How Netskope stops sensitive data being exposed publicly in Box

Another example of public shares of personal data surfaced this week when security firm Adversis discovered hundreds of Box customers had hundreds of thousands of documents and terabytes of data exposed.

This is nothing new. This is simply another example of how cloud applications like Box make it easy to share data with anyone. This streamlines collaboration but also presents risk with regards to sensitive data being exposed to individuals that should not have access or even sensitive data being exposed publicly.

I blogged about this common phenomenon early last year and even gave it a name-”The Bright Web”. We named this public exposure of sensitive data the Bright Web because unlike the Dark Web, you don’t need a special browser and don’t need to look in hidden places.  There is a ton of data being exposed publicly in cloud services using the open internet.

It turns out that cloud services like Box, Google, Office 365, and others make it easy to upload and share sensitive data publicly. This is by design as it facilitates sharing and collaboration.  The key here is that it is up to the user to do the right thing and how and when to use the share button. With great power comes great responsibility.

The good news is that Netskope enables you to not rely on the user to do the right thing.  Netskope will find and stop sensitive data from being exposed in the cloud, enabling you to mitigate risk and safely use cloud applications to collaborate.

Here is a demo video that showcases this functionality.