Cloud

Review: Box Facilitates Secure Collaboration Across Agencies

State and local government employees can seamlessly collaborate on documents from anywhere.

Carlos Soto is an award-winning reviewer and journalist with 20 years of experience covering technology and business within various sectors and industries.

A government content management program needs to be fully secure, protecting data at rest and in transit, with varying security levels for content being held and managed by the platform.

For statewide content management, data needs to be standardized so that multiple platforms are not required. Users need to be trained on a single content management platform, whether they work with permitting, law enforcement, administration, public outreach or the many hundreds of smaller agencies and public service providers found in every state across the country.

The cloud-based Box Intelligent Content Management platform was created to meet the needs of even the most rigorously regulated and protected environments, like what one might find within state government. I recently tested Box in a lab environment that was designed to mimic the various collaboration and security requirements typically found in government. Right from the start, I saw the platform’s value for streamlining, automating and enabling collaboration on a variety of content creation projects.

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Advanced Functions Enhance Content Management

At its heart, Box is a cloud-based content management and file-sharing platform that enables agencies to store, access and collaborate on just about any kind of document or file type regardless of a user’s physical location. It supports many functions, such as secure file storage, real-time collaboration (with full integration to most other collaboration programs an agency might be using), productivity tools, workflow automation and even agentic artificial intelligence.

None of those functions are difficult for either administrators or users to learn. Administrators can learn the most advanced features with a few days of training. Users probably need just a single session to learn how to work within their part of the platform.

Almost all content-related tasks an agency user would need for their daily work can be accomplished within the Box interface. This includes content management, hosting collaboration meetings, adding e-signatures to documents and web publishing. Box also fully integrates with over 1,500 platforms, which means content made outside of Box can be accessed, protected and edited within the platform.

Box Intelligent Content Management platform

Zero-Trust Solution for Securing Digital Assets

Security is paramount in government, and Box provides that with a zero-trust environment that ensures users are given access only to what they need for their work, and only for the time they need it. All data is encrypted and secured, both in storage and during collaboration sessions. For the most part, this security is hidden from regular users. I never felt that the security features were hindering me from using the platform, and it should fit in easily with other state and local security frameworks.

For my testing, I simulated three small workgroups set up in different locations. Each group was provided with a different set of standard office tools to mimic the variety that agencies might be using across a large state government enterprise. I was pleasantly surprised to see how easily Box was able to tie all those groups together.

LEARN MORE: How AI-driven ransomware can be thwarted with zero-trust networking.

For example, even though one group used Microsoft Office 365 and another standardized on Google Workspace, they were easily able to read, edit and share content with one another natively using Box. All changes made by the groups could be saved, shared and synced using Box. I was able to set up workflows that automatically sent content from one group to another group for collaboration or approval. Box’s fully functional e-signature module made for a streamlined approval process that should speed up content delivery at agencies where everything requires permissions before deployment.

Regardless of how complex a state’s IT environment or workflows are, Box can enable seamless collaboration and workforce automation. It can streamline the often-laborious content creation process, save time and money, and deploy content more quickly than ever.

SPECIFICATIONS

SOFTWARE TYPE: Cloud-based content management platform
DEPLOYMENT: Through Software as a Service or an appliance
FEATURES: Content collaboration, file-sharing, storage, automation, e-signatures, metadata management
INTEGRATED SERVICES: 1,500 integrations, including ServiceNow, Salesforce, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and AWS
LICENSE: 50 users, annual recurring or perpetual

Using Box on the Road: Some Real-World Examples

In addition to testing Box in a lab environment, I took it on the road to see how it could help streamline collaboration and content creation in a real-world situation. This also gave me the chance to try some of the extra modules that are included with the platform, such its mobility tool and a tool to tightly manage permissions for new content. The American Public Transportation Association Rail Event in San Francisco provided a perfect opportunity as I talked with leaders about innovation in public transportation.

While at the event, I used the Box Shuttle tool on my local device to access files back at the office and to mark those that I wanted to share with my team. I also received documents and other content while at the event and easily added it all to the Box platform using the Shuttle tool. My colleagues in the office on the East Coast could instantly access and read all of the new content, regardless of the platforms they were using for content creation or the format of the new content that was given to me.

I used my smartphone and the Box Mobile application to get files into the cloud where they could be shared. This app works with both Android and Apple iOS devices. Using my iPhone, I was able to quickly scan materials at the convention and was able to take photos during a presentation of both the speaker and the information displayed on a large screen behind him. Those photos quickly became more content that I shared on Box with the team.

On my laptop at the show, Box Drive worked to provide me with access to all of the files that I use, including those made by Microsoft Office 365, Adobe and even Slack. The app provided all of this in a single, secure location, so it was easy to get work done without worrying about how to find content, access it or protect it from prying eyes.

All of the Box tools worked flawlessly on the road. But what was most impressive was how easy they were to learn, use and master. I had never used Box before, but suddenly there was an entire ecosystem of content creation and management support ready for me on my smartphone and laptop. It took only a few minutes to learn how to use, which was probably the most surprising thing about this highly impressive platform.