{"id":18669,"date":"2025-10-28T16:45:45","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T20:45:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/?p=18669"},"modified":"2026-10-05T12:00:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T16:00:10","slug":"masking-pii-in-audio-files","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/data-protection\/masking-pii-in-audio-files\/","title":{"rendered":"Masking PII in Audio Files"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Voice recordings can contain personally identifiable information (PII), such as names, phone numbers, or other sensitive data embedded in spoken words.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">According to Mediartis, \u201c<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnil.fr\/en\/sheet-ndeg1-identify-personal-data\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">CNIL (French GDPR Supervisory Authority<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">) provides examples of personal data such as photos, voice recordings, first or last names, pseudonyms, dates of birth, telephone numbers, social security numbers, postal addresses, email addresses, fingerprints, retinal prints and more<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-18697\" src=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/voice-recording-PII-1-300x197.png\" alt=\"Voice recordings containing PII such as names, phone numbers, and other sensitive spoken data\" width=\"489\" height=\"321\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/voice-recording-PII-1-300x197.png 300w, https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/voice-recording-PII-1-768x503.png 768w, https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/voice-recording-PII-1.png 1021w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 489px) 100vw, 489px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Voices themselves qualify as a form of personally identifiable information (PII); voice prints are one such example. Aside from the voice itself, the <\/span><strong>content <\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>of a conversation<\/strong> can also contain PII.\u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The ability to remove PII from audio streams helps users\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;\">take one step closer to addressing the myriad data security regulations that govern the protection of personal information<\/span>.<\/p>\n<h2><b><\/b><b>DarkShield and Unstructured Data<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">IRI originally entered the data security theater with the introduction of <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/products\/fieldshield\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">IRI FieldShield<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, which focused on masking structured data while providing <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">many of the ETL features associated with <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/products\/cosort\/sortcl\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">SortCL<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As data privacy requirements expanded to include <strong>semi-structured and unstructured<\/strong> data, FieldShield alone could not meet those demands. That led to the creation of <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/produts\/darkshield\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">DarkShield<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">;<\/span> designed to discover and protect sensitive data across a wide range of formats, both on-premise and in the cloud.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-18683\" src=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/DarkShield-Coverage-300x300.png\" alt=\"IRI DarkShield supporting PII discovery and masking across audio, databases, images, documents, healthcare standards, and data files\" width=\"284\" height=\"284\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/DarkShield-Coverage-300x300.png 300w, https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/DarkShield-Coverage-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/DarkShield-Coverage-768x768.png 768w, https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/DarkShield-Coverage-70x70.png 70w, https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/DarkShield-Coverage.png 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 284px) 100vw, 284px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">DarkShield can find and mask data classified as sensitive in structured sources (flat files and relational databases), too, but supports these additional sources on-premise and in the cloud:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">NoSQL DBs<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">JSON, XML, HL7, X12, FHIR files<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Parquet and PDF files<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Microsoft Office files (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint)<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Raw text, log and .SQL files<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Images (bmp, gif, jpg, png, tif, DICOM)<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">DarkShield can also detect and redact signatures found in several file formats, and protecting handwritten PII is also on the roadmap.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Introducing Audio File Masking<\/b><\/h2>\n<p>Until now, DarkShield supported various file types containing text or images from which text could be extracted. With Darkshield version 1.6.7, IRI has expanded that support to include audio files.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">DarkShield achieves this by using a Speech-to-Text model called <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/openai.com\/index\/whisper\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Whisper<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (made by OpenAI) to produce transcriptions. The transcriptions are then scanned for PII, and when found, the audio sound bytes containing PII are modified.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Current audio file formats supported by DarkShield include:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.wav<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.mp3<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.mpeg<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><b><\/b><b>DarkShield Audio Rule: How Audio Masking Works<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">From the IRI rules dialog in the IRI Workbench <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/products\/workbench\/darkshield-gui\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">GUI for DarkShield<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> shown here, we can create and apply an Audio Manipulation rule to mask any PII found in audio files.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-18675\" src=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/create-and-apply-an-Audio-Manipulation-rule-244x300.png\" alt=\"IRI Workbench New Data Rule Wizard with Audio Manipulation selected for masking PII in audio files\" width=\"409\" height=\"503\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/create-and-apply-an-Audio-Manipulation-rule-244x300.png 244w, https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/create-and-apply-an-Audio-Manipulation-rule.png 511w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 409px) 100vw, 409px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To create a rule for the purpose of masking PII in audio, there are now new Audio Manipulation rules. These rules allow you to either replace audio sounds or delete slices of audio sound.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To configure and create these rules, open an IRI Library and open the New Data Rule Wizard dialogue. Then select the Audio Manipulation item, and click next.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-18677\" src=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Audio-Manipulation_Function-300x182.png\" alt=\"IRI DarkShield Audio Manipulation Function with options to delete audio or replace PII with bleeps, bird sounds, white noise, or silence\" width=\"359\" height=\"218\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Audio-Manipulation_Function-300x182.png 300w, https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Audio-Manipulation_Function.png 504w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 359px) 100vw, 359px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On the next page, either select to delete or replace audio via the corresponding radio button.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you select the Replacement Audio option, you can choose between using bleeps, bird sounds, white noise, or silence to replace audio sound bytes. Otherwise, the Delete option will simply slice and cut out the sound bytes containing the discovered PII.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Searching an Audio File<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To discover PII inside an audio file, we leverage data classes as we normally would when creating a DarkShield job. Once a DarkShield .dsc file is created, we just run a Search job.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In my example, I have a data class called Klaus that only looks for the name Klaus in a speech performed by former president Trump. Below you can see a sample of the search results annotations json log from DarkShield.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-18678\" src=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/json-log-249x300.png\" alt=\"DarkShield JSON search log showing PII detected in an audio file transcription\" width=\"664\" height=\"800\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/json-log-249x300.png 249w, https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/json-log.png 708w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 664px) 100vw, 664px\" \/><\/p>\n<h2><b>Search and Mask an Audio File<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To mask PII inside an audio file, we leverage data classes to find PII and masking rules to mask PII as we would normally do when creating a DarkShield job. Once a DarkShield .dsc file is created, we just run a Search and Mask job.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In my example, I have a data class called Klaus that only looks for the name Klaus and replaces the word with a bleep sound. Below you can see a sample of the search and mask results JSON log from DarkShield.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-18679\" src=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/sample-of-the-search-and-mask-results-json-log-300x247.png\" alt=\"DarkShield JSON search and mask log showing detected audio PII and the applied replacement rule\" width=\"727\" height=\"599\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/sample-of-the-search-and-mask-results-json-log-300x247.png 300w, https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/sample-of-the-search-and-mask-results-json-log.png 716w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 727px) 100vw, 727px\" \/><\/p>\n<h2><b>Audio Clip: Before &amp; After Masking\u00a0<\/b><\/h2>\n<p>Sample clips showing the difference before and after masking.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-18698\" src=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/before-after-masking-voice-300x201.png\" alt=\"Before and after audio masking showing raw voice audio compared with redacted audio in IRI DarkShield\" width=\"400\" height=\"268\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/before-after-masking-voice-300x201.png 300w, https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/before-after-masking-voice-768x515.png 768w, https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/before-after-masking-voice.png 1023w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Audio clip before masking (original recording):<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<!--[if lt IE 9]><script>document.createElement('audio');<\/script><![endif]-->\n<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-18669-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/ElevenLabsGrace.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/ElevenLabsGrace.mp3\">https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/ElevenLabsGrace.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n<p><strong><em>Masked audio clip (beep sound applied):<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-18669-2\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/masked_beep_noises-1.mp3?_=2\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/masked_beep_noises-1.mp3\">https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/masked_beep_noises-1.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n<p><strong><em>Masked audio clip (bird sound applied):<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-18669-3\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/masked_bird_noises-1.mp3?_=3\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/masked_bird_noises-1.mp3\">https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/masked_bird_noises-1.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n<h2>Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2>\n<h3><strong>What audio file formats can IRI DarkShield mask?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>DarkShield currently supports <code dir=\"ltr\">.wav<\/code>, <code dir=\"ltr\">.mp3<\/code>, and <code dir=\"ltr\">.mpeg<\/code> audio files for PII discovery and masking.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>How does DarkShield find PII in audio files?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>DarkShield uses OpenAI\u2019s Whisper speech-to-text model to transcribe the audio. It then scans that transcription with DarkShield data classes to identify sensitive values.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>What happens after DarkShield finds PII in the transcription?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>After DarkShield identifies PII, it modifies the corresponding audio segment. The masking rule determines whether DarkShield replaces or removes the sound bytes containing the sensitive information.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>What replacement sounds can DarkShield use for audio masking?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>An Audio Manipulation rule can replace sensitive speech with bleeps, bird sounds, white noise, or silence. DarkShield can also delete the audio segment entirely.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>How are audio masking rules configured?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Users create Audio Manipulation rules in the IRI Workbench Data Rule Wizard. They can choose whether to delete sensitive audio or replace it with another sound.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>How does DarkShield decide what spoken information is sensitive?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>DarkShield uses data classes to define what PII or sensitive values to search for. These data classes can then be paired with masking rules in a DarkShield job.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Can DarkShield search an audio file without masking it?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Yes. A DarkShield Search job can identify PII in the audio and write the findings to the annotations JSON log without modifying the source audio.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Can DarkShield search and mask audio in the same job?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Yes. A Search and Mask job can identify sensitive speech and apply the assigned masking rule in one workflow.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Does DarkShield support other unstructured data besides audio?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Yes. DarkShield also supports formats such as PDF, Microsoft Office files, images, raw text and logs, SQL files, Parquet, JSON, XML, HL7, X12, FHIR, DICOM, and more.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Why use audio masking instead of only storing the transcript securely?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>The transcript may reveal where sensitive information occurs, but the original audio still contains the spoken PII. Audio masking changes or removes those sound segments so the protected audio itself no longer exposes the sensitive content described in the article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Voice recordings can contain personally identifiable information (PII), such as names, phone numbers, or other sensitive data embedded in spoken words. According to Mediartis, \u201cThe CNIL (French GDPR Supervisory Authority) provides examples of personal data such as photos, voice recordings, first or last names, pseudonyms, dates of birth, telephone numbers, social security numbers, postal addresses,<\/p>\n<div><a class=\"btn-filled btn\" href=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/data-protection\/masking-pii-in-audio-files\/\" title=\"Masking PII in Audio Files\">Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":152,"featured_media":18691,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[2229,2225,2221,2224,20,1081,14,1784,18,13,15,2230,1743,1388,520,789,850,2227,2228,2231,2233,2069,152,2232,2222,143,2226,2223],"class_list":["post-18669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-data-protection","tag-ai-based-pii-detection","tag-audio-files","tag-audio-masking","tag-cnil","tag-data-anonymization","tag-data-classification","tag-data-masking","tag-data-masking-software","tag-data-privacy","tag-data-protection-2","tag-data-security","tag-enterprise-data-governance","tag-gdpr-compliance","tag-iri-darkshield","tag-iri-fieldshield","tag-iri-voracity","tag-iri-workbench","tag-mp3","tag-mpeg","tag-personal-data-masking","tag-pii-in-audio-files","tag-pii-redaction","tag-sensitive-data","tag-speech-data-privacy","tag-speech-to-text","tag-unstructured-data","tag-wav","tag-whisper-model"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v23.4 (Yoast SEO v23.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Audio PII Masking with IRI DarkShield | IRI<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"See how audio PII masking with IRI DarkShield finds and redacts sensitive spoken data in WAV, MP3, and MPEG files using speech-to-text.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.iri.com\/blog\/data-protection\/masking-pii-in-audio-files\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Masking PII in Audio Files\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"See how audio PII masking with IRI DarkShield finds and redacts sensitive spoken data in WAV, MP3, and MPEG files using speech-to-text.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" 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