Box rolls out cloud collaboration product for feds
Cloud storage company Box Inc. unveiled a new suite of products Thursday aimed at increasing productivity and collaboration within and between government agencies.
Box for Government is tailored to handle content management and information sharing while ensuring that privacy and security rules are being followed. The service has earned a Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program authority to operate from the Defense Information Systems Agency.
Three key features of the Box for Government platform include Box KeySafe, which allows customers to manage their own encryption keys, Box Platform, which allows agencies to use the company’s tech in their own custom applications, and Box Governance, which allows agencies to comply with regulations and satisfy e-discovery and record-keeping requirements.
Sonny Hashmi, managing director for government of the California-based cloud giant, said the offering will help agencies collaborate with one another across a host of projects, from law enforcement to environmental policy to research data.
“Many problems in government that agencies are trying to solve are not done in one agency any more,” he told FedScoop. “If I’ve learned one thing in my time in government it’s that it’s a very very hard problem to solve. Traditional mechanisms of emailing attachments or sharing a SharePoint site just don’t scale or open enough for people from anywhere on any device to come together to solve a problem.”
(Box)
Hashmi also said the platform will help agencies adapt to a workforce that is increasingly asking to work from anywhere on any device.
“We want to help agencies enable, not block, these work styles,” he said. “People who come in and say ‘I want to use my iPhone, I want to use my watch, I want to use my Mac at home,’ we want agencies to say yes and still feel that they have control over what is going on with that data.”
The offering also works with a suite of e-signature, security and governance partners, including IBM, Microsoft and Salesforce. It also supports compliance with HIPPA, PCI, FINRA and FISMA regulations.
Box for Government can be purchased through a variety of system integrators or GSA Schedule 70, NASA SEWP or WESC contract vehicles.
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