Simplify how you work: highlights from BoxWorks 2019

Businesses need cloud content management that’s built for how we work today. First off, we need security for our mission-critical content. Next, we need to collaborate securely on all kinds of business processes both inside our organizations and -- more often than not -- with our extended network of partners and customers outside our organizations. Finally, we need to be able to simply and easily work with our content across all of the apps we use every day -- from Microsoft Office and Teams, to GSuite, Slack, Salesforce, Adobe, and many  more.

These are the new rules of work, and today at BoxWorks 2019, we showcased several advancements that simplify how we work. We shared enhancements to Box Shield and Box Relay, and previewed updated integrations with Slack, Microsoft Teams, Adobe, Splunk.

Frictionless Security and Compliance

Box Shield, announced in August, is a new set of content security controls and intelligent threat detection capabilities. Built natively into Box, Box Shield helps prevent accidental data leakage, detects potential access misuse, and proactively identifies relevant threats.

Box Shield helps enterprises prevent accidental data leaks through a system of manual or automated security classifications for files and folders, and classification-based access policies. Account admins can define custom classification labels and policies per label that combine multiple security controls, such as:

• Shared link restriction to specify who can access shared links. 
• External collaborator restriction to limit external collaboration to approved lists of domains or completely block it based on the sensitivity of the content.
• Download restriction to restrict file or folder downloads across specific applications. 
• Application restriction to specify which third-party applications and custom apps can download sensitive content from Box.
• FTP restriction to restrict FTP transfers and uploads of files and folders.

In addition to preventing accidental data leakage via classification-based security policies, Box Shield empowers customers to detect abnormal and potentially malicious behavior from internal and external threats. Powered by machine learning, Box Shield identifies and alerts admins of potential threats such as anomalous downloads, suspicious sessions, and access from suspicious locations.

Box Shield will be generally available on October 29, 2019. Box Shield will also be available as part of Box’s Enterprise Suites.

Seamless Internal and External Collaboration

We also unveiled enhancements to Box Relay, which enables enterprises to simplify, accelerate and standardize processes across the organization with self-serve, no code workflows. Box Relay streamlines routine, collaborative business processes in Box –such as document review and approvals and the onboarding and offboarding of projects, vendors and employees –helping drive efficiencies at scale.

New Box Relay features previewed at BoxWorks include: 

• Applying metadata values: Add or update custom metadata values as a step in the workflow.
• Rejection routing: The ability to revert back to a step specified by the user when a workflow is rejected.
• Exportable activity history: Download details about actions that happened around the file in the workflow.
• Manual start: The option to manually kick-off workflows from owned or co-owned files. 
• Flexible task completion: Assign specific tasks to Box Groups or require one or all assignees in a workflow to complete the ask.
• Mobile approval and rejection: Approve, reject and complete tasks with one click from any mobile device.

Box Relay is generally available today, and you can learn more about automation business processes with Box Relay in this on-demand webinar.

Integrated Best of Breed Applications

Box integrates with a wide range of more than 1,400 applications, giving people the ability to easily and securely integrate their content across their entire IT stack. Today, we previewed updates to our integrations with Slack and Microsoft Teams, providing an enhanced and more tightly integrated experience to ensure seamless and secure collaboration. The latest Box integrations with Slack and Microsoft Team will be available in public beta later this year.

We also announced plans with Adobe to deeply integrate Adobe Acrobat PDF and e-signature tools in Box. The new integrations will seamlessly connect collaborative workflows for enterprises, making it easier and more secure to work with digital documents in the cloud. The new experience will help people from all size companies get even more work done on the billions of PDFs stored in Box wherever they choose to work - on the web, their smartphone or desktop. More than ever, you will be able to work the way you want, wherever you want, while keeping your documents secure.

Lastly, we announced several new and extended integrations with IBM that focus on data protection, governance and compliance.

If you couldn't join us at BoxWorks 2019, catch us virtually! Join the Box Virtual Summit on Wednesday, November 6, to dive deeper into these updates, hear from more customers, and simplify how you work.