Box Opens to Introduce Cloud-Based Encryption Key Control

Box Opens to Introduce Cloud-Based Encryption Key Control
Published: Feb 5, 2016
Updated: Feb 2, 2021
2 minute read
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Cloud storage and collaboration provider Box, which recently moved into a brand-new headquarters building in Redwood City, Calif. and now has more than 54,000 paying customers and 41 million users, introduced a new security product on Feb. 4: Box KeySafe.

KeySafe is a cloud-based service that gives enterprises independent control over their encryption keys for stored business data and keeps the administration simple at the same time. “Encryption” and “simple” are terms that are hardly ever used in the same sentence.

Box CEO and founder Aaron Levie told eWEEK that KeySafe is another reason that even highly security-conscious businesses can trust their most sensitive content to be kept in the cloud.

“Look at our customers: GE has more than 150,000 users on Box, Coca-Cola has us as the standard for all of their collaboration with external partners,” Levie said. “We are the standard at GAP and Procter & Gamble, Eli Lilly and 55 percent of the Fortune 500.

“What we’ve really built is a modern content platform. Over the years you’ve been covering us, you’ve seen how disruptive we’ve been about how businesses manage, store, share and collaborate around all of their information. That’s what we’re really trying to build out. Now (with KeySafe), we’re making customer-managed encryption easier to deploy and more cost-effective, raising the bar again for security in the cloud.”

KeySafe is available in two offerings — either as a physical storage appliance or as a virtual appliance in the Amazon Web Services cloud.

Box Enterprise Key Management, launched a year ago, was the first Box package to use AWS with a dedicated hardware storage module to protect keys used to encrypt sensitive data. KeySafe integrates with AWS Key Management Service through a virtual appliance to ensure customers can control their encryption keys.

Key features of Box KeySafe include:
–Independent key control: Box can never access a customer’s encryption keys.
–Unchangeable usage policies and audit logs: Customers maintain exclusive control over key policies and usage logs to ensure proper access to encrypted data.
–Frictionless end user experience: Simple data access across devices and the hallmark collaboration, file preview, and content management functionality of Box’s modern content platform.

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Box KeySafe with AWS CloudHSM (the hardware version) is available now. Box KeySafe with AWS Key Management Service will be available in March. Pricing is determined based on the size of each customer deployment. For more information, go here.

Chris Preimesberger

Chris J. Preimesberger is Editor Emeritus of eWEEK. In his 16 years and more than 5,000 articles at eWEEK, he distinguished himself in reporting and analysis of the business use of new-gen IT in a variety of sectors, including cloud computing, data center systems, storage, edge systems, security and others. In February 2017 and September 2018, Chris was named among the 250 most influential business journalists in the world (https://richtopia.com/inspirational-people/top-250-business-journalists/) by Richtopia, a UK research firm that used analytics to compile the ranking. He has won several national and regional awards for his work, including a 2011 Folio Award for a profile (https://www.eweek.com/cloud/marc-benioff-trend-seer-and-business-socialist/) of Salesforce founder/CEO Marc Benioff--the only time he has entered the competition. Previously, Chris was a founding editor of both IT Manager's Journal and DevX.com and was managing editor of Software Development magazine. He has been a stringer for the Associated Press since 1983 and resides in Silicon Valley.

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