Bulk Redaction

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Overview
• Navigating to the redaction page
• The bulk redaction table
• How to bulk redact
• The bulk redaction process

Overview

Bulk Redaction is the process of redacting selected terms within a whole Box and its sub-folders. Rather than manually redacting terms on a document by document basis, select all and any sensitive information identified by the AI's analysis and redact them across an entire dataset. 

This can save tens of hours and and be completed without ever needing to open a file in Smartview (though always be sure to review before disclosing!).

N.B. Bulk redaction overwrites any manual redaction, so ensure you are happy with your bulk redaction selections before reviewing and redacting documents any further.

Navigating to the redaction page

Once your box has finished processing, navigate to Redaction by either:

• Clicking the options button on a Box and selecting Redaction
• Choosing Redact on the navigation bar from within a Box

The bulk redaction table

The bulk redaction table contains a list of all the terms and values that have been identified during the analysis of your data according to your chosen Box Settings. This list can often contain thousands of pages of results so, to make this more manageable, there are filter and search tools for locating relevant information.

When working with large, less familiar datasets it it often a useful first step to review the data in the bulk redaction table to gain an understanding of the information contained within the data.

All terms identified will be displayed by default in pages of 20 results and in alphabetical (A-Z) order. These results can be adjusted or narrowed down using the options at the top of the table:

• Show 20 / 50 / 100 results
• Filter by Redacted or Unredacted (if a bulk redaction has already been performed)
• Filter by PII category or sub-category
• Filter by Dictionary
• Filter by Regular Expression
• Search for a specific term(s)
• Reset filters
• Add term manually

How to bulk redact

Select the terms you wish to redact using a combination of the filter and search functions. Once you are happy with your selections, click the Redact button in the top right-hand corner to begin the operation.

The Redact button also enables you to choose the method used for determining which instances of terms are redacted by using the button's drop-down. Those two methods are:

All (default): if a term is selected for bulk redaction, all instances of it will be redacted across the dataset. Contextual: if a term is selected for bulk redaction, only the specific instances where it has been identified as sensitive will be redacted in the dataset. More information.

Below are a few common redaction queries and required steps:

The bulk redaction process

• After triggering the operation, return to the homepage to view the status of the process.
• When underway, a progress bar will appear on the box - hovering over it will display the number of files remaining to be redacted.
• The completion time will vary depending on the volume and density of the data and the number of terms selected.
• Once the operation is complete, a grey fill is added to the box icon to differentiate it from boxes that have not been bulk redacted.

Bulk redaction can be performed as many times as required, and each instance will overwrite the previous redactions. Terms missed and over-redactions may only become apparent once reviewing the redacted documents, so this is often an iterative process involving multiple bulk redactions. When returning after a bulk redaction, any redacted term in the table will be highlighted blue.

Smartview redaction >>