How Important is It to Send Faxes Securely?

Traditional fax has been largely replaced by internet faxing. However, while quicker and more efficient, the internet fax runs into a problem that was never an issue with traditional fax: ensuring the data is not intercepted by a third party during delivery. Sure, there were security issues with traditional faxes, for example, you could never guarantee that the person who picked the fax off the machine at the other end was the person intended as the recipient. It was also possible to intercept faxes in the past, but you needed specialist equipment, which as far as we know, was only available to the government.

Today, though, we have to worry about cyber criminals getting hold of confidential information that we send by fax. Sometimes these cyber criminals may be interested in committing fraud or theft, other times they may be interested in business-to-business espionage, you just never know, and it is definitely better to be safe than sorry.

Below, we are going to take a close look at the importance of sending fax in a secure manner:

The key factor in ensuring security when sending a fax is that people may get hold of valuable information and use it to commit crimes in your name, or to find out information that they can blackmail you with, or find out things that you are too embarrassed to tell other people (like the results of a gynaecological examination). In short, there are a whole host of reasons why it is important to ensure security. In reference to the title of the article, then, yes, it is very important to send faxes securely.

Now, let us move on to discuss the basics of sending a secure fax:

One of the first things that you should do is to check your own system for virus, malware, and various other security issues. You should have a high quality anti-virus protection and you will need to run a full scan. If you don’t do this, you could accidently send correspondents an infection, and they won’t be very happy – imagine if you send a Trojan horse along with your CV, you probably won’t be getting the job!

When sending a fax to someone that you do not know that well, only send the information that they need. Never elaborate or send anything too personal if you do not have to. Needless to say you should make sure that the recipient is a bone fide business or a genuine person (- as opposed to a fraudster) before you send them anything at all.

Next, you have to protect yourself against human error. Make sure that you check, and then check again, the number that you have dialled. Many times a fax has ended up in the wrong place because of a wrong number. Sure, most of the time its fine and no one is any the wiser, but sometimes it has gone wrong.

There are also a number of follow up procedures that you should adopt:

·         Delivery Report: most internet fax providers will send a delivery report

·         Page Number: make sure that the number of pages you intended to send were sent.

·         Telephone: sometimes it is appropriate to telephone the recipient to make sure that they have received the fax.

We hope that you have enjoyed this article. If you would like to learn more about secure fax, then please visit Interfax.net