Protect Yourself: Box for MobileIron AppConnect

Box is designed with mobility, control and content security in mind, and many of our customers choose Box to help them tackle tough industry regulations and compliance policies. This is why Box has partnered with MobileIron to offer the security, visibility, configuration and policy management that IT needs and the convenience and productivity that users expect.

Today we’re excited to launch a brand new mobile app, Box for MobileIron AppConnect, that’s designed to work with the new MobileIron AppConnect mobile application security solution. It offers a seamless way for companies to secure mobile apps on a device while keeping a user’s corporate and personal data separate. For businesses that need enhanced security controls, MobileIron AppConnect also offers DLP features and lets admins set additional authentication policies in order to access and install corporate-sanctioned apps.

With our integration, IT can control the flow of content out of Box, as well as easily restrict printing, opening files in other apps and copying and pasting sensitive data. Additionally, MobileIron and Box customers can:

• Automate app installation
• Invisibly manage policy changes across an enterprise
• Provide SSO to enterprise applications on the mobile device
• Keep sensitive information off compromised or jail-broken devices
• Separate personal and corporate information and settings without impacting employee’s devices

Want more details on the new integration? Join our webinar on May 21 to discover how to deploy secure mobile collaboration in your organization and learn about the new Box for MobileIron AppConnect.

In fact, interest in Microsoft’s latest platforms has led to more than half a million downloads of our Box for Windows 8 and Box for Windows Phone apps since launch. We have met this demand by recently releasing some amazing features that let you do more with Box on your Windows devices. And today, we’re adding even more features to give users and businesses better control and enhanced security over their content.

Let’s take a look at what you can do on your Windows Phones and Windows 8 PCs now.

Box for Windows already gives you easy access to your content, with the ability to preview over 75 types of documents—including complex ones like Photoshop or AutoCAD files! It’s also designed around the unique features of the Windows platform, making use of live tiles, semantic zoom, and charms on Windows 8.

Today’s updates will also give you more control over the content in your account. Now, you can add, remove, and change access permissions for any collaborator in any folder that you own. This is great if you’re away from your desk and need to quickly change how someone sees your content or if you want to share something that you just uploaded from your phone.

We’re also extending some of our enterprise security and device management features to these Windows devices. First, we’ve added two-step login verification, which users or admins can enable to keep accounts safe. With this feature, a one-time code is sent to the user’s mobile phone, which they will use in addition to their password to login to Box.

Next, admins can tailor Box access to their specific IT policies.  For example, you can require an application-specific passcode lock and set a custom timeout for the lock. To prevent data leaks, admins can also restrict the ability to download files locally to the devices. All of these new features are in addition to the device pinning and remote logout capabilities we already offer.

Finally, we’re offering more access today for the Swedes and Finns, with two new localizations in Swedish and Finnish!

Go download the free Box for Windows 8 or Windows Phone app today— and try out the security settings for yourself! We’re always open to your feedback @BoxHQ or via windows-support@box.com.

Today, I’m thrilled to announce another great tool to help admins cut through complexity and find opportunities to improve their use of Box. We’re expanding our partnership with GoodData and today they’re releasing GoodBox Bash, a cloud-based service that lets customers view and analyze key data about how their business is using Box. Available immediately from GoodData, GoodBox gives instant insights into the security of content stored in Box, how different teams adopt and collaborate in Box and where opportunities exist to do more with content.

The first thing that the GoodBox Bash gives businesses is truly customizable alerting and monitoring. No matter how big you are — if you have a few hundred employees or a few hundred thousand — it’s critical to get a view over all your critical corporate data. With GoodBox, you can watch Box activity and use the rich visualizations to spot identify any abnormal behavior. Whether you’re looking for suspicious download activity or want to track previews and shared links to specific document sets, GoodBox gives you better visibility and better control over your content.

We also want our customers to squeeze every bit of value they can out of Box. The second thing GoodBox exposes is how different teams in your organization are adopting, engaging with and collaborating in Box. Pay attention to how your top-performing teams use Box, identify best practices and great new use cases, and then spread that knowledge to other teams. You can even tie content and events to broader business metrics to see how your content is influencing revenue, close rates and cost management.

For more information, check out the details on GoodData’s page or contact your Box rep for a demo!

This is not a new challenge for us; we’ve been focused on meeting the security and visibility needs of large businesses for more than six years. To meet these new requirements for secure collaboration, we think about five distinct aspects of security, and implement them at every level of our platform. Our model puts content at the center of everything we do, surrounding it with the strongest possible solutions for User and identity management, Device and App security, and the visibility and Intelligence to oversee it all.

Today, we’re rolling out a set of new enterprise-grade security features and product integrations to help our customers protect their vital content.

User Security Options

We’ve introduced a new control that lets admins restrict individual users from creating externally shared folders. This gives IT powerful, granular control over what content can and can’t be shared outside the organization. This new feature is available now to all enterprises. Check it out, and get more information here.

Device Security Enhancements

Next, we have three big enhancements for device security. First up is device pinning, available across Box Sync and our leading mobile apps – iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Windows 8. Device pinning gives admins the power to limit which specific devices users can access Box from, ensuring trusted access to content on IT-approved devices. The functionality will roll out to all enterprises in the next few weeks.

Second, we’re thrilled to be one of the first business applications integrated with Samsung KNOX, Samsung’s new mobile security offering. Next quarter, this new integration will provide enhanced security at all levels of the Android platform with simple and flexible device management that helps users easily separate their work and personal lives on their mobile device.

Finally, we’re adding a new login security feature that automatically detects and prevents unexpected user logins. It will be added automatically to every Box account in the next quarter.

Content at the Center

In line with keeping content at the center of our security approach, Box is announcing new DLP partnerships with Code Green Networks and CipherCloud. These new integrations let admins easily scan and identify restricted content and secure that information in Box’s shared folders. 

Content Intelligence and Reporting

Box is giving businesses up-to-the minute security monitoring and alerts through a new integration with GoodData.

With GoodData, users can get out-of-the-box analytics on content in Box. GoodData delivers best practices, KPIs and dashboards for content management, helping Box customers measure critical content metrics, including top performing content, security risks and engagement. And, if unusual shifts in usage, spikes in traffic on Box or abnormal behavior occurs, admins can get alerts in real time and take appropriate action.

So what does all of this news mean for you, and our millions of users? At Box, we’re driving the new definition of security for the enterprise cloud stack. We’re excited about the potential to bring cloud services closer to the enterprise and giving our customers the unmatched level of security, visibility and control they need to embrace the cloud.

If you want to dig in deeper, check out our Box Security Toolkit, and stay tuned for even more business management and security features from us soon.

In a nutshell, this feature lets you centralize all your email addresses on one Box account. That means you can keep content together, no matter what email your friends and coworkers use to invite you to collaborate on files. Once you’ve added multiple addresses to your account, you can also choose a primary address to receive notifications. However, you can always log in to Box using any of your other addresses.

If your company decides to change domains, say, from .net to .com (like we here at Box did last year), you can easily add that new address to your Box account and keep working as normal, even if colleagues keep trying to work with you at your old address.

Here are the simple steps to get started:

1. Log in to your account and go to your Account Settings (the gear icon at the top, right next to your name).
2. Under the Login and Email Addresses section, start adding new addresses. (But be forewarned: they won’t be added completely until you finish step 3.)
3. Be sure to check each email account that you’ve added for a note from Box, and click the link in each email to confirm the new address.

If you’re a business or enterprise admin and want to keep users’ Box email addresses restricted to only managed domains, get in touch with your Box Customer Success Manager and they’ll help you set that up. For more information and the full details on the new feature, check out our support site.

Let us know what you think of the new multiple email feature in the comments below, or on Twitter @BoxHQ!

1. Set up security controls for your users

We know how busy your day can be, and we want to make it easy for admins to set company-wide requirements for new and existing users. That’s why we’ve allowed you to set overall defaults for how users can join your company’s account, what type of passwords they should use and the mobile or web apps they’re allowed to access.

The Signup and Login section allows you to specify whether your employees can sign up on their own, and if they’re notified about failed login attempts. You can also require that users sign up with a corporate email address.

The Setting Password section allows you to require your users’ passwords to meet specific criteria for added security. You can set a minimum length or require the use of special characters or uppercase letters.

Together, these settings ensure that your deployment is as secure as you need it to be.

2. Customize the look and feel to match your company brand

Now that you’ve deployed Box to your business, we want to make it easy for you to customize the look and feel of your entire account, and really make it feel like it’s a space exclusively for your users. That’s where our custom branding options come in.

You can designate a specific color scheme (either pre-made or from your own hex color codes), add your company’s logo and choose a specific domain. These small finishing touches help your users feel like they’re working inside a space designed just for them.

3. Add users and set their permissions

Once you set up security and branding for your account, you can also add and manage new users from the Users tab. In addition to giving you control over who is added to the account, it’s also a great way to give users immediate access to Box, allowing them to get started right away without having to first create an account. The Users tab also allows you to customize permissions by user, ensuring each user has the right access controls for your organization or project.

Create a new user by either clicking the ‘Users’ quicklink on the front page of the admin console or selecting the Users tab. Once inside the Users tab, you can create new users, allocate storage, add users to groups and manage each user’s permission level.

Bonus: We also give admins control over a user’s ability to sync their files on their desktop, and let you set clear device limitations.

4. Search for content across your account

Sometimes you need to find specific content in your company’s account—for example, when an employee moves on and you want to see which folders they owned so you can transfer the content to their replacement or their remaining team. That’s why we offer an instant login feature, which enables you to quickly access any user’s account and perform a search for the content you need.

For easier, account-wide content discovery, you can also join our advanced admin console beta program. With the Files tab, you’ll have access to powerful search tools that let you find content by date range, content type, size and context. If you’re an enterprise customer interested in joining the beta, contact us at adminbeta@box.com.

5. Reporting on usage and activities

Finally, we know how much admins love the insight and security that usage reports can provide – they provide clarity about what’s going on in your account and who’s accessing your content, both internally and externally. With the Reports tab in the admin console, you can easily:

• Create reports with information about your files, folders and users
• See statistics about file and user activity
• Access reports about security settings

To make it easy, we always show these vital stats in handy graphs right on the front page of the admin console. We recently upgraded the look and feel of the front page, with snazzier graphs, a new layout, and a news section that gives you the latest updates on changes to the admin console. Check it out and tell us what you think!

We hope you enjoy all the features we have to offer in the admin console—and we’re always adding more, so stay tuned! Don’t have a business or enterprise account yet? It’s an easy switch! Just tell us your project or business needs and we’ll put you in touch with our team.

It’s our goal to tear down every one of these barriers. A few weeks ago, we launched Box Accelerator and knocked down one barrier – improving Box performance globally – with a 10x improvement in upload speeds. Next up, we’re taking aim at security and access control.

We’ve always made securing your content a priority, and today we’re launching four more security and management improvements that give CIOs and IT more visibility into content, more choices for authentication and more tools for monitoring activity on Box.

Advanced search in the admin console

First, we’re making it easier for admins to discover content across the enterprise.  Building on the advanced admin console beta we announced in May, we’re giving our admins to more powerful search tools, letting them quickly find content by date range, content type, size and context. The new interface is fast and accessible. My favorite new feature: any search can be easily bookmarked for future reference. Need to regularly search for all the videos uploaded in the last week? We’ve got you covered. If you’re an enterprise customer interested in joining the beta, contact us at adminbeta@box.com.

New reporting API and GoodData partnership

CIOs and IT teams need the ability to monitor activity and trigger real-time alerts as employees and external collaborators create, upload and share content. With our new reporting API, you can extract log data from Box and use it in your business intelligence platform of choice. We’re thrilled to announce a partnership with GoodData too, letting our customers directly use Box activity data to inform their sales, marketing and organizational reporting.

Two-step login verification

Box already supports multi-factor authentication through SSO partners like Ping, Okta, Citrix, OneLogin and VMWare. Now, we’re rolling out a native login verification option to everyone, letting end users and admins protect access to content across Box clients – Web, mobile and partner apps. Check out our support site for setup instructions for individual users and admins.

Integration with Proofpoint DLP

Finally, we’re announcing a new relationship with Proofpoint to offer data loss prevention (DLP) for documents uploaded to Box. This integration will simplify the process for identifying restricted content, removing it from shared folders and protecting against the loss of confidential information.

There’s a lot more coming next week at BoxWorks, too – we just couldn’t wait to share the news about these four features. To learn more about Box’s commitment to security and our vision for how enterprises can change their game with the cloud, join us at BoxWorks in San Francisco next week, or stay tuned here for more announcements!

Advanced Admin Console & Enterprise-Wide Search: We like to think of the admin console as the command center for IT. Today, we’re giving it a major upgrade by letting admins easily search across their entire company to locate content and quickly view files owned by each user. These granular options provide a new level of visibility and transparency that will make it a snap to keep your business-critical content secure.

The admin console update is available now as part of an exclusive beta program for Box Enterprise admins. Email us at adminbeta@box.com if you’d like to have it enabled for your account.

Enhanced Mobile Security Settings: If your team is anything like mine, they can’t imagine going a day without their smartphones and tablets, especially since being able to access and edit content from anywhere is such a powerful productivity booster. But as admins know all too well, securing these mobile devices has proven to be a bit of a challenge; that’s why we’re introducing new, granular mobile security settings for admins to ensure Box content remains protected wherever and whenever employees access their files.

Available today in the admin console for Android and coming soon for iOS, Box Enterprise admins ​can now enforce the use of passcode locks and restrict the ability to save files on the device for all their mobile users – helping alleviate common data loss concerns. Stay tuned for even more mobile security options in the coming months.

Activity Notification Archiving: If you work in a regulated industry like finance or healthcare, your company probably has archiving or eDiscovery needs that can make it tricky to move to the cloud. To make your transition to Box easier, we’re making it easy to send notifications of user activities like comments, tasks, inviting collaborators and sharing files to your existing archiving and monitoring systems. These new capabilities better support business compliance and eDiscovery requirements.

The functionality is available now for Box Enterprise admins. Talk to your Box account rep to get it set up in your account and designate the email addresses.

Multiple Email Domain Support: If your business operates within different countries or has multiple subsidiaries, you probably have users with email addresses from different domains. With our new support for multiple email domains, admins can easily create one centralized, managed account for all users. When combined with the enterprise-wide search as part of our admin console beta program, you’ll now have unprecedented insight into files being stored and shared across the entire organization.

Enterprise admins should get in touch with their Box account rep to configure their domains.

New Box Enterprise Licensing Agreement: We’re also introducing a new Enterprise License Agreement (ELA) for customers (both new and current) that want to deploy Box across their entire organization. The Box ELA gives predictable pricing over the lifetime of a multi-year contract, which saves you money while simplifying the management of account contracts. With Box deployed across your entire company, your team will be able to hit the ground running with improved collaboration, lightning-fast adoption and a more streamlined experience.

Contact your Box sales rep now to learn more about ELA pricing.

If you’re interested in learning more about these features, or want to see if Box Enterprise might be a good fit for your company, sign up now for our webinar on Thursday, June 7 at 10am PT.  Box’s Head of Enterprise Product Marketing, Robin Daniels, will share how Box makes it easy for business to manage all their content securely in the cloud. In the meantime, let us know below or on Twitter @BoxHQ what you think of these new tools. After all, a happy admin is a good admin!

At Box, we live at the intersection of simplicity and security. We’re always striving to find the balance between providing the flexibility that end users want, with the visibility and control that IT departments need. It’s a tough mission. And as Box has moved further upstream in the enterprise, with adoption in 82% of the Fortune 500, the demands and challenges of IT departments have grown.

Today, we’re excited to announce a wide range of updates that support the new ways that people are working, while giving IT departments unprecedented visibility into how content is moving within and beyond their organizations.

First up, we’re rolling out smart shared links over the next week. Sharing is absolutely core to what we do here at Box, and workers increasingly need to share securely with parties outside their business: vendors, partners, customers, etc. With smart shared links, we’ve enhanced the security permissions on Box’s popular grab and share link feature to make it easy to dictate who can access what content. For example, you can restrict access to colleagues within a company domain, or to collaborators within a specific folder. This option can be set at various levels including on individual files, at the folder level, by the folder owner or by the administrator for an entire enterprise. This feature is an industry first, illustrating our commitment to providing comprehensive security controls for your most important content.

Today’s employees are not only working with a lot of different collaborators, they’re also working from a lot of different devices. According to Gartner, smart phones and tablets will account for 90 percent of device adoption growth in the next four years. As enterprises increasingly embrace a ‘bring-your-own-device’ (BYOD) policy, it should come as no surprise that security and access permissions are critical considerations for today’s CIO. To this end, we’ve updated our popular Trusted Access Management feature. IT admins can now track logins from mobile devices, desktops via Box Sync and custom apps via Box APIs. In addition to tracking logins and alerting users to new access instances, IT admins can now limit the number of devices an employee can access from the same user ID.

And to help enterprises of all sizes easily make the transition to Box easier than ever before, we’re also introducing Groups Active Directory Synchronization. For Box accounts that are linked to their company’s Active Directory (AD), IT admins can now opt to have their AD groups automatically populated within Box. When users log into Box, they will be added or removed from Box groups based on their AD groups. Admins can create new groups in Box from AD, add users to a Box group or remove users from a Box group.

To provide better management at scale, we’re also announcing a new Intel relationship with feature integrations that simplify how admins manage user permissions and group access through Single Sign-On (SSO) and authentication. Via Intel Expressway Cloud Access 360 (ECA 360), administrators can automatically provision Box accounts, leveraging existing identity repositories and enable federated SSO to Box. This integration helps eliminate the need for additional authentication and adds another layer of user convenience to the Box platform.

Whew, that’s quite a lineup of updates, I know. But at Box, we believe that 2012 will be a transformative year for enterprise software, as businesses of all sizes, all over the world make the transition to the cloud. They’re only going to make this shift once, and we want to support them with a cloud content management solution that is flexible and intuitive, but also incredibly secure.

We’d love to hear your feedback on these new features – remember to stay tuned for some killer updates in early 2012. Otherwise, happy holidays!

Smart Links
The popular shared links feature on Box will soon include smart security options allowing users to limit who can view a file or folder. Editors and owners will be able to set the option on individual files, and owners for the entire folder.

When creating a shared link, users will see these options:

• Open: Make content available to anyone with the link
• Company: Enable link only for members of the user’s company (users with the same email domain, like @yourcompany.com)
• Collaborators Only: Restrict link to only collaborators in that folder
• Disabled: Disable the link completely

Account admins can also set what options are available for an entire enterprise. The shared links feature will be live in the next few weeks. See it in action:

Trusted Access
Building on the Trusted Access feature released at BoxWorks in September, we are extending the control and visibility around logins to also include mobile devices, Box Sync and logins from partner apps. Users can view and manage their own logins, and enterprise Admins can also limit the number of each type of application a user can access. This feature helps ensure Admins can limit where their users access company data. Once that limit is reached, the user must remove existing devices from his list of Trusted Access applications before logging in on a new device.

Check it out:

Groups AD
For large enterprises, managing an ever-growing list of users and access privileges can be challenging, especially when employees are joining and leaving the company or moving to different parts of the organization. Luckily, Box’s new integration with your Active Directory (AD) groups can help make things easier. You can automatically populate your group memberships from AD to Box, including creating new groups in Box from AD as well as adding and removing users from existing groups. To enable this feature, please contact your Box technical support representative.

Speaking of AD support, we are also announcing the availability of Intel Cloud Access 360 in allowing you to integrate your AD and Single Sign-On (SSO) with Box. Intel joins Ping Identity (PingFederate), Citrix (NetScaler Cloud Gateway) Okta, OneLogin, VMware (VMware Horizon App Manager) and Simplified in supporting SSO on Box. You can find more info about Intel Cloud Access 360 on Box here: http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/Secure-File-Sharing/.

You can find more information about enterprise security at http://www.box.com/simple-secure-enterprise