The author of this column is the chief executive and co-founder of Box, a cloud storage company.

When the news broke that the FBI and the DOJ dropped their case against Apple, successfully cracking open the San Bernardino iPhone without the help of the consumer electronics giant, there was a collective sigh of relief from the technology industry and security experts. Apple avoided a precedent-setting event requiring them to break their own security, and the government was able to unlock a device that may lead to advances in their investigation. But if anyone thought this issue was concluded, they'd be mistaken.

Recently, draft legislation from Sens. Diane Feinstein and Richard Burr directed at addressing the Apple vs. FBI controversy circulated in the media. The bill would require technology companies to build "backdoors" to the encryption within their products for law enforcement agencies. Feinstein and Burr have taken the the first step in what will no doubt be a contentious and important debate. But instead of doubling down on applying the existing laws and norms we have operated under in the physical world for the past 200 years, we need to redefine them based on the increasingly digital world that we live in today.

The collision between legacy laws and our new digital world will continue to resurface until our policy approaches catch up to our technology. We have already seen this friction play out in various industries, whether it is hailing a taxi from our phone, gaining access to our personal genetic data, or determining how to regulate commercial drones. Many of our laws and our expectations of government will necessarily be forced to change as new technologies arise. The impact of the digital age on security is even more pronounced.

Securing data or things in the physical world was relatively straightforward: Place information or assets inside of a physical container, lock it, and protect the apparatus through force. If anything unexpected or bad happens, call the authorities to ensure further protection. In the digital world, security is just not that simple. But with billions of people connected to the Internet, and millions of servers around the world shuffling traffic to and from every corner of the globe, determined minds can get to almost any data no matter its location. We've seen the implications of this interconnectedness, combined with weakened security, in the cyber breaches of Sony, Target, JP Morgan, Anthem and even the government's own systems.

In this context, it's clear why almost every leading expert on cybersecurity unequivocally advocates strong encryption with no backdoors, not because they want to lessen the effectiveness of our national security efforts or investigative abilities of the FBI, but because on balance there's simply no way to fully ensure the security of our technology if known weaknesses are introduced. Even Mike McConnell and Michael Chertoff, the former director of the National Security Agency and former secretary of Homeland Security, concluded last year that "we believe that the greater public good is a secure communications infrastructure protected by ubiquitous encryption at the device, server and enterprise level without building in means for government monitoring."

Which brings us back to the draft Feinstein-Burr bill. We need legislation that is more attuned to the practical and technical realities of the new digital world and the long-term consequences of the decisions that we are making. Soon, our cars will be connected to the Internet and driving themselves, and our airplanes, hospitals, medical devices and financial networks will become fully digitally enabled. The choices we make today will not only impact the security of our mobile devices, but also the systems that protect our health records, critical infrastructure, automobiles and countless other physical and virtual assets.

And as individuals, businesses and governments increasingly rely on digital platforms to communicate, collaborate and transact, our collective trust in modern technology is becoming one of the most important drivers of our future economic growth, shared prosperity and societal progress.

FBI Director James Comey was right when he offered that,“we shouldn’t drift to a place — or be pushed to a place by the loudest voices — because finding the right place, the right balance, will matter to every American for a very long time.” We are entering a new era in which the practices we constructed over the past 200 years cannot easily be applied or grafted into the modern world, and it's time to recognize that as we define this century's laws.