We know that content is our customers’ most important asset, and we know it’s no small task to appropriately manage content through its lifecycle. As the amount of business data continues to increase, enterprise content preservation becomes a growing challenge.
IDC found that 82% of organizations are considering archiving all data in the cloud within the next five years. This indicates that there is a considerable volume of data that is important for customers to store and manage, but not keep ‘active’ in their environment. Whether you’re looking for an archival solution to meet business goals or compliance obligations, long-term data preservation is a growing challenge and we know the need for data archival is quickly evolving.
Using Box, you simplify the entire content lifecycle with a single repository that has comprehensive security and compliance built in. Our intelligent platform centralizes all your content and simplifies end-to-end content lifecycle management — from creation to preservation to disposal … and now includes the addition of archival. Box Archive helps ensure your data is protected, compliant, and preserved for long-term storage.
Introducing Box Archive
Today, Box Governance policies enable our customers to preserve and protect their active content through retention policies. With Box Archive, customers are now able to retain and protect inactive content for long-term storage, helping organizations efficiently store and protect their growing volume of information. The addition of Box Archive to the Box Platform provides a single location for all content lifecycle states.
The majority of other archival solutions are stand-alone products that don’t have a single pane of glass for security, compliance, and governance. Box Archive is integrated into Box, allowing our customers to utilize their current security, compliance, and governance posture. Because all content resides in Box, you can easily manage controls and policies on your content, and they are kept in place throughout the entire lifecycle.
All archived content is owned by the enterprise, which mitigates risk when people leave the company. Admins drive archival of content, allowing them to create, search, and manage archives as well as identify and add content to archives or restore content to users. With Box Archive, customers can retain and protect data in a new long-term storage solution that enables:
- Multi-phased content lifecycle management, from active through disposition in a single platform
- Enhanced end-user productivity by centralizing Archive content which removes the files from All Files and Search results
- Retention of content with controlled access, enhancing search and end-user productivity
- Content immutability by disabling changes to archived content and ensuring the final version of content is preserved
- Access to your data anytime - archived content is highly available in Box and has the same response time as active content
- Centralized administration of enterprise retained content
- Seamless security and compliance across active and archived content
Together, Archive and retention policies ensure adherence to regulatory requirements while maintaining compliance. By utilizing Box Archive, organizations can streamline workflows, reduce costs, and confidently navigate the challenges of preserving content. You can also store archived content in the geographic region of your choice with Box Zones and Box Archive. Whether you have to meet industry regulations or international privacy standards, Intelligent Content Management from Box can help you meet your data compliance and regulatory needs.
"WestEd's primary goal is to improve educational outcomes for all learners. Research and data are at the core of everything we do. As such, privacy and compliance are paramount to our clients and was our primary concern when determining an archive solution. This made Box the obvious choice for us as it was simple to configure security and compliance standards and provided the flexibility to seamlessly integrate with the rest of our technology and security landscape. Joining the Archive Beta was a simple choice for a number of reasons. Most importantly, we were able to maintain compliance and we could prove it, which is required by our clients. Additionally, participating in the Beta allowed our input to be integrated into the product, improving its use for us and all Box customers. The white-glove support we received in the Beta program was second-to-none, ensuring we were properly configured and had a consistent feedback channel directly to the product team."
- Dustin Milberg, Vice President of Information Technology, WestEd.
“Box Archive represents an important advancement for organizations facing the intricate challenges of content lifecycle management. With the exponential growth of data volumes, the necessity for a robust long-term preservation solution has never been more critical. Box’s Intelligent Content Management platform, coupled with its compliant archiving capabilities, equips businesses to effectively navigate the complexities of content preservation, security, and governance. This strategic approach not only ensures regulatory compliance but also empowers enterprises to optimize workflows, boost productivity, and protect an essential asset—content.”
- Amy Machado, Senior Research Manager, Enterprise Content and Knowledge Discovery Strategies.
Enhanced enterprise content search and management
The world of content and collaboration has evolved, meaning the administration of that content has become more complex. Box delivers search simplicity, meaning you can easily find what you’re looking for and take action on it, whether it be to support your end users or protect the value that your content contains.
We are excited to share that we have also just released the Next Generation of Box’s Content Manager. Content Manager gives you complete administrative visibility and control over content across your organization, enabling admins to find, view, access, and perform certain actions on content owned by your organization's managed users. The new Content Manager delivers a new modernized enterprise content search and management experience, including a new search experience with advanced search syntax and range of search filters, ability to search by shared link and file/folder ID, Collaboration Management, and more.
Learn more about Content Manager here.
Box Archive FAQs
What is enterprise content archiving, and why does it matter?
Enterprise content archiving is the process of moving inactive files — contracts, records, communications, and other documents — out of your active storage environment and into a secure, long-term retention tier. It matters because unmanaged content creates real risk: regulatory exposure, storage bloat, and productivity drag from employees wading through years of outdated files.
A proper archiving strategy keeps your active workspace clean, your compliance posture intact, and your records accessible when you need them. According to IDC, 82% of organizations are considering archiving all data in the cloud within the next five years.
What is Box Archive?
Box Archive is a long-term content storage solution built natively into the Box Intelligent Content Management platform. It gives your organization a dedicated archive tier — separate from active files — where inactive content is retained, protected, and kept highly available.
When a file is archived, all versions and metadata move into the archive along with it. Archived content is owned by the enterprise — not the individual user — which reduces risk when people leave your organization. Unlike standalone archiving tools, Box Archive inherits the same security, compliance, and governance posture you already have in Box. No new vendor. No fragmented stack. One platform, from active content through disposition.
How is cloud content archiving different from traditional on-premises archiving?
Traditional on-premises archiving requires dedicated hardware, manual maintenance, and significant IT overhead — and it doesn't scale as your data grows. Cloud content archiving moves that infrastructure off your plate entirely. You get storage that scales with your organization, built-in redundancy, and the same high availability you expect from cloud-native platforms. With a solution like Box Archive, archived content is accessible with the same response time as active files — no tape delays, no retrieval windows.
How is Box Archive different from other archiving solutions?
Most archiving products are point solutions — separate tools with separate security models, separate admin consoles, and separate compliance frameworks. Box Archive is different because it's built into Box. Your existing permissions, security controls, and compliance policies extend automatically to archived content. Admins manage everything — active files, archives, and disposition — from a single platform. There's no migration to a new tool, no new vendor relationship to manage, and no gap in your governance posture. And because archived content is owned by the enterprise rather than individual users, your records stay protected even when team members move on.
What types of content should organizations archive?
Any content that's no longer actively used but must be retained for legal, regulatory, or business continuity reasons is a strong candidate for archiving. Common examples include: closed contracts and agreements, completed project files, HR records past their active period, financial documents subject to multi-year retention requirements, and communications captured for regulatory compliance.
Organizations also commonly archive terminated user data, legacy department files, and content from mergers and acquisitions. The right archiving strategy moves this content out of your active workspace without destroying it — keeping it secure, searchable by admins, and available if you ever need it.
Which industries benefit most from Box Archive?
Box Archive is built for any organization managing regulated content at scale, but it's particularly valuable in:
- Financial services. Retain and produce communications and records for FINRA requirements for communications capture
- Life sciences. Meet document control requirements under GxP and 21 CFR Part 11
- Public sector. Address NARA compliance for federal records management
- Healthcare. Maintain HIPAA-compliant long-term retention for patient and operational records
- Banking. Maintain compliant long-term retention aligned to financial services regulations, including FINRA/SEC and PCI requirements
If your organization operates in a regulated environment, Box Archive gives you the compliant archiving layer you need — without adding a separate tool to your stack.
How does content archiving support regulatory compliance?
Regulatory frameworks like FINRA, NARA, HIPAA, and GxP all require organizations to retain specific types of content for defined periods — and to produce that content on demand during audits or legal proceedings. A compliant archiving solution ensures records are preserved in their original, unaltered state (immutability), access is controlled and auditable, and retention schedules are enforced automatically. Without a structured archiving program, organizations risk non-compliance penalties, failed audits, and the inability to respond to legal holds.
How does Box Archive protect archived content?
Box Archive maintains the same security posture as the rest of the Box platform. Archived content is immutable — files in Archive are no longer editable, and no new versions can be created, which protects the integrity of your records. Access is controlled so only authorized admins can search, manage, and restore archived files. Admins can search across their entire enterprise — including both active files and Archive — for a holistic view across the platform.
And because Box Archive is built into Box, it inherits Box compliance certifications — including FedRAMP, HIPAA, SOC 2 Type II, and more — without requiring a separate security review or configuration. Your archived content is protected from the moment it's created to the moment it's disposed of.
What's the difference between content archiving and content retention?
Retention and archiving are related but distinct. Retention refers to the policy — how long a specific type of content must be kept before it can be deleted or disposed of. Archiving refers to the action — moving content to a separate, long-term storage tier where it's preserved and protected. A complete content lifecycle strategy uses both: retention policies define the rules, and archiving enforces them by moving inactive content out of your active workspace while keeping it accessible for compliance and legal purposes.
Tools like Box Governance and Box Archive work together to cover both sides of this equation — Box Governance manages retention schedules, legal holds, and disposition, while Box Archive handles long-term preservation.
How does Box Archive fit into Box's broader content lifecycle management platform?
Box Archive is one layer of a complete content lifecycle management strategy within Box. Active content lives in Box, where teams collaborate, Box AI surfaces insights, and Box Automate powers workflows. When content becomes inactive, Box Archive moves it to a dedicated archive tier — removing it from All Files and Search to keep your active workspace clean. Box Governance manages retention schedules, legal holds, and disposition. Together, these capabilities give your organization a single platform that manages content from creation through disposition — with security and compliance built in at every stage, and a governed content foundation that makes your AI outputs more accurate and trustworthy.
How does archiving inactive content improve employee productivity?
When inactive files pile up in your active workspace, they create noise. Employees search for current documents and surface outdated versions. Storage costs climb. IT spends time managing content that no one actively uses. Box Archive solves this by moving inactive content to a separate tier — out of All Files and Search results — so your team only sees what's relevant to their current work. Admins retain full access to archived content when they need it, but day-to-day users get a cleaner, faster experience. It's a straightforward way to reduce friction without deleting anything you're required to keep.
How do I get started with Box Archive?
Box Archive is available as part of the Box platform. If you're already a Box customer, talk to your account team about adding Box Archive to your plan. Our team can walk you through how Box Archive works alongside Box Governance, Box Shield, and Box AI to give your organization a unified, compliant approach to managing content at scale.
If you're new to Box, you can request a demo to see how Box Archive fits into a complete content lifecycle management strategy — from active collaboration through long-term retention and disposition.
Are you ready to simplify content lifecycle management?
Compliance remains a key driver in building out your data governance strategy, and it’s more important than ever as data volumes continue to increase. We make managing your archived content simple and secure. Using Box as your document management platform, you simplify the entire content lifecycle into a single, secure repository with comprehensive security and comprehensive security and compliance built right in.
Join us at Content + AI virtual summit to see how you can benefit from Box Archive and register for Box in focus: Compliance — the final episode of our Intelligent Content Management webinar series.
