Even in a world of technology where everything is online, the business practice of sending and receiving faxes is still widespread. Unfortunately, sending and receiving standard faxes through a traditional fax machine is not the most secure way to send documents and other important business information. Sending and receiving business faxes using a traditional fax machine can result in privacy breeches, legal issues, and loss of hard-earned profit for your business. Today’s technology-driven business environment requires more security, which is a major advantage of using online faxing over traditional faxing.
Client and Customer Information
The most important information that should be protected and secured is client and customer information. Privacy laws demand that this information is secure, and any breech of this information can erode client or customer trust in the company.
Proprietary Business Information
It is also important to secure proprietary information specific to your business. Trade secrets, proprietary processes, and important data about the operations of the business should be sent securely. With secure communication, competing businesses and hackers cannot access the information and won’t be able to cause potential loss for your business.
The Legal Side of Business Faxing
Before sending and receiving important business information and documents, it is integral that businesses consider federal and state privacy laws. Not considering privacy laws means potential costly and time-consuming legal issues for your business. The main objective of privacy laws is to protect the personal information of clients and customers, and privacy laws govern how client and customer records are transmitted, stored, documented, and purged.
Transmission Violations
One way that your company could be violating privacy laws is by sending and receiving faxes without encryption and failing to immediately collect faxes from the fax machine once you have sent or received them. Sending and receiving faxes without encryption means that the information in the faxes is not protected. Furthermore, by not immediately collecting paper faxes from the fax machine, there is a higher risk that someone could have access to them. Faxes and other paperwork containing private client information should never be left unattended, even for a few minutes.
Storage Violations
Another way privacy laws can be violated is by storing copies of faxes in a place that is not secure. A filing cabinet or even an unprotected hard drive may not be adequate to securely store faxes with private information. If your filing cabinet does not have a secure lock or your hard drive does not have encryption, the information is not protected, resulting in a violation of privacy laws.
Documentation Violations
With manual faxing, there needs to be a written procedure outlining how you transmit, store, and purge faxes. This process should be kept in writing and followed step by step to ensure compliance with privacy laws.
Losing Money to Unsecure Faxing
The unprotected sending and receiving of faxes can result in the loss of money in several ways. Unprotected faxing can jeopardize the whole network of your business. An example of this is the use of an all-in-one printer, scanner, and fax machine, as this type of machine tends to be completely unsecured.
Hackers can find ways to access these devices and send malware and viruses to the entire network, resulting in extra costs to remove it or replace all machines on the network. Depending on the size of your business, this can result in great financial loss. Furthermore, if you do not have a proper back-up of all files, faxes, and documents on the network, you will lose money trying to recover your data.
Benefits of Online Fax Services
Online fax services are a secure solution to managing faxing for your business. Services that offer faxing online do not require having fax machines or all-in-one printers on your network, therefore minimizing the risk of hacking.
Online faxing services also offer faxing that is compliant with privacy laws. Their process is already established, so you don’t have to create a written process for faxing that complies with privacy laws. Because the faxing process is done completely online through a secured site, sending, receiving, and storing faxes is completely secure, and you don’t have to worry about dealing with paper copies of faxes.
Overall, traditional fax machines and networks typically do not meet the needs of today’s technology-driven business environment because of privacy laws and new security threats from hackers. Fortunately, online fax services are a secure and legally compliant way to transmit, store, and document faxes, so you can still use faxing without worrying about the security of confidential client and business-related information.
