Dive Brief:

• Morgan Stanley Wealth Management customers now have access to a secure document-sharing platform. Launched Monday, Digital Vault is powered by cloud-based content management and file-sharing provider Box.
• The company said "millions" of clients could now exchange documents like wills, deeds and tax filings in an encrypted way with 15,600 financial advisors and staffers through its website and mobile app. 
• The deployment of Digital Vault adds a layer of protection for clients who need to submit documents to the financial institution — a step up from sending documents via regular, unencrypted email clients.

Dive Insight:

In an era of ubiquitous data breaches and hacks, adding a layer of encryption between its clients and advisors is a timely move for Morgan Stanley.

Corporations spent an average of $13 million last year in data breach-related costs, including cybersecurity assessments and recovery. For companies in the financial sector, that number rose to $18 million.

Credit agency Equifax alone is facing over $1.4 billion in liabilities this year, in the aftermath of a data breach that exposed the sensitive data of 148 million customers. The company will pay up to a $650 million settlement in an Atlanta federal court, a deal that bookends a group of federal, state and consumer suits. 

For Morgan Stanley, one of the largest wealth management firms on the planet, the Box-powered encryption platform adds efficiency to its services while lowering cyber risk. 

"By investing in a cloud content management platform like Box and leveraging other best-of-breed technology partners, we have been able to create a more secure, efficient and collaborative environment for conducting business," Naureen Hassan, Chief Digital Officer at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, said in an emailed statement to CIO Dive. 

Morgan Stanley declined to disclose the cost of getting Digital Vault up and running.

For Box, the Morgan Stanley deployment is representative of its integration strategy, which, according to CEO Aaron Levie, relies on bringing a "single, neutral platform for cloud content management" to the market.