Box’s new data-management feature probably won’t bail you out if you’re still scrambling to figure out what to do about tomorrow’s GDPR deadline, but it will give administrators more flexibility in storing data around the world.
Users of Box Zones, which were designed to help satisfy local data-residency requirements imposed by certain countries, can now designate any one of seven global regions in which to store their data and manage all that data from any of those starting points, Box announced Thursday. Box built its business with data centers based in the U.S., and with help from partners added Zones as a way of giving users data storage options outside the U.S., but users were limited to two regions: the U.S. and one other.
Now users of Box Zones will be able to store their data in multiple regions in Europe and Asia, as well as Canada and the U.S. One of the beauties of using a cloud service is that it usually doesn’t matter where your data is stored around the world, but data protection laws have been coming into fashion in some areas after unease about the U.S. government’s access to U.S.-based cloud services grew following the revelations exposed by Edward Snowden in 2013.
Global data laws are top of mind this week as Friday’s deadline to comply with Europe’s General Data Protection Act looms. The new multiple-zone feature for Box Zones goes live today, and while it could help companies comply with certain parts of the new law, there’s a lot more that companies have to do in order to comply.