When you hear the word fax, it conjures up images of antiquated noisy machines taking up a large area in the corner of an office, right? Surely no one uses fax anymore in this day and age? You wouldn’t be alone in thinking this. While email and instant messaging have pervaded every aspect of modern life, one would assume it has also taken over in the business and legal sectors as well.
Surprisingly, fax is just as popular as ever, thanks to a modern take on an old technology. Let’s take a closer look at the place of faxing in the modern business landscape.
Fax is Secure
Because so much information and data are stored on the internet nowadays, it is always a challenge to keep sensitive information out of the hands of hackers, fraudsters, and many kinds of opportunistic cyberthieves around the world. Plus, maintaining a physical fax server is not high on the priority list of IT technicians nowadays, given the plethora of other more pressing issues that require maintenance and monitoring.
However, there are many industries, including health care, business, legal, manufacturing, and financial services that rely on faxing services over email.
Email is Not Secure
It’s easy to be tempted to send that important document by email, given the effort required to send a fax from a machine. First, you have to make sure the machine is up and running at the required time, stocked with paper, toner, and ink, and has a good signal. You must also enter the correct number, and hope the recipient is prepared to receive the document. Failure on any of these counts can result in your fax not sending, which could have dire consequences.
Of course, email is easier – but it comes with risks. We constantly see data breaches exposing clients’ personal information on the news. While scanning and attaching a document to an email may initially appear to be the better solution when compared to the effort required to use a fax machine, there remains one important factor to consider: security.
Online Faxing Solutions
Sending a fax via Google is one alternative that provides users with the security of fax and the convenience of email. This solution allows businesses to take advantage of all the latest technological advances while mitigating the security risks that can swiftly put a business on the brink of collapse.
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Analog Fax
While analog fax remains pretty secure, it still takes a huge amount of time, resources, and labor to use. Users will often have to wait their turn, manually input the recipient’s information, wait for confirmation, deal with busy signals, and maintain proper levels of paper, toner, and ink.
Faxing lacks the convenience of email, and email lacks the security of faxing, so the solution lies somewhere in the middle ground in a hybrid between the two.
To Sum Up
Fax machines conjure up images of bygone days of standing in line, endlessly changing ink, toner, and paper while waiting for a sufficient signal. While traditional faxing has largely been replaced by its younger cousin email, there are still some industries that rely on fax; namely financial services, legal, business, medical and manufacturing.
They require the services of fax because it isn’t subject to the same security threats that email is. Online faxing services are a middle ground that provides the modern conveniences and efficiency of email with the security of fax.
