PII Tools streamlines detecting person names with +99% accuracy, even rolling them into Person Cards® for easier export and remediation. Let’s find out how.
Basics of Person Name Discovery
Detecting people’s names in text is the most fundamental activity in sensitive data discovery. But there are many ways to achieve this task, some more effective than others.
The main driver behind any data discovery software is known as a Named Entity Recognition (NER) engine. Different tools opt for different NERs, but after rigorous testing, we at PII tools concluded that the only way to meet our self-set standards was to develop our own.
Without getting too much into the weeds, we managed to create an NER that met all our requirements for quality person name discovery in texts:
- Multi-language, with a special focus on English, Spanish, German and Portuguese/Brazilian.
- The ability to accept arbitrary document contexts: text coming from PDFs, Word documents, Excel, email, database fields, OCR, etc.
- Efficiency, for quickly processing large amounts of text on a CPU (no need for specialized GPU hardware) and with a low memory footprint.
- Flexibility to evolve the model behavior: retraining, adding new languages, correcting detection errors.
- Accuracy to minimize false positives and negatives.
If you’re interested in learning more about PII Tools’ NER development, be sure to check out Part 1 and Part 2 of our mini-series, Detect Person Names in Text.
Everyday Person Name Discovery
With NER development complete, PII Tools users can now automate their sensitive data discovery process. And it’s applicable everywhere that you store data: files, emails, databases, the cloud, structured and unstructured data, scanned documents, images, and more.
Locate and remediate person names (PII) anywhere within your environment in four simple steps:
- Scan: For all personal or sensitive information, securely. No data leaves your network.
- Report: Analyze and review discovered data based on who is affected, where, and how.
- Remediate: Redact or erase unwanted personal information. Individually or in bulk.
- Comply: Keep up with regulations with incremental and scheduled scans.
Plus, the PII Tools dashboard is easy to use, with explanatory aids and helpful icons. You don’t need to be a trained Data Officer or processor to detect person names daily, meaning you can start performing in-house audits on day 1 after installation.
Person Cards®
The idea behind Person Cards® was to make detecting and remediating person names in text even easier.
This unique feature automatically links up all of the PII, PCI, and PHI that the PII Tools AI detector found on the person in question. It then rolls this bundle of sensitive data into a Person Card®, effectively creating a custom summary report of the individual, so you can access all their specific PII in one place.
Person Cards® are also easily exportable into a spreadsheet for simpler import into any eDiscovery platform you may be using. And, of course, all unassigned PII is also included, available for manual review and quality control. That way, you’ll feel certain that no sensitive information has slipped through the cracks.
Accurate Person Name Discovery
All the features mentioned above are only as useful as they are accurate. A Person Card® filled with incorrect or unreliable data only wastes time and adds confusion.
The unmatched accuracy of PII Tools’ NER effectively eliminates false positives. Our testing found our NER consistently among the top contenders on the market, while also managing to still balance our other criteria.
The result is noticeably accurate software that helps users detect person names and all other forms of PII data in 400+ file formats. And if you’d like to confirm our testing for yourself, be sure to check out Detect Person Names in Text: Part 1 for further details.
F1 scores for different software doing personal name detection.
Detect Person Names Yourself
Nothing is keeping you from simplifying person name detection in texts. But why stop at only names? By using PII Tools, you can add full sensitive data discovery to the mix + convenient Person Cards® for extra flexibility!
Automate Your Person Name Detection with Accurate PII Tools Software!
