Box upgrades AI document extraction and security services

Agentic AI has shown promise for helping enterprise knowledge leaders organize, classify and secure their companies' files and data.

Later this year, Box plans to release three sets of AI agents to enable users to accomplish those outcomes. The first, Box Extract, is an extension of the company's metadata tagging services. Extraction agents break down a document to understand its type -- such as a contract or spreadsheet -- and identify key data points.

The agent can crawl many different document formats, including PDFs, document scans and images. This intelligent document processing (IDP) functionality partially arose from Box's acquisition of Alphamoon last year.

"They've got what looks to be pretty good IDP capabilities," said Alan Pelz-Sharpe, founder of Deep Analysis.

Another feature Box previewed, Box Automate, is a low-code/no-code agent builder that facilitates workflow automations for task and information routing. Combined with Box Extract, Box Automate will help Box compete for customers with rivals such as Kofax, Abbyy and Hyland Software, Pelz-Sharpe said.

"There's a ton of manual, paper-based tasks and processes that need automating," Pelz-Sharpe said. "So there's no shortage of opportunities for them."

Box Shield Pro, which adds several AI agents to Box's security toolbox, is also planned for release. These include the AI Classification Agent, which tags sensitive content from signals in file context, content patterns and organizational requirements; the AI Threat Analysis Agent, which summarizes threat notifications for information security analysts; and a ransomware agent that detects mass content encryption and offers remediation paths to security teams.

While content security has been a concern that dates back decades, enterprise knowledge managers have a new vulnerability on their hands with Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, which avail information repositories to AI agents. Add MCP's emerging security risks to existing data access controls that enterprises employ to keep customer and employee data private, and together they represent a need for new security tools.

"You can't just give somebody an MCP server that lets them go look at anything in the organization," said Ben Kus, chief product officer at Box. "You have to have user-based access controls, and you have to set up not only guardrails for your MCP servers but also make sure that you're cleansing the inputs of anything that goes into AI, so you don't have these challenges."

These features were previewed in conjunction with this week's BoxWorks user conference. Box Shield Pro capabilities will be available as an add-on for current Box Shield, Enterprise Plus and Enterprise Advanced subscribers later this year. Box Extract and Box Automate will be available to customers on Enterprise Advanced plans in the coming months.

Don Fluckinger is a senior news writer for Informa TechTarget. He covers customer experience, digital experience management and end-user computing. Got a tip? Email him.