Box appears on the verge of becoming a publicly traded company. It may not happen until next year but the file storage and collaboration company has as much momentum as any enterprise startup looking to trade on the public exchanges. But the company still needs to prove to the markets that its technology is secure. That’s why the integration with companies like CipherCloud will get a lot of attention this week from Box at its annual conference, BoxWorks.
CipherCloud secures data and applications for the cloud. Its platform works across multiple cloud services such as Amazon Web Services, Office 365 and Salesforce.
Today the company is bolstering its service with AES 256-bit encryption to its existing Box offering. With the new capability, encryption keys are retained by the customer and accessed and decrypted by authorized users on personal computers or mobile devices.
The CipherCloud service connects to Box in the background through Box Event APIs. When new files are uploaded, CipherCloud automatically scans content to enforce corporate policies and block file-borne malware. It also performs encryption driven by policy at user and content levels.
CipherCloud is typically deployed within a corporate network or private cloud. The solution is deployed as software that can be run on physical servers, virtual servers, or on private cloud instances.
The added complexity needed to secure files changes the fluidity of services like Box by creating a layer that has to be navigated when using the service. Customers need the security, as it is not inherently baked in to the degree that customers demand but with it goes some usability. It’s a challenge that Box and all of its competitors face, be it Dropbox, Google Drive or the Microsoft security Office 365.