Comparison guide

AccessPoint vs. CaseGuard

CaseGuard Studio is an installed redaction workstation sold by the seat. AccessPoint redacts the same recordings inside your own Microsoft 365 tenant, as part of the access request, with the exemption on every span and no per-user licence.

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The short answer

CaseGuard Studio is a US-built redaction application that installs on the agency's own machines — including air-gapped networks — and covers video, audio, images and documents from one interface, with automatic detection of faces, licence plates, screens and other objects, mute / bleep / resample audio tools, transcription in more than a hundred languages and published per-user pricing from $279 to $379 a month billed annually. For an office that wants a desktop tool under its own roof and can budget a seat for each redactor, it is a well-featured option. AccessPoint's difference is that it is the access-request platform rather than a workstation: the recording is one document on the request, every mark carries the statutory exemption it relies on, the burned release and its time-based redaction log stay in the request file, and pricing is flat by organization size with no per-user fee.

What is CaseGuard Studio?

CaseGuard is an Arlington, Virginia company whose CaseGuard Studio bundles video, audio, image and document redaction with transcription, translation and a set of investigation tools. Its video redaction detects faces, licence plates, screens and mobile data terminals, notepads, vehicles and bodies — the vendor describes twelve categories of personal information detected at once — and a Smart Tracker follows a shape the reviewer draws until the object leaves the frame. Audio can be muted, bleeped or resampled to conceal a voice, and words can be searched or highlighted in an automatically generated transcript and redacted from there.

The product is sold as an installed application. CaseGuard says it runs locally on the customer's machines, including air-gapped networks without internet access, with redactions applied permanently and metadata scrubbed. Its pricing page publishes three per-user plans billed annually — Doc Suite at $279, Media Suite at $299 and Ultimate Suite at $379 a month — with an Enterprise tier from fifty seats. Audit logs and compliance reports are in every plan; the exemption report, on-premise deployment, offline mode and third-party integrations are listed only for Ultimate and Enterprise. The same page's refund terms refer to an AI allotment of 240 hours and 48,000 pages and to cloud-based AI hours, so buyers should ask which detection passes run locally in an offline deployment.

CaseGuard is a redaction workstation, and that is the comparison point. It is built for the person doing the redacting, on a licensed machine, and the request, the statutory clock and the paper records live somewhere else. AccessPoint is built for the office answering the request: the recording sits beside the emails and PDFs, its marks draw on the same exemption catalogue, and the release and its log are one record in one system inside the tenant the office already controls.

CaseGuard and AccessPoint, side by side

CaseGuard AccessPoint
Where the footage is processed On the agency's own machine or network — CaseGuard says it is not cloud-based and needs no internet connection to process video — with on-premise deployment and offline mode in the Ultimate and Enterprise plans. Its refund terms reference cloud-based AI hours and an AI allotment Inside your own Microsoft 365 and Azure tenant. Face detection runs on your App Service with no outside call; on-screen text detection and transcription use Azure AI Document Intelligence and Azure AI Speech deployed in your tenant. The original recording is never modified
Detection: faces, plates, on-screen text Automatic detection of faces, licence plates, screens and mobile data terminals, notepads, vehicles and bodies — twelve categories, per the vendor — plus a Smart Tracker that follows a drawn shape until it leaves the frame In-tenant face detection with stabilised tracking (one proposed tracked mark per person) and on-screen text via frame OCR against your detection patterns — a licence plate, a name badge, a case number on a monitor — each proposal carrying a rule citation. No dedicated plate, head or body detector; anything else is drawn once and tracked automatically in both directions
Audio: mute, bleep, voice distortion Mute, bleep or resample (change the tone of a voice to conceal identity) on part or all of a recording Mute, bleep and voice distortion (pitch-shifted so every word stays audible) can be combined on one recording, each span with its own exemption — the severance Ontario's IPC has ordered in place of removal
Transcript-anchored marks Automatic transcription with speaker identification in more than 100 languages; search or highlight keywords in the transcript and redact with one click; transcripts export to Word, PDF or text Time-coded, speaker-labelled transcript; Find & redact, detection rules and the AI pass propose Mute marks over the spoken span for you to accept or dismiss. Needs Azure AI Speech deployed in your tenant
Link to the request and the exemption cited Exemption logs are described, and an exemption report is listed for the Ultimate and Enterprise plans. Whether an exemption attaches to a time span on a recording, and how it reaches the request file, is not described in its published documentation Every mark — region, audio span or whole-record withhold — carries the exemption from the jurisdiction pack, alternates, comments, flags and approval like a page redaction, the in-frame caption can show it, and the request's redaction log lists each span with its effect and exemption
Audit log and release record Audit logs and compliance reports in every plan; standard and transcription reports in Ultimate and Enterprise; redactions are permanent and metadata is scrubbed on export Hash-chained, append-only audit ledger in the request file; each release carries a MANIFEST.sha256 of every entry, a Redaction Index and a "How this release was prepared" statement that counts manual, rule-proposed, model-proposed and propagated marks
Formats and the burned release Video, audio and image files with permanent, burned-in redactions; the list of accepted and exported formats and any size limit are not described on its product pages Uploads up to 2 GB by default in resumable blocks; the release renders MP4 / MP3 with marks burned in and a record-label caption, packaged in the same ZIP as the PDFs. Per-audience release variants are stored as exclusions, so a new mark applies to every cut by default
Integration with request platforms Footage import from Axon Evidence.com and Box.com; third-party integrations are listed for the Ultimate and Enterprise plans. No FOI request platform integration is described AccessPoint is the request platform: recordings are documents on the request, added from the Documents tab or Teams meeting recordings, and the release decision feeds the Contents page, the redaction log and the statistics
Pricing model Published per-user seats billed annually — $279, $299 or $379 per user per month depending on suite — with Enterprise pricing from 50 seats and a pro-rated money-back guarantee Flat annual subscription by organization size, published on the site and billed through the Microsoft commercial marketplace — no per-user, per-seat or per-minute fees, and video and audio redaction is included

Competitor capabilities vary by product edition and configuration; this table reflects each product's public positioning as of 2026-09-04.

Where CaseGuard fits

A fair comparison cuts both ways — CaseGuard is a reasonable choice when:

  • Your security policy requires redaction on an air-gapped or fully offline workstation, with no cloud tenant of any kind in the chain.
  • One or two dedicated redactors handle all of the office's footage, so per-user seats are affordable and a desktop tool matches how they work.
  • You need investigation and enhancement tools — sharpening plates, clarifying footage, detecting tattoos — alongside redaction, which CaseGuard bundles and AccessPoint does not offer.
  • You want to outsource overflow to the vendor's On-Demand redaction team from time to time.

Where AccessPoint differs as a CaseGuard alternative

Your tenant, no workstation licence Detection, transcription, review and the burned release run inside your own Microsoft 365 and Azure tenant, in the browser, for anyone with the right role on the request — no installed application per machine and no seat to assign.
The exemption rides on the mark Each region, audio span or whole-record withhold carries the statutory section it relies on from the jurisdiction pack, with alternates and an approval, and the caption burned into the frame can show it. The redaction log lists every span with its effect and exemption beside the page-level entries.
Part of the request, not a step beside it The recording is one document on the access request. Its release decision feeds the Contents page and the statistics, the fees panel estimates media review hours, and the ZIP that goes to the requester holds the burned MP4 or MP3 next to the PDFs with one hash manifest.
Flat by organization size, not by the seat Video and audio redaction is part of the platform. Pricing is flat by organization size and published on the site, with no per-user fee. AccessPoint is listed on the Microsoft commercial marketplace, reviewed and tested by Microsoft.

Migrating from CaseGuard to AccessPoint

There is no case history to move out of a redaction workstation. Files you have already redacted in CaseGuard Studio stay where they are, with their audit reports; the practical test is to run the next request with recordings through AccessPoint beside it and compare what comes out.

  1. Keep prior releases and their CaseGuard audit and exemption reports where they are — nothing needs to be re-imported for the record to stand.
  2. Deploy Azure AI Speech and the media processor in your tenant (both are deployment parameters), then take the next request with body-worn, CCTV, 911 or interview audio and work it in AccessPoint in parallel.
  3. Run face and on-screen text detection and a transcript-based Find & redact, then accept or dismiss the proposals with the exemption on each mark.
  4. Compare the two releases side by side: the burned file, the hash manifest, the redaction log's per-span effect and exemption, and the reviewer hours against the media review estimate.
  5. Retire the CaseGuard seats at renewal once the office is satisfied — CaseGuard's pro-rated refund terms apply to the unused portion of an annual licence.

Offices that also use CaseGuard's enhancement tools for investigations can keep them; AccessPoint covers the access-to-information release, where the exemption citation and the withholding log are the artefacts a regulator will ask for.

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Questions people ask about CaseGuard and AccessPoint

What is CaseGuard Studio?
CaseGuard Studio is an installed redaction suite from CaseGuard of Arlington, Virginia. It redacts video, audio, images and documents from one interface, automatically detecting faces, licence plates, screens, notepads, vehicles and bodies, muting, bleeping or resampling audio, and transcribing and translating in more than a hundred languages. The vendor says it runs locally on the customer's machines, including air-gapped networks, and publishes per-user pricing of $279 to $379 a month billed annually, with an Enterprise tier from fifty seats.

Is there a CaseGuard alternative that does not charge per user?
Yes. AccessPoint includes video and audio redaction in a flat annual subscription by organization size, published on the site and billed through the Microsoft commercial marketplace, with no per-user or per-seat fee. It runs in the browser inside your own Microsoft 365 and Azure tenant, so anyone with the right role on a request can review and mark a recording without an installed application or an assigned licence.

CaseGuard runs offline. Does AccessPoint send footage to the cloud?
AccessPoint sends nothing to a third party. It runs in your own Microsoft 365 and Azure tenant: the face detector runs on your App Service without calling an outside service, and on-screen text detection and transcription use Azure AI Document Intelligence and Azure AI Speech deployed in that same tenant. If your policy requires a machine with no cloud tenant at all, CaseGuard's offline mode is the better fit; if your policy is that data stays in the tenant your organization already governs, AccessPoint meets it without a workstation.

How does AccessPoint's detection compare with CaseGuard's?
CaseGuard detects faces, licence plates, screens, notepads, vehicles and bodies and tracks a drawn shape until it leaves the frame. AccessPoint detects faces in-tenant and proposes one tracked mark per person, and reads on-screen text with frame OCR so a licence plate, a name badge or a case number on a monitor becomes a proposal carrying a rule citation. It does not ship a dedicated head, body or licence-plate detector — a subject seen from behind is drawn once and tracked automatically in both directions — and every proposal waits for a reviewer to accept or dismiss it.

CaseGuard has an exemption report. What does AccessPoint's redaction log add?
CaseGuard lists exemption logs and, in its Ultimate and Enterprise plans, an exemption report; whether an exemption attaches to a time span on a recording is not described in its published documentation. In AccessPoint the exemption is a property of the mark itself — with alternates, comments and an approval — the caption burned into the frame can show it, and the request's redaction log lists every span with its effect (box, blur, pixelate, mute, bleep, distort or withhold) and exemption beside the page-level entries for the documents in the same release. The package also carries a hash manifest and a statement of how it was prepared.

Competitor information on this page is drawn from public sources — vendor websites, government reports, and press coverage — and was last reviewed in 2026-09-04. Products evolve, and a comparison is never the whole story: capabilities vary by edition and configuration. Spot something out of date? Tell us and we'll correct it.

Video Redaction in Your Own Tenant, Logged in the Request File.

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