Multizones: Your data where you want it

24 MAY 2018 · BY JEETU PATEL / NEWS

GDPR is here (tomorrow)! The details of the regulation are long and complicated — which is just a reflection of how complex the global regulatory and data compliance landscape has become. Data protection has been hot topic on everyone’s minds, and data residency is an integral part of that story.

While the GDPR doesn’t explicitly require data residency, many of the organizations we work with want to be able to store their data in specific regions in order to demonstrate effective risk mitigation and proactive regulatory compliance in an ever-changing compliance environment. At the same time, business has never been more fast-paced, and regulatory changes like the GDPR and the ever-changing security landscape are making it increasingly difficult to create a digital workplace that provides employees with the information they need to be successful.

When we announced Box Zones in 2016, enterprises no longer had to make a tradeoff between compliance — like with GDPR and other regulations — and productivity. Box Zones enabled data storage in the region of their choice for the first time. With Zones, users will get the same great collaborative experience they have with Box today — no matter where they, or their collaborators, are located.

This morning at Box World Tour Europe, we took this to the next level and announced multizone support for our flagship Box Zones offering, providing customers with the ability to store data in and collaborate seamlessly across any of Box’s existing seven Zones, all from a single Box instance. With multizone capabilities, all multinational organizations are able to take advantage of Box Zones, regardless of where they are based.

Enterprises now have even more control over data residency with the ability to assign Zones to individual users based on their location, while ensuring their users have a completely frictionless collaboration experience no matter where they are working. Today, the network of Box Zones spans across four continents with Zones available in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Singapore, Japan, and Australia.

With multizone support for Box Zones, organizations will:

• Reduce risk and address data protection requirements, including GDPR. Organizations will have the ability to assign a storage Zone for individual users, as well as designate a default Zone for the entire organization, proactively addressing data residency and compliance requirements.
• Provide flexibility for changing needs. Organizations can change a user’s assigned Zone at any time. Content will automatically migrate to the new Zone without the user ever losing access.
• Gain global visibility and control. Administrators can manage data for an entire enterprise from a single admin console, no matter how many Zones an organization is using.
• Drive transparency and insights. Real-time, self serve reporting provides administrators with the ability to download reports on individual users and their assigned Zones from the admin console for easy auditing.
• Keep a frictionless end user experience. End users will still be able to freely collaborate with colleagues, partners and suppliers without ever having to worry about where their data is stored.

Multizone support for Box Zones is the most recent offering in Box’s robust stable of enterprise-grade security and compliance capabilities. This new offering ensures that global organizations, including those in the most highly regulated industries, are able to securely store, manage and collaborate on content in Box, while maintaining adherence to the most stringent compliance and regulatory requirements.

Want to learn more? Check out Box Zones and new multizone support around the globe. We’ll also be hosting a webinar on Box Zones taking place on May 31st. Register for the webinar here.