Box brings intelligence to data classification to secure content in the cloud at scale

Box, Inc., a leader in cloud content management, announced the addition of intelligent, automated classification to Box Shield, the company’s advanced security solution for protecting content in the cloud. Leveraging advanced machine learning, Shield can now automatically scan files and classify them based on their content, helping businesses detect and secure sensitive data without getting in the way of work.

“The sudden shift to remote work has surfaced new security challenges for businesses, making it more critical than ever to keep sensitive data from getting into the wrong hands,” said Varun Parmar, Chief Product Officer at Box. “In June alone, Box Shield helped customers protect their content by blocking shared link access to classified files over eight million times and prevented close to a million downloads of classified files. Using advancements in machine learning to automatically apply classification labels as files are uploaded or edited extends Box Shield’s ability to enable secure remote work from anywhere. This allows IT and security teams to configure and enforce policies across the enterprise at a new level of scale that would be impossible to tackle manually.”

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Intelligent automated classification in Box Shield

Box Shield, the fastest growing new product in the company’s history, helps prevent data leakage and proactively identifies potential insider threats or compromised accounts. Some of the world’s most security-conscious and highly regulated organizations like NASA and Sierra Oncology are using Box Shield to secure their data in the cloud.

“Data integrity and data security are paramount to life sciences companies. Box Shield has been a powerful solution that helps us protect our information through enforcement of data policies across our organization,” said Mike Engels, Executive Director of Information Services at Sierra Oncology. “Shield’s new automated classification capability will help us become even more efficient in delivering a positive experience for our staff while at the same time helping to maintain data integrity and data security.”

Using advanced machine learning and data leakage prevention capabilities, this new feature scans files in real-time when they’re uploaded, updated, moved, or copied to specified folders, and automatically classifies them based on admin-defined policies. This enables customers to scale data classification and enforce policies across the enterprise, in order to reduce risk and meet compliance standards such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, and GDPR.

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With intelligent automated classification in Box Shield, customers will be able to:

• Automatically identify multiple personally identifiable information types within files, including social security numbers, driver’s licenses, International Bank Account Number (IBAN) codes, International Classification of Diseases (ICD-9/ICD-10) codes, and more
• Automatically identify custom terms and phrases within files – for example: “Box Confidential”, “Internal use only”, and “NDA required”
• Easily create policies that apply the appropriate classification label based on desired logic – including and/or conditions and unique counts

Once files are classified appropriately, Shield can help prevent data leakage through a combination of access controls already in use by Shield customers today, such as shared link, external collaboration, and download restrictions. The new feature supports the most common unstructured file types in Box, including documents, spreadsheets, PDF, Box Notes, and more.

“Remote work has accelerated cloud adoption as businesses seek to enable a distributed workforce and serve their customers digitally,” said Lakshmi Hanspal, CISO at Box. “This requires a completely new approach to security and privacy. As more work is done outside office boundaries on both managed and personal devices it is critical to have one source of truth for all of your data in order to meet new regulatory and compliance standards without slowing down business.”

The new automated classification feature comes on the heels of a series of security enhancements Box announced this year. In April, Box added malware detection to Box Shield, which automatically labels files as malicious and restricts downloads and local editing to prevent the spread to more users and devices. A month later, Box announced an improved Device Trust, allowing companies to specify ownership and security requirements on both personal and company-owned devices so users can easily and securely access content in Box. Automated classification augments the existing option for Box customers to classify files via API, through Box’s security partners.

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