When it comes to detecting PII and PHI in eDiscovery, smart legal teams are going beyond Regex, as ProSearch discusses in this blog post!

In this blog post titled (wait for it!) Beyond Regex: Smarter Strategies for Detecting PII and PHI in eDiscovery (available here), ProSearch discusses how, during document review, sensitive details like Social Security numbers or medical records can easily slip through traditional detection methods. When that happens, the risk isn’t abstract; it can lead to compliance issues or even a data breach that impacts both clients and organizations.

Safeguarding personally identifiable information (PII) and protected health information (PHI) isn’t just about meeting regulatory requirements; it’s about reducing breach risk and maintaining trust. Yet accurately identifying and redacting this data remain among the most persistent challenges for legal teams.

Many workflows still rely heavily on keyword lists and regular expressions (Regex) to flag potential PII or PHI. While these methods are familiar, they often return thousands of false positives (overinclusive) or miss nuanced or context-dependent information as well as legitimate PII if not formatted in the expected manner (underinclusive).

So, how do advances in AI offer practical solutions to these challenges? And what are some best practices for implementation? Find out here, it’s only one click! Hey, this is personal! 😉

So, what do you think? Is your organization struggling with PII and PHI in discovery? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Image created using GPT-4’s Image Creator Powered by DALL-E, using the term “robot lawyer looking at someone’s personal information on a computer”.

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Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.