone number, email address, pin codes, etc.

This recorded information is becoming a pool for hackers to breach and retrieve confidential information from them. Hence, any unprotected or unredacted PII and PCI data that outsiders or unauthorized users share will lead to a breach and a sheer violation of the Payment Card Industry-Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA).

Read about the importance of audio redaction in banks.

4 Ways to Get Redacted Audio Effectively

Now is the time to uncover the ways to perform audio redaction effectively. Thanks to advanced audio redaction software, following ways can help streamline the audio redaction process:

An illustration showing a list of ways to get redacted audio.

Spoken PII redaction
Bulk audio redaction
Transcript-based redaction
Manual redaction via audio segment

Spoken PII Redaction

As discussed earlier, sensitive information can include PII (Personally Identifiable Information). In audio files, this is in the form of speech. Spoken PII can be automatically identified and masked using PII redaction software without the need for human intervention.

For instance, a recorded call might contain sensitive information like a person's Social Security Number (SSN), which can be used to identify them. Using spoken PII redaction, the audio redaction software automatically marks all SSNs, so there is no need to select them manually. This automatic selection feature saves a lot of time and effort.

Bulk Audio Redaction

Redaction becomes much simpler and easier with the ability to edit multiple audio files in bulk. This feature allows you to redact information from numerous recordings simultaneously.

Let's say you have a sensitive audio segment, such as a name that is repeated in multiple recordings. By selecting the name just once, you can redact it from all recordings where it appears.

Did you know that one of the largest counties in California uses VIDIZMO’s automated redaction software to bulk-redact millions of audio recordings?

Transcript-based Redaction

Listening to each spoken word in an audio recording can be a time-consuming task involving multiple listening sessions. However, with the use of transcript-based redaction, the process becomes much more efficient.

By searching for specific keywords within the transcript in an automated redaction software, you can easily pinpoint and redact the sensitive speech. It automatically censors the speech corresponding to the transcript you have selected, making it a more streamlined and effective solution.

Manual Redaction via Audio Segment

When redacting sensitive information from audio recordings, it's important to be precise. Sometimes, even small segments of audio may contain important information that needs to be removed using redaction tools.

To ensure that you don't miss any crucial details, you can zoom in on the audio waveform and manually select the exact length of the segment you want to mute or bleep out. This way, you can be certain that you're redacting only the necessary information while leaving the rest of the audio intact.

Redacted Audio with VIDIZMO Redactor

VIDIZMO Redactor is an advanced, AI-powered redaction software for redacting audio recordings as well as other forms of media. It offers the following audio redaction capabilities:

Spoken PII redaction that automatically redacts personally identifiable information (PII) in audio recordings.
Bulk audio redaction for redacting millions of audio recordings at once.
Transcript-based redaction for redacting spoken words by simply searching for it in the transcription pane. This allows you to redact the spoken words from closed captions (CC) as well.
Manual audio redaction using audio segments that can be expanded for precise redaction at the granular level.
The ability to mute or bleep spoken words to obtain redacted audio.

Explore more features of VIDIZMO Redactor by visiting our dedicated website.

Or you can sign up for a 7-day free trial to experience it in action.

What is Redacted Audio, and How to Do Audio Redaction Effectively?