What is Box for?
Enterprise content management: workflow, governance, retention policy, collaboration and a large integration ecosystem.
Box and Citadel do different jobs.
Box governs content across an enterprise. Citadel protects the narrow set of files where governance is not enough.
What is Citadel for?
Protecting and archiving high-value information: board papers, IP, legal files, financial records, source code and private keys. It is a vault, not a workspace.
Do you need both?
Usually, yes. Most organisations keep Box for everyday work and move their crown-jewel data into Citadel, where there is no sharing surface at all.
Every Citadel subscription protects more than storage.
Citadel is priced for the people who use it and the work they do. The service connects identity, networking, transport, protected data, recovery and business continuity in one architecture.
Identity
Quantum-Secure® authentication designed to reduce dependence on traditional key-based access.
Network
Quantum-Secure® private networking extends protection beyond the storage environment.
Transport
ParticleMesh™ protects data as it moves between people, applications, clouds and infrastructure.
Data
Secured2 protection is applied to the data itself, beyond conventional encryption at rest.
Resilience
Multi-location redundancy, recovery and business continuity reduce dependence on any single system.
Risk
Eligible deployments can include contractual cyber-risk indemnification backed by a Lloyd's of London insurance policy.*
* Insurance, indemnification, coverage limits, exclusions, eligibility and availability are subject to the applicable policy and contractual terms.
An honest comparison.
Box is a capable product and we are not going to pretend otherwise. It is designed for productivity, and it is good at it.
Citadel is designed for containment. It has no sharing, no links, no guests and no sync client, because every one of those is a route out. Those absences would be flaws in a collaboration tool. In a vault they are the point.
Where the protection differs.
Mainstream platforms protect data with encryption and access controls: an algorithm, a key and a permission model. That is a reasonable design, and it rests on the key staying secret.
Citadel adds Secured2's physics-based Quantum-Secure® protection. Files are reduced, separated into fragments with no independent meaning, and distributed, so no single location holds a complete, readable file.
Box and Citadel side by side
| How they compare | |
|---|---|
| Primary purpose | Box: enterprise content management and workflow. Citadel: a vault for crown-jewel data. |
| Breadth | Box: broad platform with many surfaces. Citadel: intentionally narrow. |
| Collaboration | Box: central to the product. Citadel: absent by design. |
| Data protection model | Box: encryption and policy controls. Citadel: reduction, separation and distribution of the data itself. |
| Administration | Box: extensive policy administration. Citadel: accounts, plans and storage locations. |
Questions people ask
- Can Citadel and Box coexist?
- Yes, and that is the usual arrangement. Box handles content operations; Citadel holds the files that should not sit in a collaboration platform at all.
- Does Citadel offer retention policy?
- Citadel offers archive and deliberate deletion. Complex policy workflow belongs in your content platform.
- Which is more secure?
- They solve different problems. For confidential archives, Citadel's lack of a sharing surface and its physics-based protection materially reduce exposure.
Keep reading
Keep working where you work. Vault what you cannot lose.
Citadel sits alongside the tools your teams already use, and takes responsibility for the files that must never leak.