Dropbox, the cloud-hosted file storage and sharing service, has unveiled new features designed to make it more suitable for business uses.

In 2011, the company launched a service called Dropbox For Teams which included a management dashboard that allowed various functions to aid collaboration. Yesterday, Dropbox announced a new administration console explicitly design to boost business adoption.

The console allows admins to manage employee access permissions, monitor individual employee activity including their use of particular devices and third-party applications, and it allows them terminate user sessions instantly in the case of a security breach.

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The new features also allows admins to apply two-factor authentication to employee accounts, requiring to enter a six-digit security code when they access Dropbox from a new PC or mobile device. Dropbox introduced the option of two-factor authentication when one of its own employees' account was compromised last year.

“Dropbox is making it easier for IT admins to control and manage users and the sharing of company data,” said Terri McClure, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group in a post on Dropbox's company blog. “These new features will be a welcome addition for businesses looking to bring the de facto standard for ease of use for consumer file sharing into the workplace."

Dropbox For Teams is a subscricption service that costs $795 (£510) per year for five users and $125 (£80) per user, per year after that.

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The new features pose a challenge to the many companies that have exploited Dropbox's perceived security and manageability weakness to launch comparable services for businesses. These include UK start-up Huddle, which launched a service called Sync last year, and Silicon Valley firm Box.