How Kingston Technology Verifies Orders Compliantly with Identity Cloak

The Challenge: Verifying Shipments Without Breaching Privacy

At Kingston’s UK packing and shipping facility, video recordings are crucial. Every parcel that leaves their premises, especially those going to major partners like Amazon, must be accounted for with a verifiable audit trail. These recordings help resolve disputes about missing items, incorrect shipments or delivery issues.

“We ship to around 600 customers, many with strict order tracking requirements, when it comes to partners like Amazon, the margin for error is zero.”
- Andy Shorey, Kingston’s IT Director

But capturing footage in operational areas presented a compliance problem. Staff members featured in the recordings, which means that under GDPR the videos contained personal data.

To use this footage legally - whether to investigate an issue or to comply with a customer’s request - Kingston had to blank out (redact) identifiable features like faces and name tags.

Initially the company used traditional video editing tools like Adobe Premiere. While great for creative editing, these tools were slow and prone to human error when used for compliance purposes.

“Using non-specialist editing software for redaction was a problem,” Shorey says. “It was time consuming and there was always the risk of missing a single frame or face.”

The Solution: A Redaction Tool That Just Works

After researching the market, Kingston found many solutions lacked the automation and reliability they needed, until they tried Identity Cloak, Facit’s video redaction software.

Designed for compliance, Identity Cloak integrates seamlessly with Kingston’s existing Milestone VMS (Video Management System). The tool automatically detects and blanks out personal identifiers in video footage to simplify the video compliance process.

“It takes the pain away,” Shorey says. “You just upload your video, and Identity Cloak tracks and redacts individuals automatically and accurately. It’s reliable, easy to use and makes the whole process faster.”

Today, Kingston can quickly retrieve and redact footage to produce compliant video evidence. No matter how chaotic the scene may be when packages are received at a customer’s goods-inward depot, Kingston can prove that items were verified at the time they were shipped.

Results: From Half a Day to Half an Hour

The time savings have been huge. Where it used to take several hours - sometimes half a day - to manually redact a typical video sequence, Identity Cloak does it in about 30 minutes.

And cost savings too. With Identity Cloak, Kingston saves staff time and only need one licence instead of multiple editing software subscriptions.

Extended Redaction Use Cases

The main use of video redaction tools within Kingston’s business is order verification.

But the redaction tool can also be used in the event of an HR or Security related Subject Access Requests (SARs), when an individual requests to see their personal data.

For example, if there is an accident in the car park. Kingston can respond without exposing the identities of bystanders or other employees as faces, vehicle licence plates and signage are all reliably anonymised.

A Strategic Approach to CCTV and Compliance

Over his nearly 30-year career, Andy Shorey has seen big changes in how businesses use CCTV.

“We used to have cameras everywhere, even around the perimeter of our business,” he recalls. “But that generated a lot of unnecessary enquiries and footage we didn’t really need. Now we’re far more strategic. Cameras are placed where they support our core business processes, like quality control, packing and safety.”

In parallel, Kingston’s approach to data storage has evolved. In line with GDPR, video footage is stored for only 30 days unless an active investigation justifies extending that to 90 days.

“Our goal is to be compliant, transparent and efficient,” says Shorey.

Looking Ahead: Innovating Together

The partnership between Kingston and Facit is continuing to evolve. A new feature in Identity Cloak will allow redaction across multiple video streams simultaneously so Kingston can combine footage from multiple sources into a single compliant output.

This will allow the company to further streamline its response processes by redacting synchronised video feeds.

Summary

“We see Identity Cloak as part of our operational system,” Shorey says. “It helps us to maintain our standards, meet legal requirements, and gain the trust of our customers and staff.”