TMCNet: Dropbox Enhances Corporate Data Protection with New Security Controls

[November 16, 2016]

Dropbox Enhances Corporate Data Protection with New Security Controls

Dropbox (News - Alert) today unveiled new security controls that empower teams to share and collaborate, while helping businesses better protect and manage access to corporate data. The company also announced the expansion of its global infrastructure across Europe, Asia, and North America, improving its industry-leading sync performance with transfer speeds up to three-times faster than before.

"It's often challenging for businesses to balance between facilitating easy collaboration and safeguarding company data," said Rob Baesman, Head of Product, Dropbox Pro, Business and Enterprise. "Traditionally, enterprise solutions have come at the expense of simplicity and great design. At Dropbox, we see an opportunity to eliminate these trade-offs by applying our 'user-first' design approach to reimagine and improve the IT admin experience."

New admin tools improve visibility and centralize control

Developed as part of the company's AdminX initiative, the new tools will be generally available starting today to Dropbox Business and Enterprise customers via the Dropbox admin console and include:

  • Network control to prevent data leakage: This Dropbox Enterprise feature provides admins with the ability to block the use of unsanctioned, personal Dropbox accounts on their corporate networks, while still allowing access to enterprise accounts. It is interoperable with leading web gateway vendors, including Barracuda Networks, Netskope, Skyhigh Networks, and Symantec (News - Alert). Read more about the Dropbox security ecosystem here.
  • Subdomain verification to simplify large scale deployments: Available in Q1 2017, this new feature will enable admins to selectively deploy Dropbox to specific groups, and easily fold existing accounts into the corporate domain.
  • Device approvals to expand access with improved security: Admins can now limit the number of synced devices and tailor the approval process with management settings and a customizable user exception list.
  • Enhanced audit log to streamline reporting and audit activity: Starting in the coming weeks, admins can perform targeted investigations of user activity directly in the Dropbox Business admin console. With new, iterative controls that allow for filtering of over 350 different user activities by member, file name, date and type, admins can easily investigate and resolve incidents.

Dropbox Paper adds new admin controls to keep collaboration secure

Dropbox Paper, currently in beta, is a smart canvas that helps teams effortlessly create, share and stay on the same page. With today's announcement, Dropbox Business and Enterprise customers participating in the Paper beta gain access to core AdminX tools that enable them to:

  • Control sharing through a team-only sharing feature.
  • Gain visibility into user activity by adding Paper events to the Dropbox audit log.
  • Keep company information secure with new Paper features that allow admins to sign in as a user, delete or suspend users, transfer accounts, and more.

Up to three-times faster sync performance with new network acceleration infrastructure

Dropbox has extended its network infrastructure to accelerate the connection process -increasing sync performance speeds up to three-fold. As part of this buildout, Dropbox now has infrastructure in 11 regional points of presence, including California, Washington, Texas, Virginia, New York, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, Singapore, and Hong Kong. The company has also implemented an open-peering policy, at no cost to partners or customers, that allows Internet Service Providers (ISPs) worldwide to connect to its network to improve reliability and performance. More than 400 ISPs are participating in the program globally, including BT (News - Alert) in England, Hetzner Online in Germany and Vocus Communications in New Zealand, through their Orcon, Slingshot and Flip brands. Read more about how Dropbox is increasing its global performance here.

Customer and Analyst Feedback

Campaign Monitor is a leading provider of email marketing and automation software used by more than two million people at 200,000 companies worldwide. With a goal of facilitating the email design and distribution process, the company is continually iterating during its product development, and uses Dropbox and Dropbox Paper to keep its teams in sync as they create and share new ideas.

"As ideas develop into products, Dropbox Paper serves as a real-time collaboration space for our teams," says Sateja Parulekar, vice president of marketing, Campaign Monitor. "With Paper, we create and share design concepts quickly, and team members can collaborate and build on each others thinking, whether they're in Sydney, San Francisco or London. Paper's new admin controls and security features will make it even easier for us to manage Paper collaborators both inside and outside of our organization."

"Collaboration solutions like Dropbox can help drive employee productivity by taking the friction out of information-sharing and communication," said Terri McClure, senior analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group. "Dropbox's AdminX initiative continues to deliver enhancements that meet admin's requirements for security and management, while maintaining the best in class ease of use they are known for."

Additional Resources:

About Dropbox:

Dropbox's mission is to simplify the way people work together. With more than 500 million users, we're building the world's simplest, most powerful collaboration platform. For more information, please visit https://www.dropbox.com/press.

*IDC, EFSS Evaluation Guide: Dropbox Sync Performance, US41574216, July 2016.

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