Box Security in the Spotlight as Company Prepares for IPO

As the enterprise storage and collaboration company headed by precocious CEO Aaron Levie approaches, analysts are looking at evidence the company is ready to unseat enterprise software leaders like Microsoft and IBM. “One of the top questions is whether is really ready to take the mantle from more established players in the enterprise software market. If so, their future looks bright,” said Jeffrey Kaplan.

For large customers, there’s no question that Box Security is up to par. The company has invested in data loss prevention and policy control, and recently received a rating of “enterprise-ready” from cloud security firm Skyhigh Networks. Such indicators are what companies wrestling with whether to replace Sharepoint on-premise deployments with Box are looking for.

“As more employees are bringing file sharing and collaboration tools to work, IT is discovering not all of them are safe for the company’s data,” according to technology analyst Amber Whitaker. Based on the need for such technologies, companies will need to migrate users to enterprise-ready solutions like Box in order to maintain the productivity benefits they get from cloud services without sacrificing security. But this migration requires more information about cloud usage.

One company recently analyzed its file sharing usage and discovered 39 different cloud services being used. It found Box was second in terms of users, but had the highest amount of usage. Based on the data, it decided to consolidate all 39 services onto an enterprise volume license of Box. That not only had the effect of improving ensuring data was protected due to Box Security, it also improved productivity since teams weren’t using different file sharing services.

For financial services companies, the true test will come when they begin to implement data loss prevention solutions in conjunction with Box. Many Wall Street banks invested in DLP solutions last decade to protect data in on-premise applications like Sharepoint and in order to be assured of Box security they also plan to roll out cloud DLP for services like Box.