Who is Box?
Box is a storage company that has been in the business of providing cloud storage mostly for enterprises for over a decade now. Box CEO Aaron Levi was reported on Recode saying that his company's customers account for about 64% of the Fortune 500 companies. "It is basically a local file system for all intents and purposes. We're effectively working to make it so that you can have all your data in the cloud but continue to work exactly as you have been."
Box distinguishes itself through a focus on governance and compliance features. Also through developing expertise in different industries like finance and health care to enable them to better meet the needs of customers, according to Constellation Research principal analyst Alan Lepofsky.
Box Features
Previously, Levie tells Fortune, users had to log onto the website to see all their files and folders, and synchronise what they selected to their local device. Box Drive, on the other hand, streams all of that content so it shows up directly on the desktop. “Box Drive lets you navigate all of their corporate assets from your local machine, without them actually being stored on your hard drive," adds Alan Lepofsky, vice president of Constellation Research.
Once a user installs Box Drive, it shows up as another hard drive on their computer. Using any network, you can scroll through existing files, but it's not downloaded until a user clicks on it. With a traditional sync client, a user is limited by the space available on their machine.
Box has spent more than two years so far working on Box Drive, to ensure users can store all their files on the cloud while maintaining high-performance access to them. Box users can, for instance, open up a large video file and easily sync to any point in that video without having to download it.
Traditional syncing tools don't work for that kind of environment, and Rand Wacker, head of product marketing, said no other vendors like Box are offering tools that support VDI environments as Box Drive does.
Users can also open files on the Box website, enabling them to view more than 120 different file types - such as 3D images - even if they don't have the corresponding software on their desktop.
This added feature, Box Zones, determines where the business's data is stored geographically. Some countries, like Germany and Australia, have strict requirements that user data stay in the country of origin, which is what Box Zones enforces.
Box uses its own data centres and also has assistance from Amazon Web Services (AMZN) and IMB Cloud Data Centers in other locations.
How Secure are my files?
Box takes security seriously. All Box data is encrypted using high-strength TLS encryption. Your data is encrypted at rest using 256-bit AES encryption and is further encrypted using an encryption key-wrapping strategy (again, using 256-bit AES encryption). Upgrade to a Business account and enjoy these additional security features:
- Admin console for user control and auditing
- Granular access permissions
- AD/LDAP integration
Box employs multiple data centres with reliable power sources and backup systems to ensure 99.9% uptime and redundancy.
Users are freed from the constraints of their local hard drives because they have instant access to all their files in the cloud and real-time collaboration is even more simple and intuitive.
