Over the last two years, organizations have adapted to working remotely and have recognized that employees do not need to be in the office to work effectively. Because of this shift, organizations must be able to collect data remotely—but without the aid of modern tools to facilitate this process, it can be challenging to do so defensibly and efficiently.
That’s because collecting and reviewing data for litigation or an investigation requires access to an increasing number of content collaboration apps to follow remote conversations and find the right information. And that “increasing number” is intimidating—according to a recent report from Okta, larger companies (2,000 employees or more) deploy 187 such apps on average.
“Organizations today understand that one-size-fits-all software solutions are not sufficient for addressing core productivity and security challenges in the workplace. That’s why we see Okta customers increasingly supplement their bundled applications with other industry-leading collaboration tools like Slack, Box, and Zoom.” - Diya Jolly, chief product officer, Okta
Seeing new ways of communicating springing up so rapidly alters both the way people connect and how we perform data collections. Now is the time to make sure businesses are able to not just handle this wave, but benefit from it. With the right tools, that becomes doable. For example, Collect's upcoming integration with Box.
Box serves 67 percent of Fortune 500 companies. A robust content cloud, the platform enables these organizations to accelerate business processes, power workplace collaboration, and protect their most valuable information. Over the last 17 years, Box has helped make the cloud a more practical place for modern businesses to flourish. As a result, it’s become a gold mine of potentially discoverable data for many organizations. But collecting that data hasn’t always been easy.
How Modern Businesses Use Box
Modern businesses need tools that work with them—anytime, anywhere, on any device. That’s how Box helps its users work more collaboratively while keeping data secure. With their content cloud, Box covers the entire journey of content—from ingestion into cloud enabling—which many of its competitors do not.
But why do these organizations use Box instead of relying exclusively on Microsoft’s popular OneDrive platform? For many, the answer is yet another platform problem.
Businesses that collaborate with outside vendors and partners often find themselves encountering multiple tech stacks, such as Microsoft for their in-house data and Google for their web developer’s files. When exchanging documents in this context, many have to duplicate their content to make it compatible with each platform. But using a content cloud like Box can eliminate this hassle. In fact, according to that same Okta report, 45 percent of Okta users are using both Google and Microsoft.
With Box maintaining the content in one place, users can decide how they want to interact with that file. There is no need to duplicate that file; collaborators can work on the exact same document with their editor of choice.
That said, while modern companies are clearly ready to embrace best-of-breed apps to accommodate needs like these, there is still a push to reduce the overall number of apps they have on their systems—for reasons of cost efficiency, security, and convenience.
Box remains popular amid this effort because it has touchpoints across business needs. For instance, the recent addition of electronic signing capabilities—available to all of their customers—presents an opportunity for these organizations to consolidate their apps.
Overall, customers using Box report appreciating the following features:
- Security and compliance. Rich permissions options, PII scanning built in, threat detection, static and dynamic antivirus scans, encryption, and data residency options make it an appealing choice for cybersecurity-minded organizations.
- Seamless internal and external collaboration. Again, using just one platform to share and collaborate on content, with both internal and external users, is beneficial in many use cases.
- Abundant integrations. Box connects with many other enterprise services, including 1,500+ integrations with platforms like Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce. This creates an option for organizations to take advantage of its unique features while consolidating app usage across their enterprise footprints.
The Opportunities of Collecting from Box
This spirit of secure collaboration is all well and good for conducting day-to-day business. But modern enterprises must also simplify the way they discover and collect the data they need for internal investigations, litigations, e-discovery, compliance exercises, legal holds, and more. They need to conduct these collections in a defensible, seamless way—from whatever platforms their teams are using.
Without the right tools to facilitate those collections, legal teams run the risk of under- or over-collecting, leading to increased risks and costs downstream. Unfortunately, many traditional collection tools don’t have great connectors with cloud content platforms like Box. This may mean locally downloading or manually moving files, which introduces security vulnerabilities, jeopardizes chain of custody, and results in lost context on where and how documents were originally accessed, edited, and stored.
However, more targeted tools like those currently on the market—including Collect for RelativityOne—are able to connect directly with Box, so users can pull the relevant files in an intentional, defensible manner. Launching later this month, these workflows will enable the Goldilocks ideal of collection: identifying and gathering just the right amount of data (not too little, not too much) to enable a case to proceed as efficiently and comfortably as possible. This approach also provides detailed reporting, at the item and job levels, to provide context on how collection decisions were made, why specific data may or may not have been included, and any native metadata regarding access, modifications, and more.
Expanded Discovery Capabilities, Expanded Insights
In addition to collections, legal teams and e-discovery professionals can use connectors like these to help issue and monitor legal holds, apply data retention policies, and simply keep a better handle on how employees are using platforms like Box to collaborate and get work done. And with end-to-end e-discovery capabilities, the results of these upstream efforts are quickly present in a review interface—enabling quicker work with minimal data juggling and platform hopping. This means that, down the road, if litigation or an investigation should occur, it’s easier and faster to find the relevant content and get a matter moving.
Using the right tools to put business’s data into action is essential for many use cases. Now is the time to make sure businesses are able to not just handle this wave, but to benefit from it with Collect for Box later this month.
