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Creating a Legal Hold in Box Governance

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Legal Holds are available as a part of Box's Governance package. Use legal holds to place a hold on users and content related to a litigation or investigation. This hold prevents any content pertinent to the legal matter from being permanently deleted.

 

To create a legal hold

  1. From your Admin Console, navigate to Governance > Legal Holds tab.
  2. Click Create.

legaHoldsMainAdminWindow.jpg

 

Setting a legal hold on content owned by custodians

Box enables you to place a legal hold on content owned by any people you designate as content custodians.

 

To set a legal hold on content owned by custodians:

  1. Enter a Legal Hold Name (required) and a Description (optional). The name must be unique. The content of the Description field is included in the Reason for Hold column in a Legal Holds report. 
  2. Next to Apply Policy To, click Users (Custodians).
  3. Set a date range for retained files.
    • If you do select an end date, only content created or modified during the specified date range is held.
    • If you do not select an end date, the legal hold applies to all content that custodians interact with while the policy is in effect.
    • Setting a date range is permanent for this legal hold. After you set the policy, you cannot change the date range.
  4. In the top-right corner of the window, click Next.
  5. Click Add Custodians.
  6. In the Users box, type the names you want to add as custodians, and then click Add.
    • The people you add as custodians must already exist in your Box account.
  7.  Click Next and review the details of the legal hold.
  8. To activate the legal hold, click Start Policy.
    • Box applies the legal hold to all content that the people you've named as custodians own or have access to at any permission level, including content in each person's trash.
    • The content held is limited to content created or modified in the date range you selected

Setting a legal hold on folders

Box also enables you to place a legal hold on folders, regardless of who owns them.

 

To set a legal hold on folders:

    1. Enter a Legal Hold Name (required) and a Description (optional). The name must be unique. The content of the Description field is included in the Reason for Hold column in a Legal Holds report. 
    2. Under Policy Criteria, click Folders.
    3. In the top-right corner of the window, click Next.
    4. Click Select Folders.
    5. In the Select Folders window, in the Search box, type the name of a folder you want to hold, or part of the name of the folder. Then press ENTER .
  • You can also filter by user name.

 

legalHoldsSelectFolder.png

 

  1. Under Search Results, check the folders you want to add, and then click Choose.
  2. Review the details of the legal hold, and then click Next.
  3. To activate the legal hold, click Start Policy.
  • Box applies the legal hold to all content, including sub-folders, within the folders you selected.

 

Note

The amount of time Box needs to apply the legal hold policy (both initially and for any new files) depends on the number of files affected by the hold – the more objects you hold (files, folders, custodians), the longer it takes for the hold to become active. To verify that your legal hold is in fact applied, in your Admin Console navigate back to the Legal Holds tab and run a Legal Holds report to check for ongoing policies.

You can release a legal hold you've created at any time via the Legal Holds tab in the Admin Console.

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