When redacting financial statements, the workload can seem neverending. Tens of thousands of pages are filled with sensitive data involving other peoples’ financial information and they all need to be redacted properly. The biggest problem: only certain account statements need to be redacted. AI Detection might be a good option, but this could lead to over-redacting.
Even though it seems complicated, CaseGuard has features that make it a breeze. With the right combination of tools in CaseGuard Studio, we can get this job done efficiently and correctly. Let’s see how!
Setting up our redaction
To start redacting bank statements, we can start by creating a Block List. This will be a list of values that CaseGuard Studio can identify in all future files and make sure they are never flagged for redaction. In our case, we have many bank account numbers that need their information to stay unredacted in these files.
To create a block list, I first need to go to the top of the screen and click Tools>List Manager>Common Blocked Analytics.
From here, we can click Import Entries, where we’ll be prompted to select the file that contains our list of numbers. I’ll select mine and they’ll now appear in the Edit Common Blocked Analytics window.
- Tip: Click the Unblock in All Future Files Icon to remove an item from the block list.
Now that we have our list of items not to redact, we need to tell CaseGuard Studio what to identify for redaction. To do this, we can use a Regular Expression, or RegEx for short. Regular Expressions are sequences of characters that form search patterns, allowing us to find specific phrases or characters in a set of data.
CaseGuard Studio has a large amount of RegEx patterns available to use in the software already, but it also allows for the utilization of custom RegEx patterns. Since I need specific sets of numbers to be found for redaction, I have created a custom RegEx to recognize them for me.
- Tip: Creating a custom RegEx is easy. To learn how, find a website that teaches you or even one that creates the custom RegEx for you!
To add my custom RegEx, I’ll click the Pattern Detection 
Icon, and then, in the Regular Expression Panel, I’ll click the Add/Edit Patterns icon.
This opens the Patterns/Regular Expressions Panel. From here, I’ll click Add New which will bring me to the Add/Edit Patterns window.
In this window, I’ll name my pattern “Account Numbers” and I’ll select Bank Account Number as the Type. Next, I’ll paste my RegEx into the appropriate field and click Save.
We now have everything we need for our custom redaction.
Redacting
I’ll click the Pattern Detection button in the lefthand toolbar.
Now, the Pattern/Regular Expressions Redaction panel should appear at the bottom of the screen. From here, we can select our custom RegEx code from the Pattern dropdown.
Once CaseGuard Studio finishes processing, we can use the Arrow Keys in the Pattern/Regular Expressions Redaction panel to view every instance of the account numbers we need to redact. This allows for easy redaction while skipping over each account that we need to keep unredacted.