Physical vs. Virutal fax - Which is more secure?
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I know, it's an easy answer, but I'm fighting an internal battle with HR and I need to mount a case for why an online fax service is more secure than a physical fax machine.
I have outlined the obvious like plain text printouts, physical access to the machine, saved faxes in the buffer/memory, the insecurity of analog transmissions, etc...
I was hoping that maybe someone had some definitive documentation on the insecure nature of physical faxes, or a comparison of online vs. physical fax security.
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Between the two, virtual is more secure, because they can only be delivered to the user(s) specified.
Beyond that, there is no additional security. A fax is still a fax.
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Physical fax has issues like locality (security can be breached by knowing WHO you are) and lack of security on transmission and dealing with the paper security at either end. Virtual helps to mitigate this. But bottom line, security is of ZERO concern, if HR is willing to use a fax. Why are they using a fax at all if security is of any concern? There is literally nothing less secure. Faxing is like putting data on a bulletin board.
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I couldn't agree more, Scott. The reality is, that a large segment of healthcare and insurance still rely on fax type transmissions in their day to day operations. So unfortunately the "fax" is not going away any time soon.
What is happening is a migration to digital/online faxing solutions that offer encrypted transmission, secure retrieval, and secure portals.
In my situation, I can't do a thing about eliminating faxes, but what I can do is require they be done using secure methods. Online digital fax solutions, like eFax, goldfax, etc... can bridge this gap, and let me do away with the physical fax machine. My only problem is making a case for this migration with those that hold the purse strings.
Easy to quantify economically, but much harder to convey the security issues and still ensure day to day operations.
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@pchiodo said in Physical vs. Virutal fax - Which is more secure?:
I couldn't agree more, Scott. The reality is, that a large segment of healthcare and insurance still rely on fax type transmissions in their day to day operations. So unfortunately the "fax" is not going away any time soon.
None that I would use, though. If they are in a position like healthcare or HR and use fax, they know that security matters and I'd call that professionally negligent on their parts and I would then rule them security violations and escort them out the door. If you did that on Wall St., you'd literally be escorted out in cuffs with FBI cars waiting for you.
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@pchiodo said in Physical vs. Virutal fax - Which is more secure?:
What is happening is a migration to digital/online faxing solutions that offer encrypted transmission, secure retrieval, and secure portals.
In my situation, I can't do a thing about eliminating faxes, but what I can do is require they be done using secure methods. Online digital fax solutions, like eFax, goldfax, etc... can bridge this gap, and let me do away with the physical fax machine. My only problem is making a case for this migration with those that hold the purse strings.
Easy to quantify economically, but much harder to convey the security issues and still ensure day to day operations.
All of that doesn't get you up to unencrypted email security levels, though. Time to start firing insecure vendors putting employees at risk because they can't be bothered to meet the most minimum security standards.
