Boxworks 2014: New Box Security Tools Give Firms Greater Control Over Data

Box has added new security and management features to its cloud platform, providing new tracking abilities and data retention policies.

Speaking at the company’s Boxworks event in San Francisco, Box’s general manager for enterprise and senior vice president of marketing, Whitney Bouck, said the new features demonstrated that Box was not just a “sync and share firm” but is rather an Enterprise Content Collaboration (ECC) platform centered on the principles of collaboration, workflow, security and governance.

“Box is so much more than storage,” she said. “These four things in total give you a content collaboration platform that can solve a bunch of business problems.”

Box security

Box’s new information rights management features aim to further reduce the likelihood of sensitive data leaking out of a company. Trusted viewer options allow for the external sharing of content without loss of control by preventing copy and pasting, printing and downloading, while the trusted ecosystem ensures content is only shared with approved apps.

Administrators can now see what content employees are sharing with folders not owned by the company and can revoke a user’s access to files they don’t need to see. Another new feature allows admins to search for files with sensitive information, such as a social security number or credit card details, and quarantine them so employees don’t have access to such personal information.

A new retention management feature allows users to set expiry limits on files and set an action for when they expire. Files cannot be deleted before this date and if it is moved to another folder which has a different retention policy, the later date will be valid in order to ensure nothing is deleted. This feature is currently in beta and will be released before the end of the year.

Earlier this week, Box detailed new collaboration features and Office 365 integration alongside Box Workflow, which aims to automate a number of business processes, and Box for Industry, which offers vertical packages of services and applications to a number of sectors.

The company hopes that by positioning itself as a platform rather than simply as a storage provider, it can differentiate itself from its competition, which it says are merely ‘sync and share’ services. Bouck said that although it does ‘sync and share’ very well, it’s not where the value is.

“Despite the rich functionality, many still think of us as a sync and shire firm,” she said, adding the new features provided its customers with a “next generation content collaboration platform.”

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