Nebula Feature Spotlight: PII/PHI Detection & Extraction, Powered by AI

It’s no secret that in today’s digital landscape, data plays an increasingly pivotal role. From internal emails to customer records and beyond, organizations generate and handle vast volumes of sensitive information on a daily basis. In the context of eDiscovery, this influx presents both opportunities and risks. Not only must legal teams sift through millions of documents to uncover key facts, they also need to navigate the critical responsibility of safeguarding Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and Protected Health Information (PHI). Each type of data carries varying levels of risk and demands an appropriate, compliant response, if exposed.

That’s why we are very excited to release PII and PHI Detection & Extraction for Nebula, harnessing the power of AI. This advanced capability automatically flags sensitive information buried deep within datasets, empowering legal teams to act faster, reduce risk, safeguard privacy, and maintain compliance with evolving regulations.

Why It Matters

PII/PHI detection isn’t just a “nice-to-have” anymore; it’s a crucial capability that helps organizations meet growing regulatory demands. Nebula allows teams to achieve these goals without compromising speed or accuracy. Nebula PII/PHI detection can deliver tremendous accuracy, recall, and precision, enabling rapid discovery of sensitive information so teams can re-route, review, redact, or withhold data quickly.

PII/PHI Detection & Extraction gives legal teams the ability to perform the following:

  • Automatically detect sensitive personal data across massive datasets

  • Integrate advanced AI-driven Early Case Assessment (ECA) workflows

  • Accelerate privacy reviews during investigations and litigation

  • Streamline workflows by integrating detection into existing review processes, minimizing manual work and reducing review time and costs

  • Reduce exposure risk and ensure compliance with privacy laws like HIPAA, CCPA, and GDPR

  • Privilege-protect and/or redact sensitive information before production to prevent inadvertent disclosure

  • Export and report on key findings to support audits, redactions, or breach notifications

  • Respond quickly to data breach incidents by automatically identifying data types, affected individuals, and scope

Built for Real World Application

Unlike manual pattern recognition searching or expensive add-on products with no platform integration, the Nebula solution is fully automated, extremely customizable, easy to use, and fully integrated into existing Nebula ECA & Review workflows. This powerful capability is made possible through the following cutting-edge technology:

  • Smart Hybrid Detection Engine

    • Combines AI text analysis with hundreds of robust pattern recognizers to identify names, Social Security numbers, national IDs, health data, financial information, and more.

  • Scalability by Design

    • Runs automatically at the collection-level, or at any time thereafter, and does so with speed and accuracy even across large data sets.

  • Configurability by Case Type and Geography

    • Recognizers can be scoped to align with specific case needs and workflows, and filtered by region to prioritize the most relevant entities and reduce false positives.

  • Searchability and Exportability

    • Detected entities appear as structured file-based data, and can be displayed in document lists or exported to allow for additional downstream reporting or delivery.

Without effective data detection, organizations face the risk of revealing sensitive information which can result in privacy breaches, regulatory fines, and potential legal issues.

How it Works

Nebula’s AI-based PII/PHI Detection and Extraction system is integrated into the Nebula NLP toolkit. The task can be configured to auto-run during processing or initiated manually on specific Collections via the Import > Dashboard > NLP Processing menu.

Detection output is accessible in both Cull and Review. Repository-level settings allow teams to target only the relevant regions and PII/PHI categories based on needs.

Documents containing detected entities are easily discovered using the search builder or facet explorer, and results can be added to a document list, exported to CSV, or included in a production deliverable.

Schedule a Demo to See It in Action

If you’re part of a compliance or legal team, a litigation support professional, or a privacy lead looking to reduce risk without adding complexity and time, Nebula’s AI-powered PII/PHI Detection & Extraction is for you.

Watch this video for a closer look at Nebula’s AI-powered PII/PHI detection in action!

Visit this page to contact a specialist and see how Nebula can help protect what matters most. Be sure to also check out all of Nebula’s other powerful and easy-to-use features that simplify eDiscovery from end-to-end.

And, as always, stay tuned for further updates!

Daniel Mangassarian

Danny is one of our Nebula Product Marketing Managers. He specializes in product strategy, audience targeting, and cross-functional collaboration to bring impactful ideas to life. He’s passionate about building products that solve real-world problems and deliver measurable results.

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