In today’s cloud-based IoT world, nothing is more important than high security. With cyber-attacks (including data breaches) on the rise, data security is no longer a project for the backburner.
Thankfully, data security has always been a top priority for popular cloud storage provider Box. In an effort to combat the rising threat of cybercrime, Box recently added automated malware detection to Box Shield – the company’s security platform that detects threats and prevents data leaks.
Box’s security platform uses machine-learning to constantly fine-tune the ability to detect and thwart threats automatically. Most end users don’t even know it exists – it just runs smoothly in the background, keeping their accounts safe and secure.
How Box Shield protects Box accounts
Although threat detection is crucial, access control is at the top of the list for security imperatives. Threats are the result of unauthorized access. Although some hackers exploit weaknesses in software, unauthorized access is often gained through stolen or misused credentials. If a company doesn’t restrict employee access to data and limit functions, the risk for a data breach is high.
Box Shield helps admins define custom access capabilities and policies to control and restrict employee access to files and capabilities. Files and folders can be classified with labels manually or automatically and those labels are visible to all team members. Everyone on the team will know what the company’s security policies are.
With Box Shield, an admin’s ability to restrict and control employee actions goes beyond restricting access to files and folders. For example, admins can disallow content, prevent link sharing, prohibit users from adding external collaborators, and they can also prevent direct file downloads. This makes it much harder for users to abuse their access credentials and limits the damage if they were to give their credentials to an unauthorized party.
Malware is a big cyber security threat
The 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report compiled by Verizon Wireless found that malware is responsible for 28% of all data breaches. That number may not seem significant, but the average malware attack costs $2.6 million.
One of the best defenses Box Shield has to offer is the automatic detection and quarantine of suspected malware. Once malware is detected, the end user is alerted and the suspected file is restricted from being shared or downloaded. Quarantined files can be previewed and edited online, but they can’t be moved or downloaded.
Box Shield is designed to integrate with existing end-user security software like Symantec, McAfee, and sumo logic. However, companies that use additional cloud storage services will need separate protection for services like Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS.
Protecting these accounts is the end user’s responsibility. Thankfully, it’s easy to get full protection. For instance, CloudGuard protects AWS accounts through integration with Amazon’s AWS Security Hub. Similar to Box Shield, all traffic is monitored, threats are prevented and analyzed, and all user actions are logged.
Box Shield is a great example of next level security automation in the cloud. Although complete security is never guaranteed, companies that implement and enforce strict IT security policies at the company level will generally be more secure.
Automation is at the heart of data security
Box Shield’s new malware protection is just one example of data security automation that is becoming commonplace for cloud providers. While Box Shield automatically detects and isolates potential threats, the system also notifies the appropriate security team to handle the problem.
Automation is designed to reduce the need to manually analyze threats so that security teams can implement quick solutions that resolve the problem at the root and minimize a company’s downtime.
For companies that use multiple, separate cloud storage platforms, it’s crucial to implement strict data security policies on cloud-based servers without compromise. Cloud providers like Box do the best they can to monitor and thwart threats, but full security is ultimately a team effort between the cloud provider and account owner. Account owners are equally responsible for maintaining best practices to ensure data security.