Box for Veterans Affairs: Your ticket to providing stellar services

Box for Veteran Affairs

Have you ever felt like something was missing from your workplace — like having one secure platform for sharing, collaborating, and managing your content lifecycle? Telltale signs include constantly emailing documents, downloading endless apps, losing track of files, and filling out hard copies of documents, and snail-mailing forms back and forth.

Well, if you’re a Veterans Affairs (VA) team member who’s reading this, we’ve got great news: You’ve already got access to the secure platform you’ve been looking for. It’s called the Content Cloud, and it’s available to all VA employees!

The power of one secure platform

Every agency needs seamless and secure collaboration across data and content — both inside and outside its organization. Whether it’s Veteran’s healthcare, access to benefits and services, or performing research and development, all of these missions require secure content collaboration and access. So how does an IT organization enable its users to share content while simultaneously reducing risk and maintaining governance over how and what is shared, all while providing a user-friendly experience?

That’s a challenge the United States Department of Veterans Affairs employees are particularly in tune with, as the organization seeks to improve services to U.S. veterans. And it’s a challenge only the Content Cloud, and the power of Box, is cut out to solve.

Simplicity emerges from a history of complexity

A look back at the history of federal agency IT departments reveals plenty of well-meaning attempts to allow employees to do this. Organizations tried everything from emails and DVDs, to thumb drives, direct mail, and unauthorized file sharing systems. None prevailed long term. Worse yet, as the pandemic unfolded, hundreds of thousands of government employees shifted quickly to remote, digital-first environments. And more complexity followed.

Thankfully, there’s a better way for teams, vendors, and partners to work together on critical content. With the Content Cloud, the VA can power its missions with seamless collaboration, frictionless security and compliance, easy workflows, and e-signatures — all built right into Box.

“Authority to Operate” paves the way to work smarter

In 2020, the VA granted Box an Authority to Operate (ATO) on the agency network. Since then, teams can adopt the Content Cloud as their own, enabling the VA community to securely store, share, and collaborate on files with outside parties (as well as power new ways to work in the cloud).

The VA community can leverage Box to enable its staff, healthcare providers and administrators, and veterans to securely share and manage their healthcare and other VA services and benefits, including:

  • Health research data sets
  • Grant proposals and submissions
  • Research data sets with academic institutions
  • Educational materials for both staff and Veterans

 As an open API-based platform, Box is uniquely positioned to help the VA in its move to be a digital-first agency, and integration efforts are underway to leverage our platform capabilities and underpin certain systems with Box. For example:

  • VA researchers can share data sets with VA administration officials to determine which medical facilities to open, and at what levels
  • Construction project managers can share AutoCAD building design files and project documents with contracted construction teams
  • Medical personnel can collect treatment plans from Veterans that have received care in the community to greatly reduce their cost of care while in the VA

 “The VA's mission, powered by its cloud and modernization strategy, and in partnership with companies like Box, is incredibly important. I’m proud that we’re poised to help the agency reimagine Veteran engagement and bring agility to mission delivery, while ensuring the privacy and security of sensitive data,” said John Thoren, Box Account Lead for VA.

“The combined VA and Box team has made incredible progress to deliver a secure, collaborative platform that allows the VA and its external partners to securely exchange information and data. As the VA continues to modernize, Box is excited to partner with VA on additional ways to engage with veterans and their partners.”

With the VA’s ATO in place, getting started with Box is much easier across the entire organization.

 Helping agencies securely transition to hybrid work

Shifting to hybrid work means teams are accessing sensitive information from remote locations — and threat actors have noticed. Ransomware attempts targeted at public services are becoming so frequent that teams need better ways to protect Personally Identifiable Information (PII). That’s why Box enables government employees to maintain the highest bar for security and compliance when accessing sensitive data, no matter where they are.

Here’s how the Content Cloud helps:

  • Transition to hybrid work: Box’s built-in security features, including strong user authentication via SSO and MFA, device trust, AES 256-bit encryption, customer managed encryption keys, vector-based watermarking, and seven user-friend sharing roles with shared link expiration, help employees protect data in a frictionless way
  • Reduce cyberthreats: Box’s native, zero-trust controls (in addition to advanced security and compliance tools) help secure mission critical information; for example, Box Shield helps reduce accidental data leakage with auto-classification and Smart Access policies as well as intentional threats with multi-layered malware detection and anomalous alerting capabilities
  • Protect sensitive data: Box can help you meet compliance standards for data security around PII, Personal Health Information (PHI), and Payment Card Industry (PCI); with Box Governance, customers can build a scalable retention strategy for highly confidential data across use cases like financial services and health care

 To learn more about Box for government, visit www.box.com/industries/government

Questions about our work with the VA? Please reach out to John Thoren ([email protected]) Box Account Lead for VA or Wyn Elder ([email protected]) Box Global Public Sector Managing Director.

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