The Gartner glossary describes the process of redaction as a process that was widely used to hide confidential information in legal documents, and suggests that in the case of electronic documents redaction takes the form of information removal, as opposed to information masking or ‘blacking out’.

The process of “redacting” documents has been used in the legal profession for decades to black out confidential or privileged information during the exchange of documents during litigation. In electronic documents, redaction refers to the permanent removal of information, not the masking or obfuscating of data.

Uncover why redaction matters and how you can avoid ever making headlines with sloppy practices when dealing with sensitive documents. In law, “redacted” means editing a document to remove sensitive or private information before sharing it.

Common in court documents and within the government, redaction is to hide or remove (confidential parts of a text) before publication or distribution, or to examine (a text) for this purpose. It is a careful process to ensure that the redacted information cannot be easily deciphered or reconstructed.