Out of all the things to feel insecure about, email fax may be the least of your worries.
However, when it comes to businesses, online fax security is a top priority. If you’re feeling insecure about computer faxing, then I’m here to show you how to reclaim that security and feel safer with online faxing.
Encryption Is A Basic Necessity
Virtually all of today’s online fax providers encrypt fax transmissions with 128-bit or 256-bit encryption. Both encryption standards protect your transmission from start to finish. Even if someone ‘intercepted’ the fax data along the way, they would not be able to decode that data without the encryption key. Although encryption is a basic necessity for today’s business services, you should always double check to make sure fax transmissions are encrypted.
Enable Password Protection
Online faxing lets you receive faxes over all internet-connected devices. That’s great – until you think about how many internet-connected devices you own and who could use those devices.
Fortunately, many popular electronic fax providers let you enable password protection on all incoming faxes and a free fax number. Before you can view a received fax, you must enter a PIN or password. If you’re dealing with sensitive legal documents or business information, then adding this password is always a good idea.
As with all passwords these days, it’s important to add upper case letters, lower case letters, numbers, special characters, and other security measures. Otherwise, your account could be breached by a malicious third party.
Number Blocking
Most online fax services let you block specific numbers. Maybe you want to block someone who is harassing your business, or maybe you’re receiving lots of spam faxes and advertisements. Whatever the reason may be, number blocking is an effective way to safeguard your business.
Feeling Insecure About Reliability?
For whatever reason, some people still have the mistaken idea that virtual faxing services are less reliable than traditional fax machines. That’s wrong for two different reasons:
- Online fax services do not deliver busy signals to contacts
- Online fax services use a redundancy system with multiple servers to ensure faxes always go through
With traditional fax machines, your fax will not be sent or received when your phone line goes down. Phone lines can go down for many different reasons – including a power outage or local system failure.
The only reason online faxing would fail is if the internet suddenly collapsed across America. If that happens, then you’ve probably got bigger things to worry about than sending your next online fax.
All kidding aside, online faxing is more reliable today than ever before. If ‘reliability’ is a major reason why you haven’t switched to online faxing yet, then it’s time to consider making the switch.
User Controls
Some online fax services include multi-user support, while others do not. If your fax service includes multi-user support, then multiple people could have access to your online fax account.
Some businesses give full online fax permissions to all employees, while others reserve those permissions purely for department heads. Whatever your business’s needs may be, you should be careful when setting up user controls. Before adding a new user to your account, be sure to clarify basic security standards with that individual. Setup a password and make sure all their internet-connected devices follow the same protection standards.
Online Faxing Is Significantly Safer Than Traditional Faxing
Traditional faxing does not encrypt fax data. Instead, many faxes are sent through unsecured phone lines where they can be intercepted and read. Online faxing, on the other hand, uses the same secure transfer protocol as banking websites, government organizations, and online shopping sites. It’s incredibly safe and secure.
Whether you’re researching online fax for the first time or trying to make your current online fax account more secure, the tips listed above will help you feel safer about the ways in which your business communicates.
