CDSA

Box CPO: Malware Presents ‘Tremendous Amount of Exposure’ for Companies

Malware presents media and entertainment companies and other organizations with a “tremendous amount of exposure” today, according to Jeetu Patel, Box chief product officer.

“Content is one of the key areas where malware starts to spread from,” he said April 9 in a keynote webcast during the Box Virtual Summit.

To tackle that challenge, Box has added automated malware detection to its Box Shield security solution for protecting content in the cloud, he noted.

Now, when malware is identified in Box, Box Shield will automatically alert the end user, restrict downloads and sharing of malicious files, and notify IT and security teams, the company said one day before the online event.

To underscore just how pervasive of a problem malware has become, Patel told viewers 28% of data breaches today involve malware and the average cost of a malware attack to a company has reached $2.6 million.

The current COVID-19 crisis has only made the issue more complicated. There were “north of 2,200” suspicious, coronavirus-themed websites alone created in March, Patel said.

Work is very different today, he said at the start of his presentation. After all, today, one is not just collaborating with people within one’s own organization, but also collaborating “cross-enterprise,” with people from other firms, he noted.

The percentage of the enterprise working remotely has increased from 43% at least some of the time to 100% now as a result of the ongoing pandemic, he said.

Meanwhile, “enterprise content is exploding,” he said, telling viewers that over 41 zettabytes of data are expected to be created this year, up 25 zettabytes since 2015.

Productivity is fragmented, with 88 applications per enterprise used today on average, he said. That’s up 30 from 2015, according to Box.

Security threats, meanwhile, are “getting more and more rampant,” he said, noting there have been 4 billion records breached just this year. That’s up 3.3 billion from 2015, according to Box.

It costs an organization about $3.9 million globally on average for a breach, with the average cost of a breach for an organization in the U.S. a whopping $8.2 million, Patel told viewers. “So, there’s a fair amount of risk with these security threats that are going on,” he said.

Box has sought to simplify the solution to overcome security challenges by providing one platform for secure content management, workflow and collaboration, he noted. And the company is focused on two stakeholders: users and IT, he noted. While doing that, the company concentrates on three core areas to solve the challenges organizations are facing: “frictionless” security and compliance, “seamless” internal/external collaboration and workflow, and integration with all applications, he pointed out.

“As you move to the cloud, it is more and more important that you prevent the leakage of data and that you prevent threats that might happen from either negligent use or malicious use,” he said.

The company “made huge strides” in addressing the latter with the introduction of Box Shield last year, he told viewers, noting Shield prevents data leaks with frictionless content controls and detects content-centric threats based on user behavior. The addition of automated malware detection makes Shield even stronger.