About Legal Hold Policies

Legal Hold policies are available as a part of Box Governance.  Use Box Governance Legal Hold policies to retain designated content in your organization by placing certain files, file-versions, folders, or custodians (managed users) under legal hold. When content is under legal hold, Box prevents that content from being permanently deleted for as long as the Legal Hold policy is active.

How Custodian (managed-user) Legal Hold Preservation Types Work in Box

Box supports three Custodian (managed-user) Legal Hold preservation types—Ownership, Access, and Interaction—to give you fine-grained control over preserving content when custodians are placed on hold.  Each preservation type defines a different scope of data retention that you can use either independently or in combination.

1. Ownership-Based Preservation

Selecting Ownership ensures that Box preserves all files and folders a custodian owns, both at the time the hold is applied and in the future.  Ownership-based Preservation includes:

• All files and folders currently owned by the custodian.
• New content the custodian creates or uploads into folders the custodian owns.
• Owned content moved into Box Archive.

2. Interaction-Based Preservation

Interaction-based Preservation preserves file-versions a custodian interacts with, both in the future and up to seven years prior to when the hold is applied.  A delay of up to twelve hours may occur between when the hold policy is activated and when the file is preserved.

Interactions include:

• Opening or previewing a file-version.
• Downloading or uploading, including files downloaded via Box Sync and Box Edit.
• Creating or editing a file-version.
• Trashing a file or folder. If the folder is trashed, all items within the folder are held.

For Example: If a custodian is added as a Collaborator to a file after an Interaction hold, Box preserves the file only if the custodian interacts with it.

3. Access-Based Preservation (Legacy Model)

With Access-based Preservation, Box preserves:

• All content a custodian has access to at the moment the legal hold is activated, even if collaboration (including Hubs) is later removed.
• New files or file versions added to those same top-level folders.
• All content the custodian owns.
• All content the custodian interacts with after being placed on hold.
  • Opening or previewing a file-version.
  • Downloading or uploading, including files downloaded via Box Sync and Box Edit.
  • Editing a file-version.
  • Trashing a file or folder. If the folder is trashed, all items within the folder are held.
• Files or folders moved or transferred from the custodian to a non-custodian after the hold is in place.
• Hub Updates:
  • Files and folders added to Hub.
  • Files and folders removed from Hub.
  • Deleted Hubs.
  • Files and folders moved out of Hub.
  • Files and folders restored from trash to a new location outside of Hub.

Box does not preserve under Access-based Holds:

• Files accessed only via shared link where no interaction occurred.
• Files shared after the custodian is placed on hold, and with which the custodian never interacted.

Legal Holds and Box Archive

• Ownership-based Hold: Placing a custodian on an Ownership-based hold preserves all data that the custodian owns, even if that data was moved into Box Archive before the hold was placed.
  Important: When a file or folder is restored from Archive to a different user before the hold is placed, this content is not held under Ownership.
• Interaction-based Preservation: Box preserves files moved into Box Archive that a Custodian interacted with, regardless of when the hold was placed, up to seven years.
• Access-based Hold: Box does not preserve files moved into Box Archive before the hold is placed. However, if the hold is applied first, and then the file is moved into archived, then Box preserves that file.
• Folder-based Hold: You can apply a Folder-based hold on specific folders within the Archive.

Selection of Custodian(s) With a Date Range

When you select one or more custodians (managed users) for a Legal Hold policy and add a date range, Box preserves content as described above, and the following applies:

• Ownership-based and Access-based Holds: Legal hold preserves only files and versions that were created or uploaded within this date range.
• Interaction-based Preservation: Legal hold preserves only files and versions that were interacted-with within this date range.
• If an end date is specified, the policy does not hold content with which the custodian interacts after that date.
• If an end date is not specified, the date range filter applies to content with which the custodian interacts after the custodian was placed on hold (the legal hold is ongoing).

Selection of Folder(s)

When you select one or more folders for a Legal Hold policy, the following content is preserved:

• All content placed in the folder at the moment of the Legal Hold policy becomes active.
• All new files added to that folder in the future.

File (API Only)

When you enact a Legal Hold policy on a file via API (application programming interface), that is, programmatically, the following content is preserved:

• The specific file. including all versions of the file existing at the moment of placing the file on hold and all new versions added in the future.

File Version (API Only)

When you enact a Legal Hold policy on a file version via API (application programming interface), that is, programmatically, the following content is preserved:

• The specific file version is held.

Learn more about creating and using Legal Holds

• Creating a Legal Hold in Box Governance
• Permissions Required to Administer Legal Holds
• Reporting on Legal Holds
• When a custodian leaves the company while part of a Legal Hold