Online Fax - Client Side Security

Client Side Security: It is a good idea to consider what kind of information access you will need on a per user basis. Will there be areas where an open terminal is used that will need Online Fax access? The fax machines are no longer acceptable technology for receiving faxes due to security compromises. Employees will inadvertently pick up the wrong fax or the faxes will eventually be delivered to the wrong in boxes. How about the embarrassing follow-up to these problems, calling and asking that the fax be re-transmitted? What is the cost of lost confidence, lost orders, misplaced contracts or poor customer service? An enterprise-grade, hosted fax server solution should eliminate these problems.

OnLine Fax - Security of Premises

Security of Premises: The premises of your off site Online Fax solutions provider should also be considered. Your data transmission and storage equipment may be secured but how do you know who may have access to the vendor facilities? What is the risk factor there? Is the facility guarded by a qualified security guard? What hours is the guard on duty? Is there video monitoring of the facility? Is the video monitored live, for immediate response? What kind of after hours access is there to the building; to the servers?

Online Fax Hardware Security

Hardware Security: Just as you would ensure redundancy, power backup and other precautions for your computer system, your online fax communications provider should have appropriate measures in place to account for electrical power failure, server power supply failure, WAN fail over redundancy and RAID to protect your data in case of hard drive failure.

Online Fax Network Security

Network Security: Your fax network servers will need to be behind a firewall. The key here is that there should NOT be any public access to the web servers where your data is stored. Even with the best of secured servers, there's always a better hacker out there (Wiki Leaks?). If you're the server where your data is stored has log-in access, then that data is compromised and you do not have an enterprise-grade security solution.

Some corporations require custom Online Fax solutions such as having faxes received sent to an administratively controlled server for in-house distribution or having inbound faxes land on an SFTP server for retrieval. The important thing is to consider the nature of the content that will be moving inbound and outbound. Determine your network security requirements but do not set yourself up with the loophole of having your faxes go to an outside server with public log-in access.

It is also imperative that your outbound faxes would be sent from your service provider through secure internet lines (SSL); just as the service provider should be using a secured server (HTTPS, SFTP, SSH).

Online Fax Document Security

Document Security: It is not enough that you would need the option to send your data as an encrypted PDF document. An enterprise grade Online Fax solution should be able to assign this option on a per user basis and allow that user the option to send each document as secured or unsecured. Make sure that the secured data is encrypted before it is transmitted from your computer; before it is routed to a server.