Three new Box Zones, enhancements for France and Canada, and a roadmap for AI processing in-region — announced today at BoxWorks London
For enterprises operating across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, the question of where data lives — and where it’s processed — has moved from a legal footnote to a boardroom conversation. And as AI adoption accelerates, the stakes of getting data residency wrong are higher than ever.
Today at BoxWorks London, we’re announcing the next chapter of Box Zones: three new Zones, deeper in-region processing for France and Canada, and a clear path toward in-region AI.
Why data residency matters now
Data residency used to be a nice-to-have. For many enterprises in highly regulated industries, such as in financial services, healthcare, and the public sector, it’s now a procurement requirement. Regulators, customers, and internal compliance teams want clear answers about where data lives and where it’s processed before they sign.
According to Gartner, by 2027, 35% of countries will be locked into region-specific AI platforms that use locally stored, proprietary data.¹ At Box, we believe the organizations that get ahead of this — that build their content infrastructure with residency in mind — will be better positioned to deploy AI responsibly, win regulated customers, and help satisfy the compliance requirements that are only getting stricter.
Box Zones is built for exactly this. It gives enterprises in-region storage and processing across key regions worldwide, without compromising the collaboration and productivity that global teams depend on.
What's new
Three new regions: Switzerland, Singapore, and Israel
With this launch, Box Zones expands to 10 locations worldwide. Each new Zone aims to support the unique needs of the industries and organizations driving growth in its market:
- Switzerland: Home to a thriving ecosystem of financial services firms, pharmaceutical companies, and international organizations that require secure, locally-stored data to operate with confidence across borders
- Singapore: APAC's leading financial centre, where banks, fintechs, and global enterprises rely on trusted infrastructure to power collaboration across the region
- Israel: A fast-growing hub for technology companies and government organizations that need enterprise-grade content management to support innovation at scale
For the enterprises operating in these markets, trusted data infrastructure isn't a nice-to-have — it's a requirement.
“As an agency serving major German enterprises across automotive, insurance, banking, and manufacturing, we need to work in a way that reflects our customers’ data residency and security requirements,” says Frank Schöne, Director IT & Technical Director Newsroom at C3 Creative Code and Content GmbH. “Box Zones helps us do that in our day-to-day collaboration.”
In-region compute for France and Canada
France and Canada have had Box Zones since the early days, but until now, that meant in-region storage only. Inthe coming months, both regions expand to in-region compute for the core content operations: uploads, downloads, encryption and previews. For customers in these markets, that’s a meaningful step forward: The core operations (how your files are uploaded, stored, encrypted, and served) all happen inside the Zone.
And across all Zones, including the three new ones, the following capabilities run in-region:
- Upload: File upload processing
- Download: File decryption and serving
- Encryption: Cryptographic operations on files
- Representations: Previews and thumbnail generation
- Conversion: Key file format conversions2
- Zipping: File compression
Note: Malware scanning via Box Shield is available currently in 4 Zones: United States, United Kingdom, European Union, and Japan.All the other Zones will have this capability rolled out at a later date.
The expansion of in-region processing also reflects a shift that leadership sees in how enterprises think about their content infrastructure:
Data residency has become a non-negotiable business decision for multinational enterprises and regulated industries. With these new Box Zones investments, we're giving our customers more choice over where their content, metadata, and AI-powered workflows are handled, while preserving the simplicity, security, and collaboration that Box delivers globally.” — Samantha Wessels, SVP EMEA at Box.
The three new Zones (Switzerland, Singapore, and Israel) and in-region compute for content in France and Canada will be available in the coming months.
How Box Zones works
Administrators can set a default Zone for the organization or assign individual users to specific Zones where needed, typically because they sit in a different country or fall under a different regulatory obligation. Box handles the rest, including the migration of existing content automatically in the background, with no disruption to users and no manual file moves.
Zone assignment can be managed three ways:
- Admin Console: Directly from a user’s profile, suited for small teams and one-off changes
- Multizones SSO: Automatic Zone assignment based on identity provider attributes (e.g. office location), so every user lands on the right Zone at sign-in
- Box Developer API: For organizations driving provisioning from an HR system or identity pipeline
Collaboration works the same way it always has. A file lives in the Zone of the person who owns it. Colleagues in other regions can share, preview, comment, and co-edit without any additional configuration, the same way they always have.
The full picture: 10 Zones, one platform
With this launch, Box Zones spans Australia, Canada, the European Union, France, Israel, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Box Zones is available on Enterprise Plus and Enterprise Advanced plans. Pricing is fully inclusive:One price grants access to all Zones, with no additional per-region fee, and customers can select up to 10 Zones.
What comes next: in-region AI
Looking ahead, Box has announced plans to bring in-region storage and processing to custom metadata and Box AI later in 2026, with workflow and search following in 2027.
For enterprises thinking about how to deploy AI responsibly, particularly in regulated industries, this matters. Data residency and AI governance are not separate conversations. The same controls that keep your content in-region today will govern how AI models interact with that content tomorrow. Box Zones is the foundation.
For more on how Box Zones fits into a broader compliance and security posture alongside Box KeySafe, Box Governance, Box Shield, and Box Archive, visit the Box Trust Center.
Get started
Want to understand how in-region encryption, upload routing, and data migrations work in practice, or are currently evaluating Zones for a regulated deployment? The How Box Zones Works whitepaper covers the technical architecture in detail. Download the whitepaper now.
Ready to talk to your Box account team about which Zones are right for your organization? Contact us.
