Box Counters Dropbox With Enterprise Security Initiative

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The file sharing and cloud storage company Box announced a new initiative this week called Box Trust -- a network of security vendor partnerships -- and the launch of a new secure mobile app, Box for Enterprise Mobility Management.

The Box Trust program vets whether certain products integrate well with Box and its APIs. Then it certifies qualified companies as trusted partners. These companies will display a Box Trust shield logo, so customers can easily identify them, said Whitney Bouck, Box's senior vice president of enterprise.

"Anyone can still access Box's API for free, and you can still build integration with us without our support," Bouck said in an interview. "With the Box Trust program, companies can reach out to us and go through a validation exercise to bring them into the Trust program. Ultimately, Box should just plug into whatever security infrastructure a company has in place."

The program launched Tuesday with 19 businesses, including new partnerships with Symantec, Splunk, Palo Alto Networks, Sumo Logic, and OpenDNS. These five companies join Box's ongoing partnerships with other security vendors, which include Okta, Netskope, OneLogin, and MobileIron, the company said.

[Dropbox makes a push for enterprises. Read Dropbox For Business Targets Enterprises With New API.]

"Because Box is the platform that powers the information that touches every part of an enterprise's business and beyond, our customers often look to us to tell them what services will help them best secure and protect their data," Box CEO Aaron Levie wrote in a blog post.

Box's security announcement comes a week after rival Dropbox announced its own set of security features within the Dropbox for Business API, a set of tools for companies to develop enterprise applications on top of the cloud service.

The Dropbox for Business API launched with more than 20 enterprise integrations -- many of which focus on data protection and security -- giving organizations tools to oversee employee activity and manage sensitive data; add additional client-side encryption and decryption; and enable large data transfers, for example.

The Box for Enterprise Mobility Management app will help companies secure content accessed from mobile devices. It is available now for iOS and Android, the company said.

"In the past, organizations struggled with the complexities of managing apps incorporating multiple third-party SDKs, including requiring employees to navigate inconsistent user experiences and wait weeks for the delivery of SDK-specific apps," David Still, Box's vice president of mobile products, wrote in a blog post. "Box for EMM eliminates these complications by integrating directly into both the security policies and configurations at the core of each mobile OS, as well as the servers and capabilities of EMM partners."

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