Organizations may tolerate, accept or embrace BYOD—letting employees use their own mobile devices for business purposes—but they all struggle with the blurred line of protecting company data without infringing on individual privacy. Box recently announced two initiatives—Box Trust, and Box for EMM—that promise to give Box’s customers and their employees some peace of mind when using BYOD. Box currently serves more than 27 million users across 240,000 businesses—including 99 percent of the Fortune 500.
Box announced Box Trust on December 9—unveiling an ecosystem of formidable security vendors: Symantec, Splunk, Palo Alto Networks, OpenDNS, Sumo Logic, Skyhigh Networks, HP, Okta, MobileIron, CipherCloud, Recommind, Ping Identity, Netskope, OneLogin, Guidance Software, and Code Green Networks are all part of the invitation-only Box Trust team, providing a comprehensive collection of data protection, governance, and compliance tools for Box customers.
In addition to Box Trust, Box also announced Box for EMM. Box for EMM is an app (available for iOS and Android) that allows businesses to select from and combine multiple mobile device management solutions based on their specific needs. Box for EMM can be restricted to send data only to other managed apps and remotely wipe app data, while enabling the organization to retain full ownership and control over original app licenses.
Box Trust, and Box for EMM can help businesses store data in the cloud, and enable users to access, share, or collaborate on it securely from virtually any device or platform. But competitors are encroaching: Dropbox recently announced APIs for enterprise tools to challenge Box as a business-class cloud storage solution, and Microsoft threatens to undermine the entire business model by offering unlimited OneDrive storage for Office 365 customers. Box’s new Box Trust and Box EMM are part of the larger arms race to evolve from simple cloud storage into other corporate services.