Navigating the Complexities of Scaling During M&As
As valued eFax Corporate® customers, you understand that mergers and acquisitions (M&As) can significantly impact your organization’s communication and data management systems. The integration of diverse systems and processes introduces complexities that can hinder operational efficiency and create friction. As companies navigate the complexities of combining different technologies and infrastructures, they face the challenge of consolidating systems to reduce redundancy and streamline operations.
Effective communication and data management are critical during M&As, as they influence how quickly and smoothly the integration can proceed. The goal is to minimize disruptions and ensure that all departments and teams can function cohesively despite the organizational changes. One solution that can simplify these transitions is eFax Corporate, a cloud-native fax platform designed to address the specific challenges of scaling services during M&As. By leveraging eFax Corporate, businesses can overcome many of the common pitfalls associated with integrating disparate systems.
Minimizing Costs and Complexity During M&A Activities
Cost Reduction Through Consolidation
One of the primary financial benefits of integrating eFax Corporate during an M&A is the potential for cost reduction. M&As often result in overlapping technologies and redundant systems, which can lead to increased operational and maintenance costs. Traditional fax systems, for instance, involve physical hardware, dedicated phone lines, and ongoing maintenance expenses.
You have eliminated these expenses by transitioning to eFax Corporate’s cloud-based solution, which removes the need for physical fax machines and the associated costs of maintaining them. Instead, you can leverage a single, unified platform that scales with your needs. This consolidation not only reduces infrastructure costs but also minimizes expenses related to hardware upkeep and operational inefficiencies.
Our pay-as-you-go model further enhances financial management by aligning faxing expenses with actual usage, helping you avoid unnecessary costs and allocate resources more effectively.
Simplifying IT Resource Management
Managing multiple fax systems across different departments or acquired companies can place a significant burden on IT resources. Each system requires separate administration, troubleshooting, and support, which can strain IT teams and detract from their ability to focus on strategic initiatives.
With eFax Corporate, you can centralize fax management into a single, cloud-based platform, simplifying the administration process. This centralization reduces the number of support tickets and streamlines IT resource allocation. IT teams can manage all fax-related tasks from a unified interface, improving efficiency and reducing the time spent on maintenance and troubleshooting.
The ease of integration with existing IT infrastructure further enhances the benefits of eFax Corporate. The platform’s compatibility with various business applications means that your IT team can implement eFax Corporate without extensive reconfiguration or additional training, allowing for a smoother transition during the M&A process.
Optimizing Operational Efficiency with eFax Corporate
Seamless Integration and Flexibility
Operational efficiency is crucial during M&As, as you need to maintain continuity while integrating new systems and processes. eFax Corporate’s integration with existing workflows and business applications plays a vital role in optimizing operational efficiency.
Our platform’s flexibility allows for integration with a wide range of enterprise applications, including Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, and Document Management Systems (DMS). This capability ensures that fax communications are embedded within existing workflows, enhancing productivity and reducing the risk of communication disruptions.
Our platform’s flexibility also allows you to customize your fax solutions according to specific business needs. Whether it’s automating document routing or implementing custom workflows, eFax Corporate can be tailored to fit the unique requirements of each business unit or department, ensuring that fax operations align with overall business goals.
Enhancing Performance and Security
Performance and security are paramount when managing sensitive data, especially during M&As. eFax Corporate provides a consistent and reliable platform that ensures all data transmissions are secure and compliant with regulatory standards. Our advanced encryption protocols protect data both in transit and at rest, significantly reducing the risk of unauthorized access.
Perhaps, more importantly, eFax Corporate adheres to industry standards and regulations, such as HIPAA and GDPR, ensuring that your fax communications meet compliance requirements.
By leveraging a secure and compliant fax solution, your business can enhance overall performance and mitigate the risks associated with handling sensitive information. This focus on security not only protects your organization’s data but also helps build trust with clients and stakeholders during the M&A process.
Positioning Fax Operations for Continued Success
Ensuring Scalability for Future Growth
A key advantage of adopting a cloud-native platform like eFax Corporate is its scalability. As your business continues to grow and evolve, its fax operations need to adapt to changing requirements. eFax Corporate’s cloud-based infrastructure provides the flexibility to scale operations without the need for significant hardware investments or system overhauls.
The platform can easily accommodate increased fax volumes, additional users, and new business processes, ensuring that your fax solution remains effective as your organization expands. This scalability is particularly beneficial during M&As, where rapid changes in business needs and operational requirements are common.
Long-Term Benefits of a Cloud-Based Solution
Cloud technology supports digital transformation by enabling your business to streamline operations, reduce costs, and enhance flexibility. eFax Corporate’s cloud-based solution is integral to this transformation, offering long-term benefits that extend beyond the immediate M&A process.
The cloud-based nature of eFax Corporate allows for regular updates and improvements without requiring manual intervention. This ensures that your fax solution remains current with the latest technology advancements and compliance standards. Additionally, cloud solutions typically offer improved disaster recovery options and data redundancy, further enhancing business continuity.
By adopting eFax Corporate, your organization can maintain a competitive advantage in an increasingly digital world. The platform’s ability to support ongoing digital initiatives and adapt to future changes ensures that your fax operations are aligned with broader business objectives and technological advancements.
Positioning Your Business for Success During M&A
Integrating eFax Corporate during mergers and acquisitions offers numerous benefits, including cost reduction, simplified IT management, and enhanced operational efficiency. The cloud-native platform addresses the specific challenges of scaling services during M&As, providing a solution that is both flexible and secure. By consolidating fax services with eFax Corporate, your organization can navigate the complexities of M&As more effectively, ensuring a smoother transition and positioning itself for long-term success in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.
An FCC ruling allows telecom companies to cease support for analog communications, which means you won’t be able to rely on your fax machines or on-prem fax servers for much longer.
As a corporate IT professional, you probably have many valid reasons for wanting to finally dump your legacy fax infrastructure—from the hassles of troubleshooting paper jams to the high costs of renewing maintenance agreements.
But based on a federal regulation just updated in August 2022, if your company needs reliable and affordable faxing capability going forward, you’ll actually need to retire that legacy fax infrastructure—quickly—and replace it with something new.
What This Federal Ruling Means for You
For decades, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) required telecommunications companies to offer their customers affordable analog communications using the Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS). However, with the ever-increasing availability and falling costs of digital services such as VoIP, millions of customers have migrated away from the POTS network on their own, making these services both more burdensome and less profitable for carriers.
In 2019, the FCC issued a ruling allowing these companies to retire their POTS infrastructure over a three-year transition period, which ended in August 2022. However, it’s important to note that “the Commission has not mandated the decommissioning of POTS lines. In FCC 19-72, adopted in August 2019, the Commission granted forbearance from two narrow regulatory obligations imposed on incumbent local exchange carriers (LECs). Specifically, the Commission granted forbearance relief to price cap LECs throughout their local service areas from the obligations to (1) make analog copper loops available to competitive LECs on an unbundled basis at TELRIC rates, and (2) offer for resale at wholesale rates any telecommunications service that the carrier provides at retail to subscribers who are not telecommunications carriers.”
This ruling does not mean that all POTS lines must be replaced with alternative services immediately, but it does signal a strong push towards digital communication methods. During the three-year transition period, competitive LECs were required to make alternative arrangements in the affected service areas. Now that the transition period has ended, it’s likely that your phone carrier is working to decommission these lines.
Why You Should Be Looking for a New Fax Solution Right Now
A word of warning. Perhaps you’re one of the lucky organizations whose phone carrier is behind on the FCC’s August 2022 transition deadline. Maybe your carrier hasn’t even begun the work of drawing down the POTS infrastructure that supports your analog fax lines. You should not treat your carrier’s delay as an opportunity to relax your own search for a more modern business-faxing alternative.
There are two important reasons for this. First, as your carrier migrates its resources away from supporting your POTS-enabled analog service, you should expect both the quality and reliability of service to deteriorate. Second, the longer it takes your carrier to fully eliminate its POTS infrastructure, the more likely it is that your costs for maintaining that outdated service will rise. After all, another key provision of the FCC’s ruling was to remove the price caps on what carriers are allowed to charge for POTS-enabled services.
The Smart, Easy Way to Migrate Your Fax Environment Away from POTS
So, while the FCC has not mandated the full shutdown of POTS communications, the regulatory environment has made it clear that reliance on these outdated systems is no longer viable. Even if your provider hasn’t yet decommissioned the POTS infrastructure supporting your faxing capabilities, they will likely do so soon—and from their perspective, the sooner, the better.
What do you do now? There is one extremely simple and cost-effective solution: switch to digital cloud fax. Moving your company to the right, enterprise-caliber cloud faxing solution will mean:
Your IT team won’t have any onsite hardware to administer or troubleshoot.
Your staff will be able to send, receive, view, edit, and sign faxes digitally from any computer, tablet, or smartphone.
Your company will have an affordable, pay-as-you-go fax solution that you can scale up—or down—as much and as often as you need.
You’ll save time and money by eliminating the time-consuming manual steps of legacy faxing—and replacing them with a streamlined digital platform that integrates seamlessly with your other workflow apps.
And, perhaps most important for our current conversation:
You’ll move your faxing environment from dependence on the near-obsolete POTS to a future-proof cloud-based communications platform currently serving literally millions of businesses’ daily faxing needs.
Secure communication is mission-critical for organizations across the healthcare industry. Healthcare organizations must comply with stringent regulatory requirements like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to remove the risk of data loss and theft and limit the success of cybercrime.
Central to secure communication in healthcare are Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) systems, which are cost-efficient, offer rich flexibility and mobility features, and can sync with laptops, tablets, smartphones, other software applications, and traditional phone systems. Complying with regulations means deploying secure communication processes and tools like HIPAA-compliant VoIP services. VoIP HIPAA compliant companies are better equipped to securely store patient data while enjoying better-connected systems.
What is HIPAA Compliant VoIP
HIPAA was introduced into American law in August 1996 to secure the transfer of healthcare information and protect personally identifiable information (PII) against fraud and theft. The regulation seeks to prevent healthcare providers from disclosing sensitive or protected data with anyone other than their patients without their consent. Companies that breach HIPAA regulations face significant penalties and even the risk of prison time.
HIPAA ensures organizations protect the privacy and security of patients’ electronic and physical data. It also includes data transmitted via voice calls, which makes HIPAA compliance critical to healthcare providers using VoIP systems.
VoIP, also referred to as IP telephony, is a technology that delivers voice communication over IP networks, most commonly the Internet, rather than traditional phone lines. Some VoIP services only work on computers or specialized VoIP phones; others enable users to use a conventional telephone connected to a VoIP adapter. A VoIP system converts a user’s voice into a digital signal, allowing it to be transmitted across the Internet.
A HIPAA-compliant VoIP phone system meets the requirements set out by the regulation. This includes safeguarding patient data and complying with privacy and security rules around protecting PII. HIPAA compliance is critical across healthcare areas like:
Healthcare providers: All organizations that deliver healthcare services, including clinics, dentists, doctors’ surgeries and hospitals, must comply with HIPAA regulations.
Health plans: Any company that provides or pays for health coverage, such as health insurance firms and health maintenance organizations, is also bound by HIPAA rules.
Healthcare processors: HIPAA compliance is non-negotiable for any organization that processes healthcare data, such as claims processing. It’s also applicable to any organization with access to patient information, and organizations must provide secure communication channels for business associates, such as HIPAA-compliant VoIP.
Importance of HIPAA Compliance in VoIP Systems
Traditional phone lines are often vulnerable to data loss and snooping, which can risk the exposure of confidential health data and patients’ protected health information (PHI). Protecting patient privacy is, therefore, paramount to organizations across the healthcare industry. A HIPAA compliant phone system is critical to ensuring this, helping companies comply with stringent regulations that safeguard sensitive medical data.
A HIPAA compliant phone service for therapists and other medical professionals eliminates the risk of data loss by providing a secure tunnel for transmitting sensitive data. It helps healthcare providers by protecting data, safeguarding them from severe penalties and criminal action, and encouraging stronger patient relationships built around privacy and trust.
4 Benefits of Using HIPAA Compliant VoIP Solutions
HIPAA compliant VoIP solutions provide a wide range of benefits for healthcare organizations. The benefits include:
Enhanced Patient Privacy: A HIPAA compliant VoIP service ensures that only authorized users can access sensitive medical data. This minimizes the risk of data breaches and establishes patient trust.
Avoiding Fines: Failing to comply with the rules set out by the HIPAA regulation can result in severe fines and the risk of prison time. Implementing a HIPAA VoIP system ensures healthcare providers establish the required security standards across their communication processes. It also protects practices and healthcare professionals against the risk of financial penalties.
Improved Communication: One of the biggest benefits of a HIPAA-compliant VoIP service is it unlocks advanced communication tools. A HIPAA VoIP system provides secure call capabilities alongside additional features like secure file sharing, instant messaging and video conferencing. These secure communication tools make it easy for users to comply with HIPAA guidelines, ensuring seamless collaboration between healthcare providers’ employees and across their disparate branches, clinics and offices.
Loyalty and Reputation Boosts: Besides the risk of fines and prison sentences, failing HIPAA compliance also risks significant reputational damage. A HIPAA compliant VoIP solution demonstrates healthcare providers’ commitment to patient privacy, which in turn earns trust from existing users and can attract new patients to a practice. Trust is critical to success in the healthcare industry, so a secure VoIP HIPAA compliant service can set a provider apart from its competitors.
4 Critical HIPAA Requirements for Secure VoIP Communication
HIPAA-compliant VoIP services help healthcare providers comply with the regulation’s Privacy Rule and Security Rule. The Privacy Rule governs how healthcare providers can use and disclose PHI and emphasizes patient control over their health data. Healthcare providers must gain written authorization from patients before they use or disclose PHI.
The Security Rule ensures healthcare providers safeguard electronic PHI (ePHI). Under the rule, providers must ensure robust security measures are in place to protect ePHI from unauthorized access, destruction, disclosure, disruption, modification and use. The Security Rule also outlines four critical requirements under which providers must protect ePHI during VoIP communication.
Data Encryption: Any conversation occurring through VoIP systems, such as chat messaging and calls, that contains PHI must be encrypted through protocols like Transport Layer Security (TLS) or Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). Encryption scrambles data so that any bad actor that intercepts data during transmission can’t make sense of it. As a result, it’s virtually impossible for unauthorized people to access sensitive data.
Access Controls: Healthcare providers must ensure only authorized users can access sensitive data, such as PHI and VoIP systems. The Security Rule requires healthcare providers to utilize the principle of “need-to-know,” ensuring only employees responsible for patient care and treatment can access sensitive data. Additionally, multi-factor authentication provides an extra layer of security, requiring employees to prove their identity beyond simply using a password or code.
Audit Trails: Healthcare providers must maintain a detailed log of all communication through their HIPAA compliant VoIP systems. These audit trails must include data like call duration, the content of messages, the people and organizations involved in the communication and timestamps of conversations. Logging this data is crucial to detailed record-keeping, enabling providers to reconstruct communication history and identify potential security issues.
Data Backup and Disaster Recovery: Health organizations must implement contingency plans to guarantee the availability and integrity of ePHI. This process is critical to protecting sensitive data in the event of system failures, natural disasters, and other emergencies that could leave systems vulnerable to hacking. It also includes regular data backups and restoring communications systems as quickly as possible.
How to Choose a HIPAA Compliant VoIP System?
Healthcare communications typically involve the use of highly sensitive patient data. So using a reliable, robust and secure HIPAA compliant VoIP system is critical to protecting this information. Leading HIPAA-compliant VoIP providers offer solutions explicitly designed to meet the needs of healthcare providers. It’s therefore vital to research the market and identify providers that offer the following:
Business Associate Agreement: A Business Associate Agreement (BAA) provides a legally binding contract between healthcare organizations and their technology providers, such as VoIP providers. The BAA outlines each party’s responsibility around the privacy and security of PHI, so it’s vital to ensure the VoIP provider offers a BAA that aligns with your organization’s requirements.
Security Features: Considering the importance of protecting PHI and patient data, it’s critical only to consider VoIP providers that offer robust security features. More specifically, your chosen VoIP provider must also have security features tailored to HIPAA compliance.
Compliance Expertise: In addition to security features, it’s also vital to only work with VoIP providers with expertise and experience working with healthcare organizations. The VoIP provider must have deep knowledge of the best practices and latest regulations affecting healthcare firms and the tools and processes they require to guarantee HIPAA compliance.
Customer Support: Healthcare providers must select VoIP providers that offer reliable and responsive customer support. Look for providers with a dedicated support team that can solve any issues you have, answer any employee questions, and demonstrate knowledge of HIPAA compliance and their tool’s functionality regarding the regulation.
Flexibility and Scalability: Your current communications requirements will unlikely remain the same in the next 12 months and beyond. Therefore, you need a VoIP provider that’s flexible enough to align with your evolving needs and has the technological capabilities to scale as your business grows. It’s also important to consider how well the VoIP tool will integrate with your existing infrastructure and solutions and whether its implementation may cause any functionality and compliance problems.
Costs: Cost is a factor in any technology solution decision. However, cost shouldn’t be prioritized over privacy and security when implementing the best HIPAA compliant VoIP solution. The likelihood is that cheaper VoIP products are less likely to be HIPAA compliant, which could cost your business more in fines and reputational damage in the long run. So think carefully before prioritizing the cost of a HIPAA compliant VoIP.
Reputation: Selecting a HIPAA compliant phone system is critical to maintaining data security and protecting patient data. Therefore, your chosen HIPAA compliant VoIP provider’s reputation must be a key priority. Ensure the provider has a track history of working with reputable healthcare providers and avoid solutions marketed for general business use, which may not provide the required level of privacy security controls.
eFax Protect and HIPAA Compliant VoIP: A Perfect Pair for Protected Healthcare Communication
eFax Protect, our leading enterprise cloud fax solution, enables healthcare providers to seamlessly integrate their fax and VoIP communications to ensure HIPAA compliance. Aligning our online fax services with HIPAA compliant VoIP solutions enables healthcare organizations to protect all patient data and enhance the overall efficiency and security of their communications processes.
eFax is transforming fax capabilities by enhancing productivity and building data ecosystems that expand as healthcare organizations’ needs grow and evolve. The benefits of eFax include:
Enterprise-Level Security:eFax Protect’s online fax solutions rely on multiple layers of encryption, including 256-bit AES, TLS and SSL protocols, to secure fax communication when data is at rest and in transit. Additional security features like access control and authentication make eFax crucial for organizations in the highly regulated healthcare industry. This enterprise-grade security is why over half of Fortune 500 companies choose eFax’s online fax services.
Clear Audit Trails: eFax Protect easily integrates with third-party storage solutions and other technology, such as VoIP tools. Using eFax, healthcare organizations can guarantee their files are where they need them and when they need them and only authorized employees can access data.
Cost Control: eFax Protect’s flexible plans and feature-rich platform enable healthcare providers to enjoy efficient and seamless faxing without paying over the odds. eFax’s online faxing services eliminate the need for cumbersome, expensive fax machines, which must also be maintained and topped up with supplies of ink, paper and toner. Our service also eliminates hidden fees and unexpected charges, providing transparency to ensure budget-friendly experiences.
Flexibility: eFax Protect is designed to seamlessly integrate with multiple systems and applications, allowing seamless faxing on any platform. This provides healthcare organizations with the flexibility to enhance their communication processes. For example, many file-sharing providers limit the size of documents that users can send, but eFax provides a simple and efficient solution for sharing large files. eFax also enables users to send and receive faxes directly from their email inbox and on any device, from laptops to smartphones and tablets, helping businesses to streamline their communications.
Making the Right Choice for HIPAA Compliant VoIP
Healthcare providers must make the right choice when implementing new technology solutions, including selecting a HIPAA compliant VoIP. Working with a HIPAA compliant VoIP provider can be the difference between secure communications processes that protect patient information at all times and suffering costly and damaging data loss and cybercrime incidents.
It’s therefore crucial for healthcare providers to proactively evaluate HIPAA-compliant VoIP providers before committing to a product. Integrating a VoIP solution with eFax’s industry-leading online fax capabilities helps organizations safeguard their data when it’s in rest on various storage platforms and when being shared with trusted patients and colleagues.
FAQs Around HIPAA Compliant VoIP
Not all VoIP faxing complies with mandatory regulations like HIPAA. It’s crucial to work with HIPAA compliant online fax providers like eFax.
Healthcare organizations must diligently investigate VoIP faxing providers’ credentials to ensure they are VoIP HIPAA compliant. You can ensure your VoIP system is HIPAA compliant by implementing a solution that includes features like access controls, audit trail logs, data encryption, data backup and disaster recovery.
A VoIP system that doesn’t comply with HIPAA rules puts your healthcare company at risk of data loss and being hacked by cybercriminals. Losing sensitive patient health information can lead to healthcare providers being issued severe penalties, facing prison time and suffering irreparable reputation damage.
When choosing a HIPAA compliant phone system, look for VoIP providers that provide a detailed Business Associate Agreement and offer robust security features and compliance expertise. It’s also vital to work with companies that have reliable, responsive and knowledgeable customer support and the flexibility and scalability to meet your evolving requirements.
Yes, HIPAA-compliant VoIP systems can and should integrate with other healthcare technologies. Healthcare firms should actively look for a HIPAA-compliant VoIP service that works with their existing solutions and integrates seamlessly with their technology infrastructure stack.
As the world’s leading provider of cloud fax services for midsized to large businesses, we receive a lot of questions from IT professionals about faxing and VoIP. “Can we fax over a VoIP line?” many ask us. Because most of these companies have already migrated to a VoIP infrastructure (which we have written about in previous blog posts) for their voice communications, they are obviously hoping we’ll say yes.
But not before we offer them some serious warnings.
“You can try, and it may work just fine,” we would say. “But it might not work consistently, meaning some faxes may go through but not others, especially longer ones more than a few pages. Or you may be able to send faxes but not receive, or visa versa.”
In fact, faxing over VoIP can be so problematic that many VoIP service providers recommend keeping a plain old telephone service (POTS) line or two just to be on the safe side with analog applications like fax, postage machines and alarm systems, not to mention as a backup for when the VoIP network goes down, which it invariably will from time to time. That advice gets the provider off the hook when problems pop up and brings in additional revenue, as traditional business phone lines typically cost over $50/month.
Can You Fax Over VoIP?
Technically speaking, yes, a business can send and receive faxes over a VoIP network. But the more you know about VoIP, the less confident you will be entrusting it with your company’s important fax transmissions, especially if you are doing a high volume of faxing.
And in case you aren’t familiar with VoIP, here’s a very brief overview of what it is and how it works.
What is VoIP?
VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol, is a communication technique used for sending voice over what used to data-only networks. Rather than transmitting a conversation over the traditional circuit-based telephone network, VoIP takes the sounds in your phone call — the voices of the speakers and any background noises — and converts all of that into a series of data packets. These packets are like envelopes containing the bits that comprise the voice call.
The VoIP packets travel across your local area network (LAN) and/or wide area network (WAN), and may also be sent across the Internet, mixed in with many other packets containing email messages, word documents, spreadsheets, images, etc. At the receiving end, the voice packets are separated from the other ‘data’ packets and reassembled to recreate the words that were just spoken.
Naturally this all has to happen very fast, in a fraction of a second, so VoIP packets are considered to be very time-sensitive; if a packet containing a snippet of a word is delayed or arrives out of order, it is useless and must be discarded. That leads to the occasional blips and dropouts that one hears in VoIP phone calls, especially if they happen to travel over the public Internet where network congestion can cause packets to be delayed or lost along the way.
Converting voice to packets using VoIP technology makes sense for several reasons, but the first advantage is the tremendous cost savings that can be achieved by converging multiple types of business communications, that used to require multiple dedicated networks, over a single connection.
A related benefit is compression to reduce the amount of bandwidth required for phone calls. VoIP doesn’t just convert analog voice calls into digital format — the technology can compress that data considerably. A typical phone call, when it is digitized, requires 64kilobits per second (kbps) of bandwidth per call.
VoIP services, using compression protocols, can squeeze the number of bits in a voice call down to as little as 32, 16, 8 or even 4kbps (with corresponding reductions in sound quality), before sending that call across the Internet. For a large company or call center, whose employees make hundreds or even thousands of calls a day, this adds up to considerable savings.
But here’s the problem. While many forms of data can handle and even benefit from compression — including voice, documents and video — the analog fax tones cannot be compressed.
And this is where fax’s problems with VoIP begin.
How Fax Works In A VoIP Environment — And Why It Can Fail To Work…
Problem #1: Bandwidth and Compression Issues
Unlike voice calls, fax transmissions can’t be compressed. Fax data must be digitized and transmitted over IP at a full 64kbps — more than double the 32kbps or lower bandwidth of a typical compressed VoIP call. And that’s before accounting for IP packet overhead, which pushes bandwidth needs to about 88kbps — roughly 175% more than a VoIP call.
During peak usage or in large-scale faxing operations, this bandwidth demand can become a real bottleneck. It’s the same root cause for the common complaint about choppy or broken audio in VoIP calls. When other apps, devices or users are eating up bandwidth, VoIP traffic struggles to stay consistent. For online fax, that inconsistency can result in corrupted pages, filed transmissions or a silent failure.
Problem #2: Packet Loss, Delay and Jitter
In a VoIP environment, packets are broken down and travel independently across the network, and may arrive out of order, delayed or not at all. But fax is extremely sensitive to network conditions and any disruption can break synchronization between the machines. Even a 1% packet loss or a delay of more than two seconds can cause the transmission to fail entirely.
These disruptions usually stem from the following common VoIP challenges:
Jitter: The phenomenon where packets arrive at inconsistent intervals, causing fax tones to break.
Dropped Packets: Similar to dropped calls — this problem is prevalent on congested or poorly configured networks.
Network Congestion: Too many simultaneous tasks (streaming, large file transfers or multiple voice calls) lead to delays.
Quality of Service (QoS) Misconfigurations: Without proper prioritization, VoIP and fax traffic compete with other applications.
Problem #3: Protocol and Compatibility Conflicts
VoIP often relies on codecs like G.729 that prioritize compression and voice clarity over fidelity, while fax machines use protocols like T.30, T.38 and G.711. The transition from one protocol to another, especially mid-transmission, often introduces gaps or delays in the analog tones that lead to synchronization issues between machines and the transmission fails.
Even T.38 — often promoted as the standard for reliable fax over IP — comes with caveats. It only works if both endpoints and all intermediate networks fully support and implement it correctly. Unfortunately, many service providers either don’t support T.38 or implement it inconsistently, making cross-vendor communication unreliable. And if a T.38 fax must be transcoded mid-route (for example, over a non-compatible network), that introduces more latency and increases the chance of failure.
Fax Can’t Share the Information Highway
An intuitive way to understand the unique challenges that Internet Protocol creates for faxing is by thinking of a standard analog fax transmission as a presidential motorcade. Fax was designed to enjoy a dedicated and direct path from sender to recipient. On the old telephone network, fax traveled over a dedicated circuit it didn’t have to share with anybody. Returning to our motorcade analogy, this is where all cross-traffic is blocked to keep the motorcade’s speed high and consistent, and in which all of the cars in the motorcade can remain in their original sequence for the entire journey. Put simply, all lanes for the fax are cleared from start to finish so there is never any delay.
A VoIP or other IP-based network, on the other hand, was designed for complex and ever-changing traffic patterns — more like a 12-lane highway where a mixture of real-time and non-real time data packets (cars) are frenetically traversing the path and jumping in and out of lanes at all times. Some of these pieces of data share a lane for part of their journey; some data packets arrive in a different order than they were sent; still others might get re-routed or even stuck on the road for a few moments, forcing the finished data transmission to wait at the recipient’s end until they arrive and can be pieced back together in order.
Fax is a road-hog of a technology, not designed to share its lane with anyone else. So when confronted with delayed or dropped packets, fax simply shuts down.
Which is why we at eFax Corporate® explain to the IT professionals who ask us that, “yes, technically you can send or receive a business fax over a VoIP network — but doing so may create more problems for your organization than it solves.”
So What Can You Do About Fax After You’ve Migrated to an IP Environment
It’s tempting to look for a way to migrate your company’s legacy fax infrastructure to your new IP environment. After all, IP creates efficiencies, it helps your organization save money, and it can centralize many of the communications technologies that your IT department once had to manage and troubleshoot separately.
But if we’ve convinced you that fax won’t enjoy the many benefits of IP that your other data communications are enjoying, then the question is: What can you do to modernize, streamline and improve the efficiency of your legacy fax infrastructure?
The way we see it, you have seven options after migrating to a IP environment:
Move to a cloud fax model. By converting faxes into email attachments, cloud faxing eliminates dependency on fragile analog signals and VoIP infrastructure, like the cloud faxing solution from eFax Corporate. It streamlines faxing, increases reliability and empowers your team to send and receive secure faxes directly from their desktops — with full audit trails, encryption and compliance built in. For more about cloud fax, you can also download our free white paper: The IT Manager’s Survival Guide: Outsource Your Fax Infrastructure to the Cloud
Leave your existing fax infrastructure in place and continue to pay for dedicated telecom services. This is relatively safe as a short-term solution as it fails to address many of your existing issues with faxing and may create new ones of its own. For example, caring for an aging in-house fax infrastructure is costly, time-consuming and inefficient for your business.
Roll back to analog lines for every fax number. If you’ve already migrated to IP and now are experiencing faxing issues, you can revert to a fully onsite network of fax machines and servers, supported by analog or T1 lines. This might seem like a “safer” move, but it’s a costly step backward in terms of both innovation and operational efficiency.
Modernize your VoIP infrastructure to minimize interference with fax. If you must maintain some fax capabilities within your VoIP setup, you can optimize your network by implementing QoS (Quality of Service) settings that prioritize fax and VoIP traffic. Use VLANs to isolate fax transmissions from other network traffic. Upgrading your router, increasing bandwidth and installing jitter buffers can also reduce packet loss and call quality issues that impact fax reliability.
Segment and virtualize your VoIP network. Establishing a Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) exclusively for VoIP and fax devices can significantly improve stability. It reduces network congestion and gives IT greater control over packet flow. Additionally, ensuring all hardware uses the same compatible codecs (like G.711) and disabling SIP ALG in routers can resolve one-way audio issues and improve transmission success rates for both voice and fax.
Partner with a unified communications provider that offers VoIP-optimized fax support. Look for partners that provide full T.38 support, offer proactive monitoring and can help you troubleshoot issues like jitter, latency and failed outbound transmissions. With 24/7 reliability, real-time support, and SLA-backed performance, a strong provider partnership can help you maintain business continuity without compromising on quality.
Wait for a standards-body solution that fixes fax-over-IP issues. It’s possible that one day, a new protocol will emerge to overcome packet loss, jitter and interoperability problems. But with existing standards like G.711, T.37, and T.38 still widely in use decades after their introduction, this may take time that your company’s current faxing doesn’t have.
People sent sensitive data over public fax machines and stored documents on-site in unsecured filing cabinets for many years. And many of them did it without a care in the world.
So, it’s safe to say that a lot of sensitive data has been exposed to unauthorized people. And organizations that continue to use fax machines are putting proprietary information at risk every day and opening themselves up to significant financial losses.
However, things are shifting as new digital technologies take root. Today’s companies are increasingly aware of the security risks of sending sensitive information via fax.
That’s why you should move away from using traditional fax machines to send and receive sensitive data. Online fax solutions with built-in data encryption can solve these problems. With data encryption, you gain a much more secure way of transmitting and storing data than traditional faxing.
Today, several major industries still prefer faxing information, including the government, health, financial services and manufacturing industries. Also, in large firms of 500 employees or more, over 80 percent of workers still use fax machines.
It would be wonderful if your intended recipient was the only person who could read your electronic data, wouldn’t it? That’s where data encryption comes in. It involves translating data into a different form or code so that only people with decryption or secret key can access and read the original message.
Online fax encryption technology works by scrambling any sensitive electronic so that it stays private. That makes it harder to tamper or steal. And if unauthorized third parties attempt to access your data, they’ll only see a nonsensical collection of characters and words. While they could try to make sense of it, that would be an impossible task without the data encryption key.
Another advantage of data encryption is that it keeps you compliant with several data protection laws. In the US, a mix of federal and state laws protect the personal data of residents, while the European Union (EU) has the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Law Enforcement Directive, among others.
Violating these regulations, even if those missteps are unintentional, can have far-reaching consequences for companies. That’s why data encryption technology is instrumental in keeping your company legally compliant with all state and federal data security laws governing your industry. Also, having data encryption in place can help you navigate legal and security minefields in other countries where you do business, thus protecting you against having to pay large non-compliance fees.
Why Is Data Encryption Important?
By 2020, there were 44 zettabytes of data in the entire digital world. That equates to 40 times more bytes of data than there are stars in the universe as we know it. Every digital action your company takes, collecting, saving or disseminating information, contributes to the global data byte count. That includes all the data you send and receive via fax.
Depending on the nature of your business, you may collect and house private information, such as Social Security numbers, email addresses and financial account information. What’s more, you may have insights into customers’ previous purchase history and saved shopping preferences stored in databases if you are in the retail or eCommerce space. If your work in healthcare, you may have medical or insurance information about patients in your data sets. No matter what your business does, you have stored data.
While all the information you gather can be vital to your operations, this data can include private or sensitive details about your clients. No one who does business with you would be happy to know their personal data has been exposed to unauthorized third parties. Unfortunately, cybercrime is on the rise as bad actors continually come up with new schemes to access personal and corporate data. No company is safe from the risk of cyberattacks today. It’s clear why data security should be a priority for your organization.
In fact, research shows that your clients expect you to safeguard their personal data at all times. For example, one study indicates that 87 percent of consumers would not do business with a company whose data security practices concern them. Also, research has uncovered that 78 percent of customers would stop doing business with a company that gives away their sensitive data.
You must take customer concerns about data privacy very seriously. How your company handles its data security can influence how customers perceive your business. Your goal is to present your company as an industry leader in data protection.
How can you do that? Encrypting sensitive data is a must. When you pledge to encrypt data, your customers gain the assurance that you will protect their data against unauthorized access.
A secure online fax service will use data encryption, thus enabling you to send and receive faxes confidently. That’s why partnering with a quality service provider is necessary to enhance your personal and business communication.
How Data Security Helps You Build More Brand Trust
Did you know that over 80 percent of customers prefer to buy products from brands they trust? That’s why you should never underestimate the effect of brand trust in attracting and keeping customers.
Also, it’s worth noting that data privacy can make current and potential customers perceive you in a positive light. Case in point: 69 percent of consumers want brands to address the issue of personal data and how it is collected and used.
When you use cloud-based online fax encryption, you will improve your brand identity’s trustworthiness. At the same time, you will aggressively safeguard your electronic data and keep it safe from potential breaches. Also, your encryption technology makes it harder for third parties to invade your customers’ privacy.
Another advantage is that you can retain both original and backup digital fax copies for as long as you want. By doing so, you can enhance the accuracy of your business records and protect your business against anyone who wants to steal or tamper with information.
In addition, you will safeguard yourself from business record losses. And the good news is that cloud storage is compatible with PDF, Microsoft Office 365 files (examples include Microsoft Word and Excel documents) and other business document types.
Simply store or send your private files as secure faxes online, and data encryption technology will ensure they are kept safe and secure. The technology is effortless to use and can fit seamlessly into your team’s work routines.
Enhance Your Data Security with eFax
eFax is an internet-based fax technology that enables you to send and receive secure personal or business faxes from anywhere in the world using your smartphone, tablet or computer. You can use it via a mobile app, desktop app, email or a secure online portal on the web.
As an added benefit, you don’t need to invest in a dedicated fax machine to use eFax. You also will not require a multifunctional fax-enabled printer or an additional investment in a landline to send and receive faxes. Instead, all you need is an internet-enabled device and access to the web.
eFax is compatible with many types of business infrastructure, making it possible for them to integrate the cloud and advanced data encryption quickly. It utilizes secure socket layer (SSL) encryption within a secure server to optimize security when faxing, thus, protecting your business against dangerous data breaches which affect data integrity. You can safeguard internal company information along with your clients’ and partners’ data.
Another benefit of eFax is that there is no third-party human intervention to process your faxes. That means you won’t have to risk an unauthorized person gaining insight into your private financial or business data.
With the flexibility to use eFax on various devices, you can send and receive faxes wherever you are, on any device, 24/7. All you need is an internet-enabled device to send and receive your faxes, which you can then print later if the need arises. You’ll be able to conduct your business with speed and efficiency, giving you more opportunities to win business and excel at customer satisfaction.
The time is now to leave your outdated fax machine in the past and bring your communications into the 21st century. You can get started with eFax today and get the peace of mind that comes with knowing that your fax communications are always secure. In addition, you can achieve alignment with critical security and privacy laws to avoid any risk of non-compliance. Your client and partners will value your commitment to keeping their data secure, leading to greater loyalty and increased business opportunities.
If you need insight into the value eFax delivers to other organizations, you can read the many positive endorsements in our product reviews section.
Many businesses aim to increase their productivity. When team members can perform their tasks more efficiently, that opens up new opportunities and empowers new business growth.
In 2023 alone, workplace productivity in the United States climbed by 5.4%. Although this percentage may seem like a small increase at first glance, it’s significant since productivity growth hasn’t increased more than 1.5% in a single year since 2004, surpassing the 2.9% pace seen during the last productivity surge in the 1990s. This increase in productivity is good news for many businesses, and the right technology is necessary to help them stay the course.
What can organizations like yours do to keep pace? Online faxing is an essential productivity-boosting tool that can help you increase efficiency and spark growth. But many people wonder about the security of online faxing. You might be surprised to learn that online faxing is one of the most secure forms of communication available today.
Here’s what you need to know about online fax security to make the best decision.
Can You Trust Online Fax Services?
While online faxing has become increasingly popular over the past few years, some people are still hesitant to use it because they’re unsure if it’s secure. We have answers.
You can trust the safest online fax service, but it’s essential to choose an encrypted file-sharing service to protect your sensitive data. You should look for a service that offers AES 256-bit encryption, the highest encryption standard available.
With AES 256-bit encryption, both you and the fax server have a copy of the fax as you transmit using the internet. For faxes sent to you, once you receive the file, you’re the only person who can access it.
How Secure Are Online Fax Services?
If you’re using a traditional fax machine, you put any information you send at risk. Conventional fax machines use analog phone lines to send information, which has no encryption. They’re highly susceptible to data theft for this reason. If you risk sending a fax using a phone line, you could lose data and revenue and expose your company to fraud.
Conversely, eFax Protect uses encryption technology that scrambles sensitive data and keeps it secured. The technology makes it harder for hackers to tamper with or steal your information. This is especially vital since your clients and partners expect you to protect their data at all times in today’s environment.
Plus, you can never guarantee your fax won’t fall into the wrong hands when it reaches its destination. Often, faxes sit on unattended fax machines, and anyone can pick them up. This can lead to a major breach of trust or compromised data.
However, online faxes aren’t as vulnerable to unauthorized access. An unauthorized party will only find scrambled information if they try to access your fax. It’s impossible to decipher this information without a data decryption key. Only those with the decryption key can access the original message.
How to Securely Transfer Files over the Internet
If you want to know how to send a file securely, the answer is simple. You need to invest in a secure online fax service.
You must find a service with enough features to meet your needs. With secure file-sharing online solutions from eFax, you’ll feel at ease knowing your communications are safe and sound and your faxing solution can meet your demands.
How to Send Documents Securely over the Internet
With online faxing, you can fax from tools you use every day, like your computer or smartphone. With either of these devices and eFax, you have everything you need to send a fax immediately. eFax allows you to send your fax using email or eFax Messenger.
You can compose and edit your fax and send it by email. You can then receive a response and sign documents using your mobile device.
How to Send Files Securely via Email
A secure online fax service provides military-grade, end-to-end encryption. You can send faxes using well-known email services like Outlook, Gmail, or Yahoo. You can also use your custom domain to send faxes with eFax.
You can follow this simple process any time you need to send secure info over the internet:
Step 1: Enter the recipient’s number followed by “@efaxsend.com” in the “To” field.
Step 2: Add up to ten attachments.
Step 3: Click “Send Fax.”
The recipient will then receive your fax on their machine. For them, the process is just like receiving landline-based faxes.
How to Send Faxes from Your Desktop
You can send a fax from your desktop by downloading eFax Messenger Software. It works with both Windows and iOS.
The steps for sending a fax from your desktop are as follows:
Step 1: Open eFax Messenger and log in.
Step 2: Go to the “File” menu and click “Create New Fax.”
Step 3: Select your recipient’s number from your contacts or enter it manually.
Step 4: Add up to ten attachments.
Step 5: Click “Send Fax.”
Your document(s) will arrive at your recipient’s fax machine.
Here’s how to send a fax using your mobile device:
Step 1: Open the eFax app and tap “View Faxes.”
Step 2: You can add your signature by tapping “Sign Faxes.”
Step 3: Save your signed fax.
Step 4: Tap “Send Faxes.”
Step 5: Choose your recipient.
The recipient will receive your document just as with faxes that originate from a landline.
Is Fax Secure for Sensitive Data?
Today’s professionals are tech-savvy. And many professionals need to handle sensitive information, including trade secrets, financial details, or private employee or client information. Security is always a top priority. Any compromised data can cause many unwanted consequences, including lost revenues, prolonged downtimes, breaches of customer trust, and reputational damage.
Using a traditional fax machine is far less secure, and malicious actors can gain access to sensitive information. If you want to send secure info over the internet, it’s much safer to use an online fax service.
Does Online Faxing Meet Mandated Security Standards?
An online fax service will enable you to comply with regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The Graham-Leach Bliley Act (GLBA), or others. HIPAA rules safeguard personal health information, while GLBA requires that financial institutions protect their customers’ private data.
Suppose you handle this kind of sensitive information. In that case, you must ensure your online fax service meets regulatory HIPAA or GLBA compliance standards for all the vital work you can do with online faxing. At eFax, our online fax software empowers you to comply with these and other regulatory mandates or industry standards. You can rest assured that any confidential information you share stays protected.
Is It Safe to Fax Personal Information?
What if you’re not sending faxes for professional purposes? Many of us need to fax private information for various reasons, such as insurance claims or loan processing. No matter the intent, your best bet is to use a secure online fax service.
With eFax, you can trust that your personal information stays encrypted throughout the entire transmission. You’ll never need to fret about your private data falling into the hands of bad actors.
Is Online Fax Safer Than Email?
A premium online fax service is more secure than standard email. Email passes through several networks and servers as it travels from the sender to the recipient. Every link in the network is a point of weakness. These points are vulnerabilities where hackers can intercept your faxes. This cyber theft tactic is called a middleman attack.
The answer is simple if you want to know how to send a file securely. Invest in a secure online fax service, like eFax.
Why Online Faxing Is the Most Secure Way to Exchange Information
When you trust a leader like eFax, you get eFax Secure. It’s perfect for protecting sensitive and confidential files or forms.
eFax Protect uses 256-bit AES and Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption, the highest encryption standards available. Our service lives on Tier-3 secure servers, protecting your data 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We also use the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol to keep your faxes secure around the clock. HIPAA, GLBA, PCI, and SOC compliance with full data encryption.
What Is the Safest File Sharing Site?
eFax is the most secure way to transfer files. With eFax, all your faxes remain private and confidential. We’ll provide you with your own safe, personal email inbox.
Our servers have nearly 100% uptime. For this reason, you’re assured of secure, encrypted delivery of all your essential fax communications. eFax is the clear choice for secure sharing of documents and files.
eFax Protect: A Scalable, Secure, and Reliable Cloud Fax Solution
eFax Protect not only conforms to strict standards for security and compliance across multiple industries, keeping you and your client’s data secure, but keeps your data safe, secure, and confidential with 256-bit AES encryption and multi-DID support, which allows you to manage multiple lines with a single account.
With uncompromised safety and unrivaled convenience, eFax Protect offers built-in price breaks for high volume usage, with the flexibility to combine inbound and outbound faxing.
While the modern fax machine was invented in 1964 by the Xerox company, the first fax machine ever invented was Alexander Bain’s Electric Printing Telegraph, patented in 1843. Fax machines were the forerunners of digital communication and fax services predate the telephone.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the AT&T Corporation advanced fax technology by sending photos via wire transmission. Soon after, The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) successfully transmitted a wireless fax across the Atlantic Ocean. It wasn’t until decades later though that the first modern-day, commercialized fax machine was introduced by the Xerox Corporation.
Fax machine usage in commerce became widespread during the 1960s after Xerox patented the first modern fax machine. In 1966, a fax machine that could be connected to any phone line made faxing documents commonplace in many businesses. Since then, faxes have come a long way, and these days, online faxing is common.
Over the past 75 years, fax transmission time has reduced from an average of six minutes to an average of one minute. The classic “fax machine” of the 1980s (which cost $20,000 in 1982!) has also become obsolete, and faxes are now routinely sent from computers, smartphones or tablets.
Much of modern business has moved online, and fax machines are no different. Online platforms like eFax make it easy to send, receive and sign documents from any device with an internet connection. This keeps fax machine usage relevant in our changing world.
When was the Fax Machine Invented?
The fax machine was invented in 1843 by Alexander Bain, a Scottish inventor, who patented the device. It used a mechanism to scan handwritten or printed images and then transmit them over telegraph lines. This early fax machine laid the groundwork for later developments in fax technology, including the first recognizable version of what we consider the telephone fax patented by the Xerox company in 1964. In 2010, the emergence of internet faxing brought about a new era in fax communication, utilizing cloud-based servers and internet connectivity to transmit documents digitally.
Bain’s ‘Electric Printing Telegraph’ was a crude version of later iterations of the telegraph — but it was still way ahead of its time.
The first fax machine used a pendulum to scan an image made of raised metal pins line by line. As the pendulum swung across the metal image, it completed an electrical circuit wherever it touched metal. At the receiving end, this electrical signal caused a chemically treated paper to darken through electrolysis, creating a crude copy of the original.
Think of it like a very early dot-matrix printer, where the “dots” were created by chemical reactions triggered by electricity instead of ink. However, it had some major drawbacks that stopped it from going into commercial use:
1. Speed: The scanning system was slow, taking several minutes to transmit even a small image.
2. Synchronization: Synchronizing the pendulums at both ends was crucial – they had to swing in perfect time to keep the copy aligned with the original.
3. Sensitive materials: The chemical paper used for receiving was sensitive to environmental conditions, would degrade over time, and could be messy.
Despite being a groundbreaking technology, Bain’s fax machine invention had limitations that made it impractical for commercial and personal use. It wasn’t until Frederick Bakewell introduced his version of the fax machine that faxing started to take shape as we know it, eventually leading to what we know today as internet faxing.
Timeline of Fax Machine History
1843: Mechanical Fax
Alexander Bain invents the ‘Electric Printing Telegraph’ machine in 1843 which is the world’s first fax device.
1880: Scanning PhotoTelegraph
The English inventor Shelford Bidwell invents the Scanning PhotoTelegraph machine, which is the first telefax machine capable of scanning and sending a two-dimensional image.
1888: TelAutograph
In 1888 the TelAutograph machine was invented by Elisha Grey which allowed users to send signature images over long distances.
1924: Wire Transmission
Scientists at the AT&T Corporation advance fax technology further by sending photos by telephone/wire transmission.
1924: Wireless Transmission
The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) develops the TransOceanic Radio Facsimile and successfully transmits a photograph between New York and London.
1924: Color Fax
The AT&T Corporation invents a fax device which is capable of transmitting the world’s first color facsimile.
1924: 6 mins
It took 6 mins to send a single page fax.
1960: Satellite Fax
The U.S. Army sends the world’s first photograph via satellite facsimile from America to Puerto Rico.
1964: Telephone Transmission
The first commercialized version of the modern-day fax machine is introduced and patented by the Xerox Corporation using telephone transmission.
1974: 3 mins
It took 3 mins to send a single page fax – how long does an eFax transmission take?
1982: $20,000
The cost of a fax machine was recorded at $20,000, which when adjusted for inflation, equates to $62,350 in present-day currency.
1982: Computer Based Fax Board
GammaLink introduced the first computer based fax board, the GammaFax.
1988: Fax Stamp
Europa. Transport and Communications stamp was printed in Greece. Stamp features a satellite and fax machine, symbolizing advancements in transportation and communication technology during that era.
If there’s one invention that’s benefited from the passage of time, it’s the fax machine. Invented back in 1843 by Alexander Bain, the first fax machine was a far cry from the compact fax machines we know today.
The image quality was poor and transmissions were less than expedient. Considering the technology at the time, though, this was to be expected. Bain used “pendulums” and a “clock” to synchronize and capture images on a line by line basis – not exactly a speedy way of doing things. The images were then reproduced, giving way to the first fax.
It wasn’t until English physicist Frederick Bakewell improved on Bain’s original “fax machine” that faxing began to take shape – although not at breakneck speed. Bakewell’s fax machine used “rotating cylinders” and a “stylus” to create faxes. In spite of debuting at the 1851 World’s Fair in London to curious stares, it failed to be a runaway hit. Thankfully, Bakewell’s fax machine served as a blueprint from which other inventors could later draw inspiration.
By the late 1860s, Giovanni Caselli had come up with a fax machine known as the Pantelegraph. Unlike its predecessors, though, it was a hit – forming the basis of the modern-day fax machine. It would take another century before fax technology truly found its stride, though.
Xerox
In 1964, Xerox invented the Long Distance Xerograph (LDX), a fax machine that could transmit regular-size documents (one page at a time) to any fax machine in the world. Unfortunately, it took around six minutes to do so. The LDX would remain the standard in fax until a Japanese telecommunications corporation created the “ITU G3 Facsimile Standard” in 1980. But it wouldn’t take long before a new development in fax would take over.
The Rise of Analog Faxing
There are a number of reasons why analog fax machines helped to take fax to the next level. For starters, all you needed to do was plug your fax machine into a regular phone line, and wham! You were ready to send your next fax. This was a big incentive back in the ‘80s and ‘90s – largely because the internet hadn’t yet taken off and people still believed that fax was the safest way to send private data.
But as corporations began to rely more heavily on analog fax machines, the cost to maintain them began to add up. There were paper costs, ink costs, maintenance and repair costs, and more. Plus, there was the inconvenience of having administrators run documents back and forth to the fax machine – impatiently waiting for a busy signal to give way to a much-needed ringtone. And when faxes did transmit, administrators would have to distribute them one-by-one to their intended recipient.
So what’s the takeaway here? Fax technology was transforming, but it was still a pain.
Multifunction Devices
Adding fax machines to copiers or multifunction devices (MFDs) was supposed to make faxing more convenient. And in a lot of ways it did. You could scan, print, fax, and copy documents from one standalone machine – hooray! But the cost factor was still a major problem for owners. In many instances, the cost to run a MFD was more than the cost to run a traditional fax machine. And we’re not just talking about the price tag, but also the cost to repair them.
This was around the time that corporations began switching to fax servers to improve the function of their MFDs and standalone fax machines. On the whole, fax servers were great. Fax machine owners could reduce paper costs and send faxes faster. But as with any next-generation technology, the cost to set up a fax server was expensive. So expensive, in fact, that one server could run thousands of dollars to buy, set up, and run.
That’s not to say that fax servers didn’t bring convenience – they did. Users could send faxes directly from their desktop – without having to deal with an actual printer or fax machine. Further, fax servers answered the all-important question of how to handle private information, which HIPAA law prevents from lingering out in the open on, say, an old-fashioned fax machine, for example.
As fax servers became the new norm for corporations, however, small business owners and individuals were still looking for ways to make faxing easier for them.
Internet Faxing
As the world migrated to the web for most of its data needs, including email, cloud storage, and document editing, a new evolution in fax began in the mid-1990s. For the first time, anyone could send a fax from a computer using an online fax service. The cost was affordable and the technology was simple. All you needed was an internet-ready device and an online fax account.
Unlike traditional fax machines, online fax is fast and convenient. You can send faxes from wherever you access the internet, connecting to fax machines around the world in seconds. Best of all, you don’t have to pay the expensive cost of owning a fax server. For very little money, individuals and businesses alike could send faxes on the go – enjoying the same features you’d expect from a traditional machine, like cover sheets, free local fax numbers, and transmission verification reports.
In addition, online fax services provide end-to-end audit trails, confirming the transfer of your faxes the moment they’re complete. You could even add a cover letter or input an electronic signature to sign a contract.
Online fax service companies offer both email fax and mobile fax capabilities from one electronic device, such as an iPhone. Whereas before you needed a bulky fax machine to send faxes, with a fax app, all you need is your cell phone. You can send, read, edit, and manage all your faxes from one administrator-controlled account.
The Impact of Fax Today
Fax remains an important technology today thanks to leading online fax companies like eFax®. With the eFax Mobile App—one of the best fax apps—you can send multiple faxes to multiple people in seconds. Your faxed documents print out like real faxes, and you can track every stage of the transmission process—including the time and date of completion.
Putting a fax machine into the pockets of busy people and business owners revolutionized the way people send and read fax information. Once we were beholden to old-fashioned fax machines, fax servers, phone lines, printer paper, ink, and IT experts. Today, we can send a fax as easily as we can send email thanks to online faxing—the best fax machine alternative there is.
Faxing has transformed significantly since its initial entry into our business and personal lives. But one thing’s clear: its impact continues to grow. We can use online fax to stay connected, increase responsiveness, save time, safeguard private data, and more.
Bain and Bakewell may not have received the credit they deserved in their lifetime, along with the countless other inventors who followed in their footsteps. But they certainly have changed the way we think about data transmission, and that’s worth an honorable mention!
How Do Fax Machines Work?
Traditional faxing machines effectively send photocopies across telephone wires. At a high level, a fax machine works in three stages:
Scan a document
Send the document to another fax machine
That machine prints out the document
Modern machines can use a modem instead of a telephone line to send a fax via the internet. This is similar to how Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) allows us to make traditional phone calls or through online apps like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.
Fax machines turn scanned images into sound signals that are then converted to a sound wave signature which can reproduce the image on another piece of paper at the other end of the line. Modern fax machines can convert the image into an electronic format that can then be stored electronically, sent to an email recipient or printed on paper.
The earliest fax machines used radio waves to transmit images. Most fax machines use thermal paper, just as they did back in the late 1800s.
Why Online Faxing Is Better than Fax Machines
Online faxing is superior to traditional fax machines in many ways, including:
Cost: Senders don’t have to buy a fax machine or maintain a physical phone line just for the fax. Senders also don’t have to buy fax paper, ink or toner.
Ease of Use: You can send and view faxes from any internet-connected device using your eFax account. This includes computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones.
Safety: While fax machines communicate over unsecured phone lines, online faxes can be encrypted and protected. eFax systems can even help filter out spam.
Storage: eFax allows you to store digital faxes and file them easily, so you can access your faxed documentation at any time.
Modern online faxing solutions provide increased versatility and convenience over traditional fax machines. Online faxing is easy, affordable and convenient.
You can use eFax to send signed documents, files that are too big for email attachments and any other paperwork that can’t be sent through email. You can also convert your incoming faxes to emails to distribute around your office and store them electronically. This innovative alternative to faxing documentation is an affordable and accessible way to set your business up to send and receive faxes.
The first fax machine was invented by Alexander Bain’s Electric Printing Telegraph, patented in 1843. He successfully sent an image using the machine, but it was low-quality. The fax machine went through many iterations before the modern fax machine was invented in 1964 by Xerox company.
Alexander Bain invented the first fax machine in 1843. He called it the Electric Printing Telegraph.
The first internet fax was sent in 1996. It allowed users to send and receive faxes instantly using a computer device connected to the internet.
Yes, technologies like eFax offer a reliable and secure medium to send and receive faxes online. Moreover, many business owners rely heavily on faxes and don’t see the need to adopt another form of communication if what exists now still works.
The modern fax machine, patented and sold by Xerox, was available to the public from 1964.
Yes. The first fax machine (1843) coincided with the Oregon Trail period (1840s-1860s).
The first fax machine was invented by Alexander Bain in 1843 with the introduction of his “Electric Printing Telegraph.”
Read Resources About the Invention of the Fax Machine
If your company is a covered entity or business associate in the healthcare industry, you know the ever-growing threat that cybercriminals pose to your patients’ data—and to your company’s HIPAA compliance.
To cite just one example, according to a study reported in HealthCare IT Security, 93% of healthcare organizations suffered a data breach in the last three years. Worse, the same study found that 96% of healthcare security professionals believe their organizations are not technologically equipped to keep pace with hackers’ increasing numbers and sophistication.
Cybercrime Is Evolving, and Your Cybersecurity Needs to Evolve With it
Question: If cybercriminals are becoming more numerous and their methods more advanced, can you afford to allow any aspect of your company’s cybersecurity to remain static?
We believe the answer is clearly no. This is why when selecting any digital service your employees will be using to handle patients’ data—including a cloud fax solution—you should search only for vendors that are working continuously to stay ahead of these risks.
HITRUST CSF® Certification Demonstrates Your Vendor Is Always Working to Prevent the Next Threat
For healthcare entities like yours, one way to find the technology services that are best equipped to deal with cyber threats is to look for those built by companies that have earned HITRUST Common Security Framework (CSF) certification.
As we’ve noted previously here on the eFax Corporate® blog, HITRUST CSF certification is considered the gold-standard framework for compliance and security in healthcare IT.
This is partly because the framework incorporates key elements of internationally accepted data standards, such as those from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the agency whose security guidelines the US Department of Defense follows for protecting its own data. HITRUST CSF also incorporates the major elements of the most stringent data standards such as PCI, ISO, HITECH and, most relevant here, HIPAA.
These payers understand that electronic protected health information (ePHI) is among the most attractive types of data to cybercriminals. They know that hackers grow in number each year and that they keep finding creative new ways to attack the networks of covered entities and business associates. And they know that most technology vendors aren’t able to keep up with these security threats.
An important benefit of the HITRUST framework is that is flexible and always evolving to meet new challenges. To attain this certification, an organization must show that its technology and practices are able to quickly adapt to new threats and overcome them.
With that in mind, among all of the other reasons to look only for solutions backed by HITRUST-certified companies, the most important might be this:
HITRUST CSF certification demonstrates the vendor is continually evolving and updating its technology to deal with changes in both healthcare regulations and cybercriminals’ behavior.
The First Major Cloud Fax Provider to Earn HITRUST CSF Certification
Considering how many faxes your organization likely sends and receives—and how many of those contain ePHI—you can see why HIPAA compliance and security should be among your top priorities when selecting the right cloud faxing solution.
That should make the decision easy, because eFax Corporate is the first major cloud fax provider to earn HITRUST CSF certification.
Our enterprise-caliber Digital Cloud Fax Technology (DCFT) solutions have been protecting healthcare organizations’ highly sensitive and regulated data for more than 20 years. Attaining this new HITRUST certification is only our most recent demonstration of eFax Corporate’s commitment to provide the most secure, HIPAA-compliant cloud fax platform for covered entities like yours.
Do you trust your virtual assistant program with sensitive patient data or personal information? Here’s why you shouldn’t.
Smart speakers are perhaps the fastest-growing trend in the tech world. These single-unit wireless speakers or soundbars built with artificial intelligence (AI) come from Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Samsung (with more brands to hit the market soon).
Though originally intended for home use, smart speakers have gradually edged their way into medical offices. For this reason, it’s a natural progression that physicians and healthcare professionals will be enticed to use them for the convenience of note taking, web research, or even accessing medical records.
That could be a colossal mistake.
Virtual assistant programs like Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, Cortana and Bixby are not in compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) – at the time of this post. Hopefully, this will change in the near future, but for now, it’s critical to know that using these devices in a medical organization has serious data security risks.
Even within the short span of time that smart speakers have been commercially available, there are already many examples of the technology being implemented in hospital settings.
For example, some hospitals are experimenting with ways to use Alexa to help surgeons comply with a safety checklist before a procedure or offer Alexa apps that provide instructions patients can use at home. In fact, voice-activated patient tools have been rolled out in large health systems such as the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, Northwell Health in New York and Carolinas HealthCare System in Charlotte, NC. Uses range from allowing users to access common topics related to first aid, to finding the nearest urgent care center and wait times.
These kinds of voice-activated tools may eventually become one of the essential ways patients deal with doctors and hospitals, as well as schedule appointments, access and update personal medical records, or refill prescriptions. From the hospital and doctor’s perspective, they might enable providers to more closely monitor patients at home, such as activation tools used for medication reminders.
Taking it a step further, smart speakers will most likely end up in patient rooms, where voice commands will operate televisions and other appliances, forward patient requests, and notifications to mobile devices used by doctors and nurses. Smart speakers may become integrated with building management system platforms, where voice control can adjust lighting levels and window blinds. These smart speakers could free up nurses and other staff, allowing them to spend less time running tedious, non-medical errands, and freeing them to spend more time on issues requiring actual medical expertise.
However, while there is great potential for positive impact of the technology, the issue is that still it needs additional advancements and protection to ensure that sensitive patient data is kept safe. Failure on the part of a staff member to secure medical record data could cost an organization hundreds of thousands of dollars, as well as supply cyber-criminals with an opportunity to commit identity theft.
Perhaps even more concerning is the increasingly creative ways cybercriminals are hacking and stealing data, particularly in the healthcare industry. Contrary to popular belief, digital devices like smart speakers are not immune to hacking. In fact, as reported in Wired recently, a group of Chinese hackers developed a technique for hijacking Amazon’s voice assistant gadget. Although Amazon has pushed out security fixes, it highlights the fact that in the age of the Internet of Things, nothing is ever 100% safe from hacking.
As was reported by NBC News, Candid Wueest, Symantec’s principal threat researcher, explained: “Someone could hack into these devices remotely and turn them into a listening device. Some of them even come with cameras, so they could see what you’re doing.”
Healthcare presents specific challenges related to HIPAA compliance for the security of patient data. The current structure of most smart speaker’s architecture doesn’t align with HIPAA compliance, particularly in terms of access of personal health information (PHI). For example, a key challenge for Alexa is that they may not only transmit PHI to a user, but might also collect data through speech-to-text. The question then is how to prevent unauthorized access to that data, and whether HIPAA requirements for those devices be met and audited for compliance. In fact, this is a core task of the new Alexa health and wellness team, according to a recent CNBC article.
So while it might be tempting to bring an Amazon Echo, Google Home or HomePod to the office, until they become fully compliant, to do so would be risking HIPAA violations. Until such time that smart speaker technology has developed new advances that meet stringent compliance regulations, it would be better to use your smart speakers for the uses in which they were originally designed.
Most everyone would agree that welcoming in a new year provides hope, but as COVID-19 continues to bring about lasting ramifications for the healthcare industry, it continues to shed a light on the importance of continuity of care. As providers treat and manage the care of those impacted by the virus coupled with vaccination planning, improving healthcare information exchange empowers physicians, care coordinators and health insurance companies to make informed clinical decisions at the point of care.
To help the industry meet this critical need, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently proposed a new rule aimed at streamlining prior authorization processes to help reduce provider and patient burden while promoting patient’s electronic access to health information. According to information released by CMS, this proposed rule builds on the CMS Interoperability and Patient Access final rule and would place new requirements on Medicaid and CHIP managed care plans, state Medicaid and CHIP fee-for-service programs, and Qualified Health Plans (QHP) issuers on the Federally-facilitated Exchanges (FFEs) to improve the electronic exchange of health care data, and streamline processes related to prior authorization. The CMS fact sheet goes on to explain how this proposed rule would require increased patient electronic access to their health care information and would improve the electronic exchange of health information among payers, providers, and patients. Together, these policies would play a key role in reducing overall payer and provider burden and improving patient access to health information.Following the initial release of this proposed new rule in December of last year, CMS included several requests for information (RFIs) to support future rulemaking or other initiatives – one which pertained to reducing the use of facsimile (fax) technology across programs. In response, Consensus, Inc. – the company behind eFax Corporate® – took the opportunity to address this RFI through the submission of a formal comment letter to CMS, explaining the significance of Digital Cloud Fax Technology (DCFT) to the larger drive toward total interoperability. It was critical to offer these insights as a means of voicing our concern as to how the broad category of “facsimile (fax) technology” may unintentionally impact the delivery of care for many providers who use DCFT to exchange patient information, order medications, and receive test results from labs.
Digital Cloud Fax Technology’s Impact
Secure, paperless, cost effective and proven way for providers, payers and ancillary services to share documents and records
HIPAA-compliant
Integrates with existing EHR technology
Falls under the HIMSS category of “foundational interoperability”
Critical technology for rural healthcare organizations and financially challenged urban clinics
It must be stated, Consensus supports efforts to improve interoperability and promote the electronic exchange of healthcare data, including giving patients and providers access to prior authorization information to better manage care while reducing the burden on the healthcare system. With policy changes like this latest CMS proposed rule set to improve patient access and advance electronic data exchange, the days of the physical, paper-based fax machine are clearly numbered. So, while we agree with CMS’s desire to remove paper faxing from the process of data exchange, we believe that CMS failed to recognize the use of HIPAA compliant Digital Cloud Fax APIs, which serve an easy interoperable and integrated solution for secure document exchange for patient data today within process workflows and significantly easing the burden on the providers required to comply with any new rules.
We also expressed how there are unique circumstances that might present a challenge to meet the proposed compliance date, including resource challenges, funding, existing system incompatibility and lack of reliable core infrastructure – especially in rural settings. Depending on when the final rule is published in relation to a state’s budget process and timeline some states may not be able to secure the needed funds in time to both develop and execute implementation of the API requirements by the proposed compliance date. Some areas may have difficulty in finding needed IT resources for the development work.
Finally, our letter stressed how this accelerated comment period is unusual for such a significant proposal. Which is why we requested that CMS and ONC extend the comment period to a minimum of 60 days after publication in the Federal Register so the potential impacts of the proposed changes can be better evaluated, and a greater number of comprehensive and thoughtful comments can be considered.
What we all must understand is that fax doesn’t necessarily lump cloud faxing technology in with the paper fax machine – it is a protocol. Digital Cloud Faxing Technology is secure, HIPAA compliant and can certainly be interactive. Fax is a known quantity for being able to move information from one point to another securely privately and with a high degree of reliability and is pervasive among providers of all kinds. As the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) works to meet the goal they set of achieving total interoperability by 2024, Consensus looks to align with the goals of CMS to eliminate paper, increase security and facilitate electronic transactions. Digital cloud fax technology is a natural fit for meeting those goals while presenting information in a way that providers and payers in all settings and locations are accustomed.Our letter, in its entirety, can be viewed here: https://beta.regulations.gov/comment/CMS-2020-0157-0058
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