HIPAA

Choosing Secure Fax Services for the Medical Industry

Faxing still has a place within many healthcare organizations, providing an effective way to send and receive protected health information (PHI). However, there’s recently been a shift to cloud-based secure fax services, allowing for improved usability and security of that shared information.

Healthcare providers must choose a fax provider carefully guaranteeing the security of PHI at all times, while also ensuring providers and staff have access to and can operate the system easily. Cloud-based faxing allows users to easily transmit data in a digital format through a secure internet connection using high-level encryption, real-time data transfers, and other capabilities.

Here are some things people in the medical industry need to know about how to choose a secure fax service.

How Online Fax Services Work

“The cloud” is any software or service provided over the internet; a cloud fax service replaces physical fax machine or on-premises fax server with internet-based, outsourced service options. A dedicated phone line or fax machine isn’t necessary with cloud-based faxing, nor does it need an on-premises fax server that requires system maintenance and/or upgrades with internal IT staff involvement.

Instead, cloud faxing takes a digital file and sends it with a special email address that includes the recipient’s fax number, or provides an easy-to-use web interface. The service provider converts uploaded documents into the proper format, encrypts them, and sends them to the recipient. Or, when receiving, the provider converts the document into a format that’s readable and then delivers the fax.

A cloud-fax service offers 100% compliance with HIPAA and other regulations.

How To Choose an Online Fax Service

Follow these steps when choosing an online fax service:

1. Assess your needs.

First, you’ll need to know the realistic volume of faxes that will need to be sent and received. Additionally, prepare a list of fax document workflow and processing requirements so you know ahead of time what the fax service will need to provide.

2. Reach out to vendors.

Start by researching top online fax service providers and reading about their offerings, as well as investigating past and current customer reviews. Reach out to the top vendors for more information.

Ask for representative to explain all included features and how they handle customer service needs, and ensure the product meets your needs. At this time, you can evaluate both their product and customer service.

3. Understand cost and fees.

Hidden fees and unexpected costs can make budgeting difficult, so ask about overall pricing and any other charges you could face throughout the contract.

4. Request a demo.

Most providers offer a free product demonstration or trial period, so take advantage of this. Test the service before you finalize the purchase to see how it works and better understand if it will work for your needs. For example, is it user friendly? Does it provide necessary features and capabilities for managing your faxing and document control needs? Does it integrate with your back-office document workflows? What is the capacity and performance?

You should also ask about additional tools that can integrate with your current technology or other features the service offers (such as custom cover sheets, delivery to network folder, broadcast faxing, preset delivery times, or folder-based faxing).

5. Make sure the secure fax service is HIPAA-compliant.

Ask vendor about whether their product is HIPAA compliant and what features are in place such as:

Control over access to customer PHI.
Data encryption during transmission and while at rest in the cloud.
Cybersecurity insurance coverage.
Finding and protecting against anticipated cybersecurity threats and information theft.

Ultimately, the service should take steps to guarantee all PHI availability, integrity, and confidentiality.

Additionally, ask the vendor if they can share their Annual SOC 2 Type II audit report and Application Penetration Test report with you. Also ensure they would sign Business Associate Agreement (BAA).

Benefits A HIPAA-Complaint Fax Service Should Have

Cloud faxing, or online faxing, has a variety of benefits including greater flexibility, security, and efficiency. For example, cloud-based fax services:

Provide secure transmission. Criminals cannot hack into a fax to steal data, and even if it is somehow hacked or intercepted, the third party can’t read it without conversion by an authorized user. Faxes deployed with data encryption can make faxes more reliable and secure, which is essential when sending and receiving PHI.
Send a secure fax immediately. Data traveling uninterrupted from a fax sender to a recipient is less susceptible to hacking. Cloud faxing sends faxes directly to an individual, and the user who wants access must provide correct credentials. You’ll then receive confirmation that the intended recipient gets the fax.
Keep costs down. There’s no need to purchase, operate, or maintain a separate fax machine or on-premises fax server, or have a dedicated phone line. You’ll save internal IT staff time because there isn’t an on-premises fax server or network systems. Cloud faxing also reduces paper waste.
Are easy to use. Managing incoming and outgoing faxes is as simple as having access to a computer or mobile device and internet connection – no other equipment is required. Immediate service activation doesn’t require a long lead time, and user-friendly online tools allow you to send and receive faxes anywhere.

Plus, Softlinx also offers a customer web portal with comprehensive fax administration features, making managing fax users and secure fax activities easy.

Enhance productivity. Using a cloud fax service streamlines healthcare fax workflows and significantly simplifies faxing tasks. This helps staff work more efficiently, eliminating challenges like managing junk faxes or dealing with paperwork, refilling paper or ink, or other maintenance.

Trust Softlinx with Secure HIPAA-Compliant Faxing

Our HIPPA-complaint cloud faxing services and other solutions can help you achieve smarter document-handling protocols while protecting PHI. Request a demo today or call (800) 899-7724.

What Measures Are Necessary for Faxes to Meet HIPAA Regulations?

Privacy laws like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) play a critical role in the healthcare industry, governing how organizations handle sensitive information. If you transmit patient health information via fax, this standard applies to you.

This guide will discuss how privacy laws affect faxing and how to ensure HIPAA compliance with faxes.

What Is HIPAA?

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act is a federal law passed in 1996 to protect sensitive patient health information. Based on this law, national standards were established to prevent health information from being disclosed without patient knowledge or consent.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services enforced the requirements of HIPAA by issuing the HIPAA Privacy Rule. This set of standards addresses how organizations use and transmit health information to protect the privacy of those who seek care. These guidelines aim to protect patients’ health information by setting use limitations while still allowing for high-quality healthcare delivery.

How Does HIPAA Impact Faxing?

While most individuals don’t associate HIPAA and faxing with one another, these terms share a crucial connection. If you work in healthcare, you likely transfer sensitive patient information using faxes. HIPAA laws require that you protect this data during utilization and disclosure, which includes faxing.

The majority of healthcare offices use faxes to transmit patient information. If any of these facilities send sensitive information to the wrong recipient, they can incur serious HIPAA penalties for noncompliance. That’s why healthcare organizations must use fax solutions optimized for HIPAA compliance to minimize the risk of accidental disclosure.

HIPAA-compliant faxing solutions have security features like data encryption, page-by-page confirmation and real-time data transfer. These safeguards prevent patient information from being compromised or misdirected.

The Difference Between Meeting HIPAA Regulations With Online Fax Versus Traditional On-Premises Fax

Healthcare providers that use traditional on-premises fax solutions experience difficulty meeting HIPAA compliance standards due to the many security challenges posed by these outdated technologies. With advanced online fax solutions, organizations can send a HIPAA compliant fax securely and seamlessly.

Fax Machine Access

Traditional fax machines can print incoming patient health information at any time, leaving physical copies of this information temporarily unattended on the printer. This lack of access control can pose serious patient privacy and security risks by leaving information exposed.

Through online cloud faxing, incoming faxes are transferred to the intended recipient using their unique fax number, preventing the information from being misdirected. The patient information is also encrypted, so it can only be read by authorized individuals.

Fax Cover Sheets

All faxes containing patient health information must have a protective cover sheet as required by HIPAA. This cover sheet indicates that the document includes confidential health information and is not to be transferred to another party without express patient consent, in the absence of which it must be destroyed.

Online faxes allow you to customize your cover sheets to include all required disclosures and enforce them by department, user or across the entire organization.

Fax Transmission Records

When transmitting paper faxes, senders must create and retain confirmation copies containing transmission and transaction log summaries, along with the date, time and the recipient’s fax number. Online fax technologies take detailed records of all your fax transmissions and receipts, making report generation effortless.

Received Fax Security

Traditional on-premises faxing requires that received faxes be securely stored immediately upon removal from a physical fax device. Cloud-based faxing solutions send received faxes directly to the intended receiver’s email. Once the fax has been sent, all data and images within the fax are wiped from the faxing platform to prevent access by third parties.

How to Ensure HIPAA Compliance With Faxes From Softlinx

At Softlinx, we offer HIPAA compliant fax services to help healthcare facilities protect their patients’ sensitive health information. We’ve spent over 20 years providing our customers with innovative enterprise information technology (IT) solutions to help them optimize their document workflow processes and maximize profits.

We offer a HIPAA compliant electronic fax service called ReplixFax for the healthcare industry. This system is designed to protect confidential patient information while maintaining business continuity through safeguards such as:

Advanced data encryption.
Safe data transmission over secure IP networks.
Secure centralized storage.
Intrusion detection and prevention.
Multifactor authentication.

ReplixFax maintains detailed logs of all faxes, retrievals, deletions and inquiries to facilitate audits. Due to our secure network, our data center is fully compliant with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), HIPAA and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) standards.

Send HIPAA Compliant Faxes With Solutions From Softlinx

You can bridge the gap between HIPAA and faxing with HIPAA compliant fax services from Softlinx. When you outsource your faxing to cloud services with us, we’ll help you leverage greater cost savings, productivity and compliance.

Schedule a free live demo to explore our solutions today!

The Importance of HIPAA-Compliant Fax Cover Sheets

Implementing safeguards for medical privacy laws per the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) is crucial for all healthcare organizations, whether protected information is communicated over the phone or via email. As long as the patient provides their consent, healthcare providers can safely send and receive protected health information (PHI) via encrypted emails or cloud faxes. However, obtaining the patient’s consent is not enough — the fax must be HIPAA compliant per the federal law restricting the release of medical information.

Learn more about the importance of medical HIPAA compliant fax cover sheets and other technical safeguarding measures healthcare organizations can use to protect ePHI.

What Are PHI and ePHI?

Protected health information is any health information with a patient’s personal identifiers, such as a name, date of birth or social security number. Any PHI that is electronically transmitted, whether by email or fax, is known as ePHI.

Why Do Faxes Need a Cover Sheet?

Because a cover sheet is the first thing the recipient will see when they open the fax, it is a physical barrier of protection. A medical HIPAA compliant fax cover sheet is a technical safeguard to deter accidental viewing and disclosure of protected information.

What Should a HIPAA Fax Cover Sheet Contain?

There are a few fields all HIPAA compliant fax cover sheets should include to keep the sender and the unauthorized recipient safe from an unintentional data breach. If you opt to download a free cover sheet template online, be sure to check for the following fields:

Patient/HIPAA Information

The patient’s name and reference number
The date and time you sent the fax
A HIPAA cover sheet disclaimer

Sender Information

Name of the individual sender
Name of the covered entity or organization
The sender’s fax number and phone number

Recipient Information

Name of the individual recipient
Name of the recipient’s organization
The recipient’s fax number and phone number

What Is an Example of a HIPAA Fax Disclaimer?

Your fax cover sheet will also require a HIPAA disclaimer. A HIPAA disclaimer serves to:

Notify the recipient the fax contains classified patient health information.
Safeguard against unauthorized viewing if the recipient is unfamiliar with HIPAA regulations.
Protect the covered entity from liability should the information be viewed, copied or distributed.

A HIPAA disclaimer is reasonably straightforward by nature. First, it should state that HIPAA protects the fax’s enclosed information. Second, it should specify that if the recipient is not the intended individual or entity, they must contact and inform the sender of receipt and arrange the fax’s return or destruction.

Like cover sheet templates, you can find HIPAA fax disclaimer examples online. Here’s ours:

IMPORTANT: This fax contains confidential information, some or all of which is protected health information defined by the federal Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule. This fax is exclusively intended for the entity or individual to whom it is addressed because it contains proprietary, privileged, protected and/or exempt information that is exempt from disclosure by federal law.

If you are not the addressed recipient (or an employee or agent responsible for delivery of this fax transmission to the intended individual or entity), you are hereby notified that disclosure, dissemination, copying, or distribution of the information enclosed is prohibited and you may be subject to legal restriction or sanction. Please notify the sender via telephone to arrange the return or destruction of the information enclosed and all copies.

Why Should Organizations Use a HIPAA Fax Cover Sheet?

It may surprise healthcare providers to learn HIPAA regulations don’t definitively state you need to include a cover sheet when you send protected information via fax. However, a HIPAA fax cover sheet is the simplest way to deter unauthorized disclosure of sensitive information if the fax arrives in the wrong hands. A fax cover sheet’s overall purpose is threefold:

It provides the sender’s contact information so the unintended recipient can inform the sender.
It tells the recipient to whom the fax was sent to encourage them not to look at the contents if not permitted to do so.
It protects the covered entity from liability should the fax be illegally viewed, copied or distributed.

What Other Measures Can You Take to Ensure Privacy?

Outside of using a HIPAA fax cover sheet and disclaimer, there are other practices you can carry out to ensure the safe delivery of protected information.

Verify the fax number: Occasionally, fax numbers change or are entered incorrectly during sending. Before you send a fax, call the intended organization to verbally confirm with a representative that the fax number you have on file is up to date.
Notify your recipients: Call the organization to notify them when you send protected information. You can do this when you call to confirm the fax number, but even if you’re confident the fax number is correct, it is best to inform the intended recipient the information is coming their way — in case the fax fails or delivers to the wrong number.
Print a delivery confirmation: Once the fax is successfully delivered, print the delivery confirmation for physical documentation. You can also review the printed delivery confirmation to confirm the fax number one last time. Occasionally, you may not notice an error — especially if it is a single digit — until you see the number in print.

Send Secure, HIPAA Compliant Faxes With ReplixFax

Many healthcare organizations opt for cloud-based faxing with a HIPAA fax service as a convenient method for creating HIPAA-compliant faxes. ReplixFax streamlines HIPAA compliance for healthcare providers and administrators with secured storage networks, Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption and other built-in safeguards. Our solutions are audit-friendly, enhance communication between EHRs and facilitate multidevice access for combined convenience and compliance.

In short, we ensure your ePHI healthcare faxes deliver seamlessly and compliantly. We’ve designed our cloud-based fax services with busy, patient-centered healthcare organizations in mind. Our ReplixFax cloud fax service is easy to use on the go thanks to its intuitive interface, saving healthcare providers and administrators valuable time and energy. Using our email-to-fax interface, sending a fax is as simple as attaching a file to an email, addressing it to the recipient’s fax number and hitting send.

Contact us today to migrate your faxing to the cloud with our HIPAA-compliant cloud fax service for healthcare organizations.

What Are the Benefits of HIPAA-Compliant Cloud Fax Services?

There are many advantages to incorporating a HIPAA-compliant, cloud-based fax service into your healthcare operations. Aside from the daily ease of more straightforward business processes, these faxing systems help bring peace of mind that your fax communications and activities are on-par with the healthcare industry’s strict governance.

Healthcare administrators and practitioners have enough on their plates without the headache of a complex fax system. When you must continually spend time checking and double checking fax information, shoring up its security, updating internal policies and training on the latest software with the newest compliance features, you are directly inhibiting one of the most perfunctory aspects of healthcare administration.

You can make your faxing and online-document deliveries streamlined and secure through a cloud fax service — all while taking advantage of a host of additional benefits, such as these four.

1. Enhanced Compliance & Patient Confidentiality

Adhering to HIPAA’s stringent industry rules is a leading concern for healthcare institutions and their partners. However, ensuring your practices are HIPAA compliant takes time, money and continual resources, both on the human and technical side.

With a secure, cloud-based fax delivery system, you directly streamline nearly all aspects of medical document communications that are still critically used today. This not only means quicker and more efficient services within your office, but the risk of in-compliance is off your shoulders — unlike when you have manual faxing or on-site fax servers.

The following items bolster this enhanced compliance:

Business Associate Agreements (BAA): BAAs serve as chains of trust for all levels of healthcare providers, vendors and subcontractors. According to HIPAA, anyone with access or potential access to PHI must sign and adhere to these contracts. ReplixFax has built-in user logs, notifications and authorized access controls that complement BAAs and PHI-handling best practices, ultimately meeting HIPAA compliance.

HIPAA-Audited Data Center: Your faxing service platform is managed and hosted at an SSAE-16 audited data center. This means you have a top-of-the-line facility, computer systems and data-management team regularly scrutinized under HIPAA’s evolving requirements, year to year.
Compliance Management Partners: The cloud-based nature of the system means you have a 24/7 resource to support your critical fax data. This partner is just as responsible for its management and must be as well-versed in HIPAA regulations as you are, reinforcing your holistic risk-management practices.

2. Heightened Data Security

Some of HIPAA’s strongest regulations center on the safeguards and protection of PHI. Considering healthcare is one of the most-hacked industries today, its vast swaths of stored medical history and sensitive data mean healthcare service organizations cannot rest on their laurels. Institutions must continually be vigilant, monitoring their networks, setting up cyber-security defenses and partnering with vendors to help mitigate today’s and tomorrow’s risks.

It’s no easy task, but a comprehensive HIPAA-compliant fax service system can help you accomplish this with the following features:

Designated Sign-In: Anyone sending a fax or working with system data must first sign into their individual, password-protected account.

Fax Encryption: While at rest within the cloud-storage system, all faxes, files and their inputted protected health information (PHI) sit encrypted through a AES 256-bit encryption method, one of the most advanced in the industry.

Fax Data Recovery: The loss of patient data will not only interrupt a healthcare organization’s or vendor’s operations — it puts real people at risk. Your reputation sits at stake without a routine data-backup system in place to recover PHI and faxes in the event of an emergency or cyber threat.

Automatic Notifications: You can set up notifications to alert both senders and receivers when a fax has been initiated. This means sharper, real-time communication and better fax management, with fewer instances of sensitive data sitting in a queue.
Authorized Access: You can set up your cloud-based fax API with authorized-only access, which gives system log-ins only to a select few individuals. This directly reduces the chance of unauthorized data access, viewing, transferring and overall in-compliant handling.

3. Streamlined Auditing

Another aspect of HIPAA compliance concerns the thorough and secure documentation of information, transactions and procedures. HIPAA-compliant faxing is no different, and agencies that do not have proper audit trails in place risk severe fines and repercussions if they are found to be incompliant.

The sheer amount of faxes and fax-related communications procured in the healthcare industry necessitates a complete, streamlined auditing system that logs and accounts for every piece of correspondence. With a cloud-based fax API system, you get the following:

Complete Data Log: The fax API system maintains a record of all file activities, including additions, deletions, retrievals, transfers and data search queries. This is square one in a straightforward audit trail protocol for yourself or your medical clients.

User Activity Log: The system registers all user activity, which you can then search and catalog using current administrative tools or other integrated web services APIs.

Fax Trails: The system logs every incoming and outgoing fax, meaning you have one central repository for fax audit trails. Any audit request or compliance check has a straightforward accountability system in place.

Annual SOC2 Reports: This is a complete report on the data center hosting your PHI, detailing its service environment, practices, updates and procedures, so you can rest assured your data management remains HIPAA-compliant.

HIPAA-Compliant Fax Deletion: The system allows for industry-standard electronic file deletion, simplifying another compliance headache for many healthcare institutions or hosting vendors.

4. Simpler Software Integration

You can harmonize your’s or your client’s current computer programs and applications through tailored Web Service APIs. This software integration minimizes disruptions to your business operations, reduces employee training and allows operations to remain active. Plus, with more streamlined software suites, you can take care of tasks like converting HIPAA-compliant fax to emails or HIPAA-compliant link sharing in a few simple clicks.

Some other features of this integration include:

Safe Fax Delivery: Send faxes using safer, security-enhanced delivery channels, either via email-over-TLS or Web-over-secure links.The sheer amount of faxes and fax-related communications procured in the healthcare industry necessitates a complete, streamlined auditing system that logs and accounts for every piece of correspondence. With a cloud-based fax API system, you get the following

Safe Communications Portal: All communications enacted through the Web Service API come as encrypted links using premier Secure Sockets Layering (SSL) protocol.

Fax Data Corrections: Reduce the likelihood of human error and improper data inputs. Replix Healthcare Fax can pull fax numbers and other simple data from your existing fax directories, including popular systems like LDAP, Microsoft Active Directory and IBM Domino Address Books.

Complementary Administrative Tools: You can incorporate other administrative and fax-management tasks into Replix Healthcare Fax through Web Service API.

What Can Your Healthcare Organization Accomplish With HIPAA-Compliant Fax Services and Support?

It’s not just about saving time and money. A complete, HIPAA-compliant fax solution for your medical or healthcare organization alleviates the oversight and energy it takes to remain in compliance, which is square one for those in the industry.

These cloud-based faxing programs also put people first — from your office administrators to your patients themselves. As concerns over data privacy and usage only grow more pressing, you can rest assured your organization is taking every possible measure to secure medical information and meet the public’s heightened demands.

A Replix® HIPAA-compliant fax solution from Softlinx is your partner in doing so. Schedule a free live software demo today at (800) 899-7724, email our support specialists, request a quote online or fill out our contact form.

Why You Should Use a Secure Fax

Is online fax secure? That is one of the most frequently asked questions among people who have yet to find a secure fax service. If you’re still unsure about online faxing, this guide will answer everything you need to know about using an online fax service.

What Is Secure Fax?

A secure fax is a digital document that is encrypted for security over fax servers. A secure fax cannot be intercepted, stolen or accessed by unauthorized third parties. On a secure fax, the numbers of both the sender and the recipient are hidden from view to protect both identities. Secure faxes are protected with strong encryption and impossible to read until they arrive in the hands of recipients.

Many of today’s businesses are employing cloud fax service companies to safely fax sensitive document with utmost confidentiality.

How to Send a Secure Fax

When you need to send documents in as safe a format as possible, your best option is to use a secure cloud fax service. Online secure fax services keep documents safe from interception while in transit between senders and receivers as well as while at rest in the cloud. Compared to traditional faxing methods, digital faxing offers the following benefits:

1. Encrypted Systems

Correspondence via digital fax is done over an encrypted system that is far safer than Ethernet, WiFi or phone lines. This makes digital fax a far safer and more secure medium of communication than either traditional fax or email, which both occur over lines that could easily be hacked or intercepted by a third party.

Traditional faxing is done over phone lines, rendering such documents vulnerable in situations where a line has been bugged by an information thief. If, for example, your company is infiltrated by someone who intends to steal information and pass it onto a third party, that individual could possibly bug your phone lines and make it possible for the competing entity to receive incoming and outgoing fax messages.

When matters of safety are taken into consideration, email correspondence is also trumped by the digital faxing option. If someone sends a document to your email inbox, that document is passed through Ethernet cords that are similar in nature to phone lines. Moreover, emails are vulnerable to hackers and data breaches. In the medium of digital fax correspondence, each exchange is protected by layers of security that are impossible to penetrate with phone bugs and email phishing tactics.

2. Flexibility

With digital faxes, you can choose to receive the documents on an email server or a fax machine. Furthermore digital fax servers can also deliver your faxes into secure network folders or directly into your business applications. As such, the faxing medium offers a range of choices that email itself simply lacks. If the documents in question are of a sensitive nature, you would definitely want to restrict the exchanges to faxing devices. This, of course, would be the option to take if the documents involve signatures, social security numbers or credit card information.

If the documents are benign and contain no sensitive data, you may opt to receive them as emails or faxes. For faxes that merely concern promotions or party invites, you might wish to receive them as email correspondence.

3. Legally Binding Documents

When it comes to legally binding documents, email remains an unacceptable medium. Given the aforementioned problems associated with email, there are too many risks involved with emailing legal documents. For starters, there is no way for a party that requests a signature to verify the authenticity of a signature when it arrives in the form of an email message.

Legal documents are one of the main reasons why fax, both traditional and digital, has remained popular in the face of email and online correspondence. Fax has always been an accepted medium for legally binding documents because the issuing party can verify that the signature is indeed authentic.

If a document is signed in paper form, the authenticity of the signature is obvious due to the handwriting of the signature itself, whether the document is signed in ink and returned via snail mail or returned via fax. If a document is signed electronically on a digital fax form, the signature is verifiable since the document itself can only be processed on the computing device of the intended recipient of the original blank document. Therefore, faxed documents are generally accepted as legally binding, barring those submitted to government agencies.

4. Hack-Proof Documents

Cyber thieves can hack into email servers and leak the private data of targeted parties. Instances like these have collapsed businesses, ruined careers, destroyed reputations and put people at risk. Despite the efforts of email service providers, who have worked with anti-malware developers to block the intrusions of data thieves, hacking remains a problem for many users. For each new fortification in cybersecurity, hackers up the ante and find new ways to bypass security code.

With faxes, there is no equivalent to the hacking issue because cybercriminals cannot hack into a fax to steal data. You never have to worry about unauthorized foreign parties cracking the code on a fax to access your private info. Simply put, faxes rely on a different type of technology that cannot be intercepted by third parties. Even if an unauthorized party intercepts a fax communication, the thief would not actually be able to steal any data from incoming or outgoing faxes because the data would need to be converted for readability and only the sender or receiver could authorize that task.

5. No Spam

One of the biggest differences between the mediums of fax and email is the flow of spam, a problem solely confined to the email medium. Since the rise of email back in the mid-1990s, the word

“spam” has been common parlance among even the most entry-level Internet users. You will inevitably receive spam the moment you give an email address to anyone outside your closest personal confidants.

Thankfully, today’s most broadly used email servers are equipped with functions that filter spam into separate folders, allowing users to avoid the majority of unwanted messages. Still, the very presence of spam as an ongoing problem — one that everyone with an email address has had to deal with at some time or another — points to the very real security issues of email as a medium. The fact that you can end up on spam lists simply for listing your email address on social media, even in the most limited capacity, points to the real and clear danger of exchanging sensitive data through email correspondence.

In the medium of fax correspondence, there is no equivalent to spam. Even if your fax number falls into the hands of a bulk-list hard seller, it is illegal to send junk faxes because doing so uses up the toner and paper of parties at the receiving end. Therefore, digital and traditional fax correspondence is free of the plague of spam or anything of a similar nature.

6. No Blocking

With email, problems can arise with the blocking features that are generally designed to protect users. The blocking features are intended to filter out spam and messages with dangerous attachments. However, various other messages can get scooped into blocking filters due to characteristics that are not always easy to pinpoint. For example, you might send an important business email to a potential client or partner, only for that message to end up in the recipient’s spam folder. While the individual might have enacted steep, indiscriminate filter functions, the problem could easily be down to the wording of the email header.

When important emails end up in other people’s spam filters despite your own best intentions, you could end up missing out on various opportunities. This is one of the other main reasons why faxes are better than email when it comes to business correspondence.

With faxes, there is no such thing as a blocking function because faxing has no equivalent to spam. In the majority of cases, faxes are anticipated and warmly received on the other end. Even when a fax is not expected in advance, it will generally be received well due to the pre-established relations between the two parties. After all, you are unlikely to receive outright junk faxes because the practice is illegal. If someone sends you a fax, it would probably be for something that you already anticipate signing and returning or responding to in some other positive way.

7. Instant Confirmation

One of the biggest advantages of fax correspondence is that you can verify whether the message has been received at the other end. With traditional fax, you are notified the moment the fax is either auto-printed or placed in a queue at the receiving end.

When you send a document via fax, you get the instant assurance that your message or document was received on the other end, regardless of whether the recipient is there to view it at the time in question. In that regard, you can feel a sense of accomplishment when you send a fax because you will have completed your end of the exchange, regardless of whether the other party responds.

Is Faxing Documents Secure?

When you use an online fax service, the following practices can help your organization keep security tight:

Make sure that your fax service provider uses strong encryption to keep your documents protected and secure while they are in transmission or at rest in the cloud.
If you forward a fax that contains portions of information deemed confidential by the original sender, make sure to crop the info in question before you forward the fax to the third party.
Before sending a fax, contact the intended recipient to verify they will be available to receive the fax. This step is especially crucial if the fax communication involves a deadline or anything that requires prompt action at the other end.
If a fax concerns matters of high confidentiality, refrain from sharing said fax with organizations that engage in weak confidentiality practices.
Enact a retention policy within your organization and among partnered entities to ensure that faxed communications via email, both sent and received, are not retained beyond their intended expiration dates.
Fax services typically retain logs of outgoing and incoming communications. It is, therefore, crucial to read and understand the privacy protections and retention policies of a service provider.

Cloud-based fax services are safe and efficient as long as the medium is used with the utmost responsibility.

Is Using Email Safer Than Sending Faxes?

Email has been around since the 1980s and remains popular for many reasons. When compared to the fax, email servers provide quality in the following areas:

1. Password Protection

For basic privacy, email is a safe medium for basic correspondence in most situations. Email servers are protected by login and password prompts. These prompts will not grant access if the wrong info is entered into the fields. If you enter the wrong username or password twice in a row, the email server will usually block your IP address. You will then need to verify your identify and reset your information, typically through a secondary email address or possibly via phone verification.

With strict login prompts and security protocols, email is generally a secure medium for the majority of daily communications that do not involve legal documents or sensitive business data. That said, the vulnerable aspects of email have rendered the medium inappropriate on all but the most encrypted servers for communications between elected officials and government personnel.

2. Firewalls

Most of today’s email services protect users with firewall functions. These filter out suspect emails and block the activation of attachments that could be dangerous, such as .exe files. Therefore, today’s email platforms are far safer than the early programs that most people used back in the late ‘90s and the early ‘00s when it was not uncommon for extension files to execute and infect hard drives. These days, such problems are rare on most email servers. In fact, few of today’s younger users have ever had a computer crash or OS infection originate from a corrupt email.

Email is generally viewed unfavorably as a means of communications among serious organizations. This is because of its checkered past. To a large extent, these attitudes are justified. Email servers are not foolproof. Some of the biggest horror stories from yesteryear could still occur in isolated scenarios. As such, businesses, government agencies and other high-security organizations refrain from using email servers for all but the most casual and inconsequential correspondence.

The advent of mobile text messaging, which is commonly practiced among work colleagues, has largely replaced email.

3. Privacy

In many ways, email is one of the most private mediums of communication between people who are not in the same room. While you can talk to someone on a phone, other people nearby might overhear your side of the conversation. You could exchange messages on an online forum or on social media, but all such posts could easily be seen by other people who use those platforms, even if you use high-privacy settings. With email, the only person who sees the message is the user with access to the inbox in question.

In this regard, email correspondence has the advantage over faxing. A fax could potentially be seen by anyone with access to the machine at the receiving end. If you run a busy office space where dozens of people from various departments pass by the fax receptor each hour, no communication sent via conventional fax could really be considered private.

Granted, if you are the only person with access to a particular fax, the privacy risks would be less substantial. However, that gets beyond the intended purpose of faxing, which is generally for two parties to instantly exchange secure and often legally binding documents across great distances.

Basically, faxing has the advantage over email in terms of security. On the other hand, email has the upper hand in terms of privacy. If you need to send sensitive data or a signed document to someone in a different department, building, city, state or country, use fax. If you want to reveal something touchy about your personal life to a close friend afar, use email.

Why You Should Use Fax Instead of Email

In all the debates about fax vs. email security, most people agree that faxing is the better option for documents of a sensitive or highly classified nature. Email lacks the safety of fax for the following reasons:

1. Email Attachments

Emails can come with dangerous attachments. These attachments can infect your computer and possibly spread to other machines linked to the same network. If you work in an office and receive an email purported to be of interest to your business, it could possibly have a virus attached. This virus will execute on your hard drive the moment you open the message.

The scary thing about email attachments is how they are sometimes difficult to spot. Even if you do realize that an email has some type of malware attached, it could be impossible to stop the infection by the time it comes to your attention.

These days, people are largely desensitized to the threat of harmful email attachments. This is because it is often assumed that Windows will detect such problems in advance and suppress them. Therefore, employees are often naive about the potential threat of email viruses. Moreover, certain types of malware are designed to run in the background of a machine and steal info. This can happen unbeknownst to the user of an infected machine.

Faxed documents, by contrast, never pose such a threat because there is no way to attach malware to a fax.

2. Email Hacking

Another major risk of email correspondence is the possibility of third-party hacking. If you and a colleague are discussing confidential business information via email, those messages could be accessed by an unauthorized party and leaked into the wrong hands. It could either be a rival within your company or a competitor looking to harm your business in some way.

When email accounts are hacked, the intrusion is virtually impossible to detect. Most victims of email hacking only learn of the situation the hard way, such as when information is leaked to the Internet. Depending on the sensitivity of the information in question, an email leak could cause a company to unravel.

With secure digital faxing, there is no risk of third-party hacking because the information in transit would merely consist of unreadable code that can only be translated on the machine of the recipient.

3. Phishing

Another major risk of email is the possibility of phishing. Phishing is generally defined by messages from an ostensibly friendly source. These emails contain fetching links. The moment you click one of these links, popup prompts appear on your screen that ask for basic personal info in a misleading but seemingly benign manner. Even though many email users are wise to such gambits in this day and age, many people still fall for this trap. Your company might have a naive employee who takes the bait and unwittingly puts the whole network at risk.

In some cases, programs will open that take over your computer. These programs execute inescapable prompt boxes the moment you open the message. Phishing is basically designed to access vital company data. This may include contact lists, credit card numbers and the passwords of program account holders. In a worst-case scenario, a phishing incident could lead to a data breach of epic proportions. This could cause you to lose customers by the thousands.

Thankfully, phishing is not possible with secure digital faxing.

Secure Fax Service From Softlinx

Secure fax is becoming the most accepted way for B2B communication. If you constantly engage in fax communications to and from your customers and contacts, you should definitely employ the services of a cloud fax service. Contact Softlinx for a demo or get a quote.