CSI: Provider of automotive testing and certification services uses brighter Redact for GDPR-compliant cross-border data transfer

The Client

Italy-based CSI S.p.A., an IMQ Group company, is a European center of excellence for testing, inspection and certification of material, products, managing system and business compliance. CSI and IMQ Group in synergy have over 70 years of experience and offices also in China, Poland, Spain, Turkey and the UAE. CSI Automotive offers various services from product development and validation to REVEAL, their data acquisition and management software, with the ultimate goal to increase the safety and quality of everything around us.

Privacy by design to enable data sharing outside the EU

Fully automated upload and download with our SDK

Easy and fast integration via secure cloud API

The Challenge

For one of their clients, a Chinese multinational automobile manufacturer, CSI is testing the safety and functionality of advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS). The main challenge was enabling cross-border data transfer to a country without an adequacy decision regarding the level of data protection by the European Commission. As personal identifiers like faces and license plates were captured by vehicle cameras during the testing process, in order to transfer the data to mainland China, the headquarter of their client, image and video data needs to be anonymized. To be fully compliant with privacy regulations, the automatic license plate and face redaction needs to be highly accurate, even when objects are only partially visible.

The Solution

After a successful free trial of brighter Redact online, CSI’s Engineering Department chose to continue using our scalable cloud-based image and video redaction software, to get the best results for both license plates and face anonymization while reducing their hardware footprint and maintenance costs. The client further used the brighter Redact SDK for convenient access to our cloud-API.

700+

hours of video

anonymized

The Result

In a first batch, CSI successfully anonymized more than 400 hours of video data within three months and plans to use the redaction software for an additional 320 hours within one month. Due to the GDPR-compliant anonymization of the collected data, CSI was able to share data with their client, which wouldn’t be possible, or not without entering a legal gray area, by other means like encryption. CSI and their client continue to use brighter Redact for further projects, potentially with an additional on-premise deployment in their own private cloud.

"According to our customer, the anonymization process is seen as a requirement to be compliant with EU regulation. For them, accuracy is important and for us, as a partner, both performance - in terms of speed - and stability of the solution is crucial. […] brighter AI’s service meets our requirements. The redact client was also really helpful to easily integrate brighter AI’s software into our workflow. In addition, the customer experience brighter AI provides is great, because we get dedicated support with prompt replies and comprehensive troubleshooting […]"

Salvatore Musumeci, Powertrain and Vehicle Validation Manager, CSI S.p.A.