3 Reasons why virtual fax is more secure than email
Fax has been around for decades and the majority of businesses and industries continue to use it. Even with the rise of email, companies still prefer to use fax. Why is that?
Emails have to go through firewalls, ISPs, spam filters, etc. Leaving them vulnerable to attacks from cybercriminals. The importance of data security is crucial; with the amount of high profile breaches over the last number of years and increasing public awareness highlight this. You only need to look at 2018 to see that. The ten biggest data breaches alone exposed 2,438,000,000 people.
So how do we bring fax into the 21st century? In recent years, the number of companies using virtual fax has increased due to the advanced features they provide alongside the traditional capabilities of analog fax.
Our virtual cloud based fax solution eComFax is cost friendly, convenient and more secure than both traditional faxing and email. It allows you to send and receive faxes from any device and location with an internet connection. Continue reading to learn 3 reasons why virtual fax is more secure than email.
Benefits of virtual fax vs email
1. Legality
For a document to be legally binding and therefore admissible in court, you have to be able to ensure its authenticity is 100% accurate. This is one major advantage that virtual fax has over traditional email which can’t offer this because it is vulnerable to fraudulent activity, interception, manipulation and hacking. This might be unsettling given how much we rely on email. Of course, you may still submit emails as evidence; however, they will be heavily scrutinized.
On the other hand, with virtual fax you can be certain that they will be admissible in court while still having the convenience of sending faxes through email. What’s more, a faxed signature is also valid legally and accepted for many business deals and transactions.
2. Higher level of encryption
While email is the most common way for businesses to interact, it is not the safest option. Traditional email is vulnerable to interception by unauthorized individuals who either receive a copy in error or who deliberately gain access to others’ email accounts. Which means that criminals can infect computer systems with malicious software that can steal passwords and login information or allow access to the whole computer system, permitting emails to be read. This malware may then infect the recipients’ computer systems, causing security issues and data loss of even more sensitive information such as physical address and even credit card numbers.
It can also be used to distribute spam, time and resource-wasting commercial messages or phishing, which is when fake emails that appear to come from a bank or other legitimate sender and attempts to trick the recipient into giving up sensitive information such as secure login details.
3. Compliance
Being compliant with regulations has been a key topic over the last few years and is only set to increase. With GDPR in Europe and the California Consumer Privacy Act having come into effect. With these regulations, alongside the general increase in public awareness and mistrust, Companies cannot afford to let a big data breach happen. Our eComFax solution complies with many regulations such as GDPR, MiFID II, HIPPA, PCI-DSS, FERPA, and the Dodd-Frank Act etc. You can send and receive encrypted documents throughout all the process of sending, transmission and receiving. Only the authorized recipient can view them, thus reducing the risk of others viewing sensitive data and adhering to these compliance regulations.
Why use virtual fax instead of encrypted email?
This is a very common question. Your first thoughts might be that it is the same thing and both are just as secure. Unfortunately, if you use encrypted email, it´s not as secure as you might think:
– Message only encryption. With the majority of encrypted email services only your message is encrypted, not the subject or the email address of the recipient. This may not cause major problems, but it can still give information about your business that you may not want people to have.
– Complexity. It’s also a much more complex and time consuming as whoever you send it to needs to have the same software or a special key to decrypt it. One issue you need to be aware of is that secure email is not usually encrypted when stored.
– Cost. There is also the issue of cost, with the average costing 8$ per email account per month, that can quickly add up to 1000´s even for a small business. This alongside other risk factors make virtual fax more appealing than encrypted email.
Does your company use analog fax or email to send important and sensitive information? Would you like to learn more about eComFax and how it can help your business? Contact us today and we would be happy to help you in any way we can.
