Cloud storage means different things to different people. While consumers are concerned about storing their photos and music, businesses are storing mass amounts of critical data in the cloud. Unless you’ve been living under a rock you know that Box and Google Drive are two of the biggest players in the cloud storage vendor landscape. So, is there a clear favorite in this race? Who will win the hearts and minds of the enterprise? We’ll walk through some key evaluation criteria to help you better understand which vendor to bet on. For more detail, grab our complimentary eBook - Google Drive vs Box: An Enterprise Perspective

When evaluating Google Drive vs Box for the enterprise, we looked at four key areas: Security, IT Management Concerns, Mobile Device Support, and Implementation Support and Long Term Costs. Below we’ll address two of the four criteria (stay tuned for part two featured on our blog).

Security

It should go without saying that the security of your data in either of these applications will be a major evaluation sticking point. Who will be able to access this data? How is the data protected during transfer? We turn to the industry standard for reporting on controls at a service organization, SSAE 16.

SSAE 16 Compliance

SSAE 16 compliance is crucial. There are two audits available: SSAE 16 Type I and Type II. A Type II is what to look for as it’s essentially a measure of the effectiveness of business controls in operation. Good news! Both Google and Box have passed SSAE 16 Type II audits with reports available upon request.

Single Sign-On Support

Enterprises tend to be big users of single sign-on (SSO) solutions and all of the major protocols are supported by both services.

IT Management Concerns

Control is something IT needs to have so user permissions and audit trails are something to think critically about.

User Permissions

Both Box and Google Drive cover the essentials that IT admins would expect. Regarding unique features offered by each service…..with Google Drive users can be granted the permission to comment on a document, a halfway between read-only and full access. With Box, IT administrators can put password protection on files and folders and put expiration dates on files and folders.

Audit Trails

Audit trail generation is an important component of a cloud-based storage backend for business. Google Drive and Box cover audit trail basics including tracking the user who performed an action and the IP address used. Both services offer the ability to look at a single user, user group, and in Google Drive’s case, a domain. Google has the potential advantage in this area depending on the importance of audit trails since it has a Reports API which can be used to retrieve data for use in an organization’s own reports.

Want more details as to the differences between these two popular cloud solutions? Grab our eBook and start evaluating!